News: Exchanges to USA

In the middle of the Easter holidays, Tom and Angus from the Third Form, and Campbell, Alex and I from Chalmers West, set out for Philadelphia on the second part of this year's exchange with the Germantown Friends' School. Pupils from there stayed at Merchiston in February, and now it was our turn to go and stay with their families and attend their school.

While we were there, we were given a choice of sporting activities - either athletics or baseball - Tom, Angus, Campbell and I did baseball and Alex did athletics. A few days into our stay, there was an athletics match, in which Alex entered two events, the long jump and the high jump - he won both. Campbell and I were also meant to play in a baseball match, but it was cancelled because of bad weather. We did, however, have two matches, and we played reasonably well, although our team lost both of them. Alex had no further athletics matches, but enjoyed the training sessions. We all thoroughly enjoyed the sporting activities we took part in during our stay there.

On arrival in Philadelphia we were given no time to get over jet-lag, and had to go to school on the day after we arrived. We all had difficulty in coping with the difference in time, which was five hours ahead of British Summer Time.

We were warmly welcomed to the school by the Headmaster. There numerous differences between the school and Merchiston: pupils call the teachers by their first names instead of Ma'am or Sir; casual clothes are worn instead of school uniform, giving it a more relaxed atmosphere; and the grounds are about half the size of Merchiston's, but there are about twice as many pupils there. In the classroom, we felt that we were ahead in the Sciences, but in Maths and Languages, they are about a year ahead of us. In Language lessons, no English was spoken at all.

Germantown Friends School is a Quaker school. Instead of our Chapel services, they hold a weekly meeting, which lasts about half an hour, with everyone sitting in silence, unless they feel moved to speak to the congregation.

The school day started at 8.20am, and finished at 2.30pm, with eight lessons being taught. Afterwards, we did either athletics or baseball.

When we were in America, our host families took us on a number of sight-seeing trips - in my case to Washington DC and to New York. Washington, with its white buildings is one of the cleanest cities I have been to. I saw the White House, which is a lot smaller than it looks in pictures, and when we went to the Vietnam Memorial, there was a bugler playing, and we had to follow the tradition of putting the right hand over the heart as a new name was being carved into the stone. Everything about New York was massive: there were countless skyscrapers, crowds of people everywhere, and lots of yellow cabs - not exactly the best place to play a game of yellow car! Whilst in New York, I visited the Statue of Liberty, learning that originally it was bronze, but had turned green because of all the rain, and queued for two hours to go up the Empire State Building: this was certainly worth it in the end because the view, which stretched as far as the next state, was stunning. Finally, we saw Times Square, with its massive screens and rotating bill boards, and even a Macdonalds which was the size of a Tesco supermarket.

We undoubtedly had a brilliant time in America, made many new friends, and learnt a huge amount about life there. We would thoroughly recommend this exchange to next year's Third and Fourth Formers, and sincerely thank all at Merchiston and at GFS who worked so hard to make it a successful and enjoyable trip.

by Raleigh, Alex and Campbell

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