SIDNEY — Three Sidney High School students traveled to Germany as part of a month-long exchange with the Friendship Connection on June 14. This completes the exchange that began in past March, when nine German students visited Sidney High School and stayed with families for a month. The three students who traveled to Germany are recently graduated senior Laney Shaw, incoming senior Kiersten Sprague and incoming junior Zoe Crist.
Shaw will be staying with Aileen Weinand near the small town of Eschwege in northern Hessen. Sprague will be staying with Svenja Menzenbach in the city of Wetzlar in central Hessen, near Frankfurt and Crist will stay with Helene Mashayekhi in Marburg in central Hessen.
All three students have studied German for a minimum of two years and will experience total language and cultural immersion. While in Germany they will have an opportunity to attend German school, witness day to day life and culture and make friendships that could potentially last a lifetime.
Sidney High School has participated in the Friendship Connection program for over twenty years. The choice to make a home-stay style visit over a “class trip” is simply a matter of overall learning. Instead of staying in hotels and hopping from one site to another, these students will experience language and culture first-hand.