Brandon Kinkade, 16, a sophomore at Simley High School, has spent nearly three weeks hosting Toni Louis Hengel, 15, one of 31 German students visiting Minnesota this month as part of an exchange program. Kinkade and fellow students from Simley and Rosemount High School are introducing their German friends to everything American, including cheeseburgers, apple pie and even Jell-O (incidentally not a favorite of the German students).

Come summer, Kinkade will travel to Germany to stay with Hengel's family as part of the German American Partnership Program (GAPP), which immerses students in schools and homes and, ideally, creates friendships that ultimately foster better relationships between the two countries. GAPP, created in 1972 by the German Foreign Office and the U.S. Department of State, has grown to include some 800 school partnerships.

"I was lucky enough to participate in this type of exchange at White Bear Lake High School," says Matthew Mitchell, now a German teacher at Simley High School.

In 1994, during his junior year, he traveled to Ratingen, a city outside of Düsseldorf.

"I came home fired up about the culture, and I improved my language in just four weeks," Mitchell said. "I was far and away ahead of where students were that didn't go. Ultimately that exchange led to my becoming a German teacher."

A unique equal exchange

Knowing how GAPP shaped his future, Mitchell set out to organize a GAPP exchange after he began teaching at Rosemount High School in 2003. By the fall of 2005, he had his first group of students from Rottweil (yes, home of the dog), and the following spring his students made the trip there. When he left Rosemount that fall to teach at Simley, he continued the program as a partnership between the two Minnesota schools.

What makes the GAPP exchange different from other foreign exchanges, Mitchell says, is the equal student-to-student exchange. For three weeks German students live with families of American students studying German. Then the American students go and stay with the families of students they hosted. The exchange has to occur during the school year, and the visiting students give presentations to their host schools on various topics about their country and culture.

But the trips are packed with outings as well. Since arriving on Oct. 10, the German teens have taken a road trip to Duluth and Ely, experienced the Minneapolis Segway Tour, visited the Mill City Museum and Walker Art Center, and of course, seen the Mall of America. "That was heaven," said one 15-year-old Rottweil student, her friends nodding in agreement.

When Kinkade travels to Germany, Hengel expects him to be most shocked by German food, but he suspects he'll enjoy his favorites: schnitzel and spätzle. After all, the boys have discovered a lot in common, including studying math and science and playing soccer.

Will the friendship last? Only time will tell. The friendships forged on Mitchell's 1994 trip have. In 2006 he returned to Germany for a wedding between two students in his exchange program. Next year, they'll come to his.

Kara Douglass Thom is a freelance writer living in Savage.