photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Exchange students from Eutin, Germany, pose outside of Lawrence City Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026.

On Thursday, his last day at Free State High School, Richard has just gotten out of woodworking class.

How strange is that – woodworking, cooking and acting classes in a public school?

It’s quite strange indeed for Richard and a dozen other students from Lawrence’s sister city of Eutin, Germany. They recently got done spending two and a half weeks learning at American high schools, living with American families, trying “crazy” American food, and there’s so much they’re going to take back with them to their town of about 17,000 people in Germany’s north.

“It’s such a beautiful experience, and I think, yeah, we’ve all grown over this time,” said Alina, who spent her exchange at Bishop Seabury Academy.

Eutin and Lawrence’s Japanese sister city of Hiratsuka both have regular student exchange programs with Lawrence, where teenagers from each community can spend some time in the other one exploring their culture and how they live their lives. These Eutin students were matched with host families and placed in one of three high schools, Lawrence High, Free State or Bishop Seabury.

Last week, the Journal-World met up with some of them – Antonia, Alina and Jette at Bishop Seabury, and Lara, Lilly, Maxi, Richard, Sina and Smilla at Free State. Here’s what they had to say about food, football, and the friends they made on their trip.

Lots of variety

Right off the bat, the Eutiners knew that American schools were going to be different.

“We all knew that the school days here are pretty long for everybody,” Jette said. “In our school at home, up to 10th grade, you go home by 1 p.m. and eat at home and stuff; your day is a lot shorter.” But in American schools, “even, like, the 11-year-olds are staying in school here until like 2:30. It’s pretty different, and also hard for them and exhausting.”

But you meet a lot of different people in American schools, too. Lara was struck by how many people from different grades she met. And Lilly, Maxi and Richard weren’t expecting the sheer variety of classes – not only woodworking, but welding and cooking and other vocational skills, and even art classes.

“All the different classes, and how much fun these classes are,” is impressive, Maxi said.

Lilly had just come from an acting class, and she also said she appreciated the ceramics classes at Free State. “I wouldn’t have done this back home,” she said.

These kinds of classes are not what you’d find in Germany’s school system, where there are different educational tracks for the skilled trades and college prep, and students in the different groups have their own schools and their own curricula.

The students also said they were used to hearing lectures in their classes, and the hands-on learning and group projects of American schools were new to them. At Bishop Seabury, Antonia, Alina and Jette were pleasantly surprised by the number of class trips they got to go on, and the special events and hands-on activities at school.

“No day is like the other here,” Antonia said. “There’s always something going on.”

There were some smaller things about American schools that seemed unusual. Lilly noted that American high schoolers wear such “casual, relaxed clothing” at school that seems more like pajamas.

And a couple of the Eutiners thought it was funny that 16-year-olds were driving to school. In Germany, the driving age is 18, and most high schoolers go to school either by bus or by bike.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

From left, Lara, Sina and Smilla, exchange students from Eutin, Germany, are pictured at Free State High School on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026.

‘Football spirit’

But perhaps the most different high school experience of all was high school sports.

Kids do play club sports in Germany, but they take place outside of school. “We don’t have school sports,” Smilla said. “We don’t have school rivalries at all.”

Some of the sports were more familiar – the girls at Seabury took in a school volleyball match, for instance – but even these are different than what they’re used to, because there are always people from the schools cheering the teams on.

This was really neat, they thought, because it made the school feel more like a community.

“There are always people watching and supporting them,” Richard said. “That’s cool.”

And the one with the most people watching is usually football. In Germany, if you go to a sporting event, you’re there just to watch the game. But an American football game is more of a total experience, the Eutiners said.

“There’s so much entertainment,” Maxi said, with cheerleaders, music and everything else going on in addition to the game.

The girls at Seabury said it could be overwhelming. When they attended a game at one of the public schools, they didn’t really understand the rules, but their American friends told them you can “just cheer when other people are cheering.”

Seabury doesn’t have a football team of its own, but at Free State the Eutiners got to personally see the student body come together and show their love for their team, whether they had connections to people on the team or not.

“The football spirit is just really cool for us,” Lara said.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

From left, Antonia, Alina and Jette, exchange students from Eutin, Germany, stand outside Bishop Seabury Academy on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026.

‘Just stay open to everything’

One thing Jette appreciates better now is how big a place America is.

“It’s so much bigger,” Jette said. “At home, like, from our hometown, we can drive two hours to Denmark.” But when Seabury had its grandparents’ day, some people would say their grandparents lived in Kansas, but were too far away to visit for a day.

It’s not just the distance between cities and towns – everything seems bigger here.

“The parking lots are crazy big,” Richard said. “The cars are way bigger. Just the size of things.”

Even something like going to the supermarket is on a totally different scale. “It’s huge, and the whole experience is so, so different,” Antonia said. “There’s so many crazy flavors and colors and stuff we just don’t have.”

She said that after her first trip to the supermarket, “our host family asked us, ‘Oh, what did you do today?’ And we were just, ‘Oh, we went to the supermarket.’ And they were so disappointed, like, ‘Oh, such a boring day.’

“And we’re like, ‘No, it was not boring at all!”

The variety of foods available in America, and how they’re delivered, was something the Eutiners could talk a lot about.

Lara was surprised by how common drive-thrus are. There are some in Germany, but they’re only for when you’re in a hurry and need a very quick meal. Most of the time, when you go to a restaurant in Germany, you’ll sit down and eat there.

And Sina was surprised by the portions at restaurants. “The amount of food you get … it’s so crazy,” she said.

Sina liked her host family’s cooking the best – a lot of salad and other healthy foods – but she also really enjoyed Taco Bell. And Smilla’s host family ordered from a restaurant that had “Louisiana food.” Was it Terrebonne on Mass. Street? She can’t remember the name. But she does remember one delicious new dish.

“They had these little rolls of corn,” she said – hush puppies with dipping sauces.

The girls at Seabury said they’d miss Mexican food, which is almost impossible to find in Europe. And Alina and Antonia both had a culinary adventure on a weekend trip to Chicago: authentic deep-dish pizza. “Yeah, it was amazing,” Alina said.

“Never say no,” Antonia said, when your host family asks you “to try some crazy American food.”

“Get the ranch, get the ribs!” she laughs. “… You should try it out! Just stay open to everything. You might be shocked, but you might also be shocked in a good way!”

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

From left, Richard, Maxi and Lilly, exchange students from Eutin, Germany, are pictured at Free State High School on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026.

Staying in touch

The Eutiners loved learning about America’s culture, but they also loved the people here and how welcoming and accepting they were.

“Here we had celebrity status,” Jette said. People were excited to meet them, they’d recognize them out in public, they’d come up and ask questions about them.

“We’re not really used to that,” she said. “We’re not used to the person at the checkout at the grocery store, like, asking me questions and wanting to know about me.”

Her advice to future exchange students is to just embrace that: “Try to be open from the very start.”

Richard said that his host family was “very open, very kind.” “They just take you in like a normal family member,” he said.

Lara will keep in touch with her host sister and her classmates at Free State. So will Sina, and so will Smilla, whose host sister is actually thinking of going to Germany on an exchange next year.

And all of the students said they would definitely come back to America if given the chance. Lilly, who had been in the U.S. before, knows she wants to come back to Lawrence specifically and see her host family and all her new friends.

“I’m already thinking, next year, how can I come back and see these people again?” she said.