The Long Goodbye...

Suddenly, the end of Session 1 was upon us.  The Language and Culture students, staff and host families gathered at Brauhaus Südstern for a delightful evening filled with good food, laughter, shared stories and plenty of posing for the camera.  We were already impressed with this group of kids.  Then they impressed us even more at the farewell dinner by requested time at the podium for an addition to the evening program, all student-initiated, organized and led. Students mades speeches, played viola and piano, and asked their host families to stand or come forward.  Inspired, a house father just had to come up and speak. And then another PL (program leader); all had thanks to offer.  It was a truly heartwarming evening. 

These students are fun, mature, self-starters and team players; we loved how easily they organized games among themselves and made sure to include everyone.  They built friendships and even, among a certain subset of them, adopted each other as uncles, brothers, fathers and sons (see above). We could hardly keep a certain frisbee out of their hands in the courtyard even when it was time to leave for excursions. That was the same frisbee causing walking hazards on the hike up to Teufelsberg, wasn't it? They loved that frisbee until one of the students accidentally tossed it over the courtyard wall, and there was no way to reach it.  (Someone bought a new one, and only then, the neighbor finally tossed the original one back over the wall!)

On Friday, we had the final presentations and Frühstück (breakfast) in the classroom.  Level 4 had a drawing to see who would take home the class mascot, Bärchen (little bear).  Then, true to form, another student-organized pick-up game day in the CIEE courtyard on Friday afternoon.  All were invited and included.  We love these kids!

These four weeks have been fabulous! The friendships and memories we made will last a lifetime as will the experience of living in Germany with host families and using German in the classroom and around town. CIEE specializes in curating educational, immersive and cultural experiences that help turn ordinary students into citizens of the world. As we end Session 1 and students fly back to the gateway cities and fan out across the country, there are some tears, lots of laughter, shared Instagram handles and many, many pictures.  We couldn't be prouder of this newest group of CIEE graduates!