One of Heritage’s foreign exchange students, Paula Moser, navigates the halls of the first American school she’s ever attended. From Germany, she traveled across the world to try out the American high school experience. She came all this way for a change. She shares that “in Germany a lot is happening, and it’s all the same. I do a lot of sports in Germany. I have practice right after school with the same people; every week is the same, and I needed a change. That’s why I wanted to experience something new.”
As you can imagine, high school in Germany is completely different from the United States. Moser shares that her old high school is very serious and much harder than school here.
“Here you can relax. You can use your phones, but in Germany that isn’t allowed. You have to pay attention all the time… and you have to focus a lot on school. School takes a big part of your life,” she says. No phones, shorter classes, shorter days, formal dress code. Everyone is much more serious in Germany because “if you don’t focus on school you’ll fail,” Moser insists.
With the significant difference between here and Germany, Moser is having a hard time adjusting to the new school, schedule, language, and people.
“I like school; I really like the opportunities here [at Heritage]. You can do a lot of sports, and the people here are really nice so far,” she said. “It’s difficult to find friends because everyone has their own groups.” Even with the difficulties of finding her own friends so late in the school year, she has found people to hang out with who she likes to be around.
One of the first friends she made here was Chloe Avera, a senior who she met in her first class. Moser came into her Public Safety class on the first day back and asked if the seat next to Avera was taken, but Avera responded, “No, I want to make a friend.” She admitted in the interview that Paula is “beautiful” and very kind, and that’s what made her want to be friends.
Moser is very social and loves to hang out with her friends and go shopping in her free time. If she’s coming from a new country, she must be friendly and outgoing to make friends and be involved, and that’s exactly who Moser is. Avera describes her as “outgoing, really funny, and very likable.”
While it’s hard to come to a new school and navigate different cliques and classes, Moser is doing a wonderful job and is adjusting well to her new schedule and friends.
