I’m Frances, and I’ve spent the last 10 months here at the Burg-Gymnasium Wettin and am going back to the U.S. in a couple of weeks as my exchange program ends.

My exchange was made possible by my exchange program CBYX, (Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange) which gives scholarships to students in the U.S. and Germany to live abroad for a year and experience culture in the opposite country. As part of the program, me and the 38 other high schoolers from my area met up for a third time from 19^th -23^rd May. We slept in a youth hostel, shared rooms with the other participants and were supervised by counselors who we knew from our previous meetings. This time, we participated in activities organized by the program like seeing a German play, listening to a political science presentation, going to a Stasi museum, but a lot of times we just talked or explored the city.

The focus of the week, however, was a trip to the Bundestag, where we sat in on a session, got the opportunity to ask questions to representatives and the Bundestagspräsidentin, and some of us got to personally meet members of the Bundestag. I had a lot of fun in Berlin and am grateful to the program and the counselors for making it possible and such a positive experience, but also for the wonderful people who are on exchange with me. Exchange is better when you know people are going through the same struggles with you.

Frances Richardson