Without speaking to junior Leonie Tils, one might assume she is a normal American girl. But this basketball playing, track running, piano enthusiast is not.  First of all, she’s German.  Born in Hamburg, Germany, she is one of only a few foreign exchange students on campus.

“Coming to the States and being away from my family and friends is hard,” Tils said. “I never thought I would miss them this much. I mean they are gone, they are really so far away.”

Starting a new school in the middle of one’s high school career can be difficult enough, but starting it in a country that is 5055 miles from home would be nerve racking to some students.  However, Tils is facing the foreign exchange program with courage.

“I’ve known since eighth grade that I wanted to do [foreign exchange],” Tils said. “I read books about it , and people told me about it. I was like yes! I want to do this [program].”

Before making the big decision of doing a foreign exchange program for a year, she tested the waters by being an exchange student in America for a few weeks.

“After the few weeks I spent as a foreign exchange student before this I was like I really want the full experience,” Tils said.

While some parents may not allow their teenager to live overseas with a family they had never met before in America, it is more common in Germany.

“Right now there are like ten people from my school right now doing the foreign exchange thing,” Tils said. “I think that Germany has like the most people doing it.”

Though it was hard for her parents to let her come to America, they wanted Tils to be happy.

“It was hard for my parents, but they really just wanted the best for me,” Tils said. “It was mostly hard for my 13 year-old sister, when I left. Going to the airport was probably the hardest time for us.”

Surprisingly to some students, Tills has known how to speak English since the third grade. Though she was familiar with the language, at first it was difficult for her to process what people were saying to her.

“It was kind of hard in the beginning to talk with people, because some people talk so fast,” Tils said.

Some things, such as her passions, did not change when she came to America. Tils has always loved running track and playing the piano.

“I had always run the track back in Germany, I played lots of sports” Tils said.

However, Tils found there were other hobbies she enjoyed participating in.

“When I came here I did basketball. It became one of the best experiences of my life,” Tils said. “It was nice to have like a team, because I had never had that before.”

Basketball was a sport Tils could participate in with her host sister, sophomore Paige Eberhart.

“I am really good friends with my host sister, she is my age,” Tils said. “The family is so nice, they include me in everything”

Eberhart’s mom was excited about hosting Tils in this program. Her family had never done this before.

“We went through the application process and in November Leonie came to live with us,” Eberhart said.  “I think that when you stop and think about all that Leonie has experienced as a foreign exchange student particularly the amount of change that she faced all at once, in my opinion she has acclimated very well.”

Tils will have lived apart from her family for a year, in a country where she knew no one when she arrived last August.  She has approached this journey with a positive attitude, immersing herself in as many activities as possible, meeting as many new people as she can while learning about our culture.

Paige Eberhart thinks that the foreign exchange program with Tills is a great thing, allowing a close bond to develop between the two.

“[Tils] really is like a sister to me,” Eberhart said.  “Sometimes she gets on my nerves you know, but by the end of the day we really are sisters.  It’s really cool for me because I only have a brother, so it is pretty fun to have her around.”

Life with Tils has become a normal thing in the household, and Eberhart knows it will be difficult when Tils leaves to go home to Germany.

“It will be different when she leaves, but I know we will still keep in contact with each other and stuff,” Eberhart said.

Tils has come to realize that high school life in America and in Germany is basically the same.

“At first it was hard because I didn’t know anyone, and I was like a stranger. But, then after awhile I thought that life in Germany is basically the same as here,” Tils said. “The people are really the same.”