Sophomore Celine Bremer never thought about being a foreign exchange student until it happened. “We had an information day at school where organizations came and they explained the whole student exchange thing and all the details,” she said. Bremer was immediately interested. She said she got to the interview, received the details, then she was in; everything about the experience since has been a blur.

The 17-year-old comes from the central German city of Göttingen, which is roughly 4,800 miles from North Platte. She said she hasn’t been homesick yet. “I’ve talked to other exchange students and none of us have been,” she said. Although there’s technology to communicate with her loved ones in Germany, the main enemy is time. There’s a seven hour time difference between North Platte and Germany. “It’s so hard because when I wake up, they’re getting out of school and I have to go to school so we can’t really talk then. When I get out of school and am done with cross country, they are already asleep,” Bremer said.

On top of being so far from home, Bremer is living with people she had never met in person before she got to America. She only communicated with her host family through Facebook. “I was pretty nervous about meeting them and seeing what their daily routine looked like versus mine and to see if we could make that work,” she said. Now, she says that her house parents are her friends. She was also afraid that she wouldn’t understand anything at school due to the English, although she’d been learning the language since third grade. “It’s so different to hear it everyday in the real English,” she said.

In Germany, one of Bremer’s favorite things to do was to play soccer. She is considering trying out for the soccer team in spring. In the meantime, she’s a member of the North Platte cross country team. “I wanted to get my condition back because I wasn’t able to do any sports for two years back in Germany. I had heart problems,” Bremer said. Cross country is one of her favorite things about being in Nebraska because it’s “so different” compared to her home.

Bremer is in North Platte for 10 months through the organization Education First (EF). This organization works in 112 different countries, with its headquarters based out of Sweden.

Bremer said, “I don’t actually know what my favorite thing about America is, everything is special and amazing and impressive. There’s no words for it.”