WHS class planning trip to Germany

Five German language students at Wahkiakum High School are busy dreaming and making plans to go to Germany for spring break this year.

Don Cox, who has been teaching history and German for many of his 11 years at the school district, will be a chaperone and guide. This is his eighth year teaching German and his fourth year making a trek with students to Germany.

“We’ve been planning this since the beginning of the year,” Connor Emlen-Petterson, a second year German student said. “I’m excited. It’s a new place and it will be a cool experience. We’ll get the flavor of the country.”

“I want to see a castle,” Bryanna Peek, another German student said.

She will see several. Neither have been out of the US.

This year the itinerary includes Munich and a cruise on the Rhine River, which Cox says is much like the Columbia, “except there is a castle on every hill.” The students may visit a medieval city, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Cox always plans a visit to a neighboring German speaking country and this year, the students will visit Innsbruck, Austria. They will depend on public transportation and stay in youth hostels, which will keep costs low.

Cox has been on a couple trips with tour companies in the past, but wants his students to have a different experience, meeting and interacting with Germans instead of other Americans.

He remembers watching some of his students interact with a German woman on the street, who was thrilled to have an audience

“Did you understand what she was telling you?” he had asked his students. Very little, they acknowledged, but it didn’t matter. They had connected on another level.

Each student has to raise $2,000. This year they are selling pop tarts before school and at lunch. They are planning to have a rummage sale in January and a car wash in March.

“My philosophy is put as much of it on the students and let them own this as much as possible,” Cox said. “It gives more meaning to the experience.”