Mphoentle Grace Tsotetsi (19) from Boipatong in Vanderbijlpark is still adjusting to life back in South Africa after she had been an exchange student for 10 months in Germany.
She says: “I must say that being an exchange was one of the most amazing experiences I have had the privilege to be part of. Most importantly I continued to be a Rotary Peace ambassador. I loved everything about my year all the good and the difficult times. My exchange year was filled with learning and I love learning something new be it bad or good. I believe that all experiences are there to help me grow, which is exactly what my exchange was made up of Growth. From 2017 when I was picked for the local interviews to this very last minute which is reverse culture shock. Exchange is not just a year in my life but it is a lifetime in a year.”
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Mphoentle lived in Bavaria near a city called Aschaffenberg which is in the Southeast of Germany and is the largest of all the 16 federal states. At first she stayed with the Schlotkes in a small village called Pflaumheim which has about 2852 residents, before experiencing life with Becker/Kempf in a bigger market community called Elsenfeld with around 9000 residents. Her last host family was Rehbein/Van der Does who lives in a municipality called Obernau with about 1000 residents.
She was enrolled as a pupil of the Karl Theodore Dalberg Gymnasium in Aschaffenburg. It is a musical and technical gymnasium where she studied Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Biology, Chemistry, Economics, History, Geography, Religious Studies, Sports, Music, English, German and Spanish. She says it was quite a challenge to learn German and Spanish at the same time, although she is glad she could do it. The problem was that she had to understand German before she could start learning Spanish as the Spanish classes were presented in German!
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Apart from all the studies, she still found time for fun and exploring. Soon after her arrival she made friends with an Italian girl, Alessia, who had moved to Germany just a couple of months earlies. Despite the language barrier, they explored the area together and went to the movies and ice skating together. Mphoentle also joined a youth group every Friday where she learn a lot about another religion and later on about Russian families. She also did a lot of travelling.
She also made friends with a dog for the first time in her life. She said she was super scared of dogs, but then she met Charlie who belongs to her second host family. He had just a positive impact on her life, she is now planning to get her own dog soon. Mphoentle describes her exchange year as the highlight of her life.
The German culture had made quite an impression on her. “It’s super amazing to live in a country where everything is centered in culture, from the rituals which happen on certain holidays to how just walking in the city feels like. For example, there are things like the Advents Calendar which children get on 1 December. It has 24 doors which lead up to Christmas and inside the doors there are a treat for everyday. Then there is the Maibaum ceremony whereby the (May tree) is erected on 1 May. Apart from these festive rituals, Mphoentle says she has also learned to plan and to always be on time.
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Since returning to South Africa in January, she has commenced her studies to become a Bereavement, Birth doula. One day she hopes to qualify as Obstetrician Gynecologist. She was also working towards qualifying as a Health and Safety officer by the end of this year, but her studies have been put on hold due to the lockdown. “I was also working on my company which helps to instill self-love and confidence in the youth, and which has expanded into working with instilling confidence in our own Eco-environment. Due to the pandemic, I am now running a drive which collects and distributes reusable pads to girls who need them,” says this ambitious girl with a heart of gold.
Mphoentle had a special message for young people. “As it’s said in German: “leben ist kein ponyhof, wir können nicht in Selbstmitleid wohnen”- Life is not easy and we cannot dwell in self-pity. There’s no doubt in that, therefor we must strive to be the ultimate best version of ourselves. Let’s try not being realistic for once, especially as the youth of the country, the future leaders, and have that one goal which shoots to the stars. We might as well catch it, it might catch us by surprise, like how my exchange year caught me by surprise. I can’t begin counting the odds of being able to be part of such an amazing programme, which I knew nothing about before I came across their website. Qualifying to be part of it was an instant dream which came true. All I had was a definite desire, just like Napoleon Hill said. It was supported by a definite faith and it turned into a definite success. So here is to not being realistic; here’s to being confident in all we do; being true to ourselves and others. Here’s to leaving the fear of failure behind if we want to be successful. I believe it’s time to increase our rate of failure, because among those failed moments, there’s that one odd chance…”
