Going somewhere
By Joey Berlin
Originally published 09:21 a.m., December 15, 2007
Updated 09:21 a.m., December 15, 2007
Considering the United States wasn’t Nele Klemeyer’s first choice to study abroad this year, she’s adjusted awfully well to being Emporia High School’s only exchange student.
She’s made friends, played tennis, gotten involved in theater and gotten accustomed to the Midwest — and that’s just in her first semester.
When she came to Emporia in August from Bremerhaven, a town in northern Germany of about 120,000 people, Nele’s knowledge of Emporia consisted only of a brief bit of research on Google.
But with the help of Kent and Jodi Heermann and their son, Andrew, a senior at Emporia High, 16-year-old Nele has done more than just survive in her temporary home.
“She’s a darling girl,” Jodi Heermann said. “She has become really a part of our family.”
Nele (pronounced NEE-la) originally thought she was headed to Argentina to study, but there were problems with contacting the Rotary exchange district there. She found out she was being rerouted to the U.S. just two weeks before she came to live with the Heermanns.
“Actually, I would’ve preferred another country,” she said. “Because I would’ve learned Spanish, and I know English. But then I was like, ‘OK, well at least I can go somewhere,’ so that was my point. I didn’t want to stay home.”
Nle has been studying English since the third grade. She had been to the United States once before during a short-term exchange, but she stayed in the mountains of Colorado. So this time, the first thing to hit Nele once she got off the plane in mid-August was the Midwest heat, something she said she doesn’t experience in Bremerhaven.
“Nele’s first word out of her mouth after we left the airport was, ‘Whoooa,’” Jodi said. “It was like 106 that day when we went to pick her up.”
There were other adjustments to make, too, of course.
“It was different,” Nele said. “In Germany, I always take my bike everywhere, and we have a good bus system in my town. So it was different because I couldn’t go that free everywhere, and I didn’t have any friends to visit.”
Andrew helped her meet people, though, and soon Nele made friends and got adjusted to other differences, like those between EHS and her school in Germany. Nele was used to being in one classroom the entire day, instead of going to a different room for each class. Also, her German school doesn’t serve lunch.
Nele has gotten involved in activities at Emporia High. She played tennis at EHS this semester and is part of the theater department’s upcoming production of “Beauty and the Beast.” She might try out for soccer in the spring.
She credits the Heermanns with not only helping her meet people, but also allowing her to manage her own life.
“They were really nice,” she said, “and they said I could just do what I want in the house. Not, ‘You’re not allowed to eat that,’ and ‘You have to do that.’”
For the elder Heermanns, having both a boy and a girl in the house is just like old times; their daughter, Jennifer, is in her third year in college.
“We’ve had a few more activities to go to, which is fine,” Jodi said. “We’ve maybe been to some activities that we normally wouldn’t have gone to because we didn’t want to or need to.
“I don’t think it’s impacted (us) time-wise as much as maybe people think. We’re busy, but no busier than any other family that has two kids in high school. We try to go to as many of Nele’s activities as we go to Andrew’s.”
Occasionally, Nele gets together with other exchange students in the Heermanns’ Rotary district for weekend events planned by the district. Doing so has allowed her to see other cities, such as Kansas City and Lawrence, and she’s made friends with the other exchange students, getting together with them in between planned events.
“They’re just like (American) kids that age,” Kent Heermann said. “They’ve got cell phones, they text each other, they have Facebook on the Internet, they have blog pages. They’re wired — it’s a lot different than being a Rotary exchange student 20 years ago, when you had to write letters, and on a rare occasion you might call your parents or they call you.”
Every once in awhile, Nele does talk to her parents on the phone. But she keeps in touch with them and her 19-year-old sister mostly by e-mail.
“I’m kind of slow (in responding) except for my sister,” she said. “Because my sister just got on Facebook, so it’s faster, and you don’t have to write that much. Because my parents always like to hear everything in detail. So it’s hard work.”
Nele was homesick the first time her parents called her, but it hasn’t been much of a problem since then. This Christmas will be her first away from her family, and she admits it will probably be somewhat difficult for her.
But the way she’s adapted to everything else in her first four months in Emporia, chances are, she’ll find a way to adapt to that, too.