Nele and Merle Cremer arrived at Dallastown at the start of the year all the way from Germany.
The junior twins came to study abroad, and they’re leaving after making new memories and connections day by day.
“We were born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, but moved to Germany when we were 13 months old, as that is where our family lives. We then grew up in Germany, near Bremen, and started learning English when we were 8 years old,” Cremer girls said.
Once reaching the final year of their previous school they had to decide what they wanted to do once completing their sophomore year.
When they had been offered the opportunity to live with family friends and continue their education here in America for a year the twins couldn’t resist.
Joining a completely new school in a different country is a very scary thing to be faced with. Since school and the language here is different, and they didn’t know any kids here they did face challenges of making friends. However at Dallastown there are a variety of inviting staff and students.
“Dallastown was very welcoming; we always received help from teachers and classmates whenever we had questions about vocabulary. The teachers were also extremely helpful, they were always very friendly and patient toward us and even took the time to explain things to us a second time when we couldn’t understand something. And we made some great and fun friends here pretty quickly.”
The Cremers spent time with other families such as the Gorman family after junior Molly Gorman met Merle in an English class.
“I love how funny Nele is and I love how caring Merle is,” Gorman said.
As it may be expected, our culture and norms here are very different from those the twins have been accustomed to in Germany.
“In Germany, we cannot choose the subjects we want to take. We have a single, fixed schedule, with different subjects every day, and, up until the 12th grade, we spend most of our time exclusively with our homeroom,“ Cremers said.
This exhibits the notable differences between school life here and in Germany. At Dallastown, students are offered a larger variety of subjects and extracurricular activities as well as the option to choose the classes individually to fit to their desired future plans.
While getting to watch football and lacrosse games, and meeting new friends is always a fun journey there is definitely much to miss about being back home.
“Since our friends and family are there and they keep living their lives of course, and you miss them from time to time, especially on holidays or when it’s their birthday, but on holidays especially we missed our family a lot, because they weren’t with us.”
While these final weeks of school for most of us mean going off to summer vacation, for the Cremer girls it means returning home to Germany a week after summer begins.
The girls now leave with more memories made and friends gained, Dallastown will miss them and we wish them the best of luck.
