"China Was the Best Experience of My Life" – A Year of German-Chinese School and Youth Exchange
China Today by Helmut Matt, November 10, 2016 Adjust font size:
Freiburg Main Station! Above me was the clear autumn morning sky. Full of thoughts, yet filled with joyful anticipation, I waited at platform No. 2. What changes would the upcoming 10 months bring to our lives? Would we get along well with our 15-year-old guest “daughter” from China?
In fact, we already knew each other, having spent a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days on Huangshan Mountain with her and her mother a few months earlier. But how would it be living under one roof for almost one year?
When the doors of the long-distance train opened, Yiqi was one of the first passengers to alight, and all my worries evaporated. A delighted smile on her face, Yiqi ran in my direction and greeted me as if I was her own father. I now had no doubt that this coming year would be full of beautiful, interesting and exciting experiences, for my family as well as for our guest-daughter from Anhui Province in southern China.
Chinese exchange student, Yiqi, visits the Europa-Park in Rust, Germany, with her mother and host mother.
I took Yiqi’s luggage and we walked to my car. I knew that my wife Linda would be impatiently waiting at home for us to arrive.
We had come up with a very special idea for the first day. It was on that Sunday that the German town of St. Morgen in the Black Forest region would hold its traditional horse festival Rossfest. Enthralled, Yiqi stood among the other visitors listening to festive folk music, gazing at the parade with its numerous historical horse-drawn carriages and at the villagers attired in traditional Black Forest costumes. My wife and I agreed that there couldn’t have been a better start to an exchange year in Germany.