A long way from home, experiencing a new way of life and learning the do’s and don’ts of American life, junior Johannes Huy gets his American experience.

“The language, the sports and meeting new people, all of my daily stuff — like the language, I have to think about the words for a minute,” Huy said. “It’s just different. It’s just not German, so I’m not used to speaking English everyday. The first couple of days I just tried not to speak because I didn’t want to make mistakes, but after a few days I was like ‘eh, screw that, I’m going to speak anyways.’”

Huy came from Western Germany, Rhineland-Palatinate, Edesheim, which is much smaller than Manhattan. He played many sports but had never played football.

“I played rugby, but that is nothing in comparison to what is going on in the field. I thought ‘wow this is intensive, it’s long,’” Huy said. “The coaches make it to be like a military drill.”

Huy struggles with learning the plays and, more specifically, the English made it difficult for him. He found he must take the time to process it.

The social atmosphere of Manhattan High School has a wide variety of people making it easier to find a place in the food chain.

“I don’t know about making friends because when I say a ‘friend’ it’s not the same as saying I just know someone, like I know the whole football team, but I’ve got to get to know that person, share some experiences with them, or hang out,” Huy said. “In Germany we [what Huy would consider his close friends] would always sit all together, like I could have thousands of ‘friends’ but only few I would actually consider.”

In Edesheim he was educated about how life in America might be.

“They told us that Americans would be very friendly and interactive on the surface, even if you hadn’t ever heard of them,” Huy said.

His personal experience has lived up to the ideas from Germany.

“You know when you’re like walking on the street people will say ‘Hello’ but, if that was done in Germany it would be like — ‘uh, what,’” Huy said.

As for specific things Americans do during their daily life and certain laws that we have that alter the activities one from another country may participate in, Huy has noticed a couple differences.

“The drinking age is very high, there is a lot of fast food, and in Germany fast food really isn’t considered a proper meal,” Huy said. “We’d be like ‘hey we just finished eating dinner let’s go get some McDonald’s burgers’ — but that’s like a meal here. The quality of fast food is a lot better here, though.”

Huy noticed how proud the students of MHS are of the school.

“It’s not like that in Germany, everybody hates school,” he said.

Huy has to get used to with the American life is adapting to that the ‘normal’ teenage life is considered here.

“Young people in America don’t have much freedom, like 16 is pretty much being an adult in Germany and you pretty much do whatever you want, but 16 in America you don’t go to bars, parties and clubs,” Huy said. “But in Germany that is a regular thing.”

His transportation ways are limited being a foreign exchange student.

“Back home I had a motorcycle, so I was able to get around the villages in my town pretty easily,” Huy said.

Homesickness hasn’t gotten to Huy too much yet. However he did have a couple things that came to mind. “I miss German salad, German drinks, German food in general,” Huy said.