Germanic tales shared by FHS grad Knudsen
The biggest influence of the trip was how it led her to a career choice.
“I really had never known what I wanted to do,” she recalled.
“Seeing how environmentally conscious and ‘green’ they are in Germany — they walk more, they bike more, they’re just a little bit more conscious — really made me realize I wanted to do something similar in my career,” Knudsen said. “I’m hoping with industrial engineering (which is her major at University of Tennessee, Knoxville) I can work with companies to just become more green and more environmentally friendly.”
Another take-away, she said, was the people she met.
“I met so many amazing people while I was there,” Knudsen said. “I now have friends on every continent except Antarctica.
“After taking this trip, I knew I wanted to do something similar, traveling abroad or some other trip again,” she added.
Knudsen said some fellow exchange students she encountered came from South America, Europe, Africa and a few from Australia.
“The different cultures I got to see while meeting these people is such an amazing experience,” she said.
Knoxville Breakfast Rotary Club sponsored Knudsen’s exchange trip, where she stayed with a host family in Neumünster, an hour from Hamburg, and attended the school Freie Waldorfschule for the first six months. “My two host siblings went (to that school),” she said as the FHS grad likened it to the Montessori School. I met a lot of great people there.”
Knudsen related a trip she took with her host family, where “we sailed the Baltic Sea to an island off Denmark. I had never been on a sailboat before that,” she said. “I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn’t really help or anything, but I was so happy to be there.
”I just loved this experience because it was something I had never done before.
“I would love to get the chance to go on some type of boat trip like this again.”
Knudsen also took a class trip with the Freie Waldorfschule school to the Czech Republic.
“We stayed in a very, very small town,” she said. “It’s just across the German border. I loved it. My favorite day was when we took a day trip to Prague.”
Knudsen also went with her first host family on a trip to Moran, Italy, before fall break.
Around Christmas, she switched to her second host family and destination, Burdesholm, where she attended another school, Hans Bruggenmann Schule, “which was your more normal high school.”
However, “I was only there for two months before COVID happened and everything shut down,” Knudsen said.
”That was a tough year,” said Bill Nichols, Youth Services Committee member. “She came back home, thank goodness, after a lot of attempts to get her on a plane to come back.”
The 19-year-old, who is a junior at the University of Tennessee, where she is majoring in industrial engineering.
