Augsburg 2012: Chennai exchange students met expat families from India and Germany

Editorial

In Nördlingen, close to Augsburg. 

For most of us it was the time of our lifes! As exchange students we had a great time in Germany. We are girls aged 15 to 16 from the Sacred Heart School in Chennai (Tamil Nadu, South India). Together with our teacher Ms Swarna Ashok we went to Augsburg in Bavaria on an exchange at the Maria Ward Gymnasium in June 2012. It was not only a fun tour. We worked on a project promoted by the Goethe-Institut Chennai “Living Between Cultures”, where we interviewed Indian and German expats  (interviews below). 

For our personal experiences click our blogs on the right.

Chennai students visited Augsburg.

The project aims at the experiences of expatriates living in a foreign country. We interviewed three Indian families (living in Augsburg and Munich) and three German families (living in Chennai) - and our German teachers, who assisted us with the project. In Augsburg our exchange partners helped us with contacts, but it seemed the Indian famillies where quite busy. So we could only interview one of them face to face. With the other one we had a telephone interview and the third one was not available at all.

So what to do? There was only limited time and our exchange partners did not have any ideas how to find other Indians in Augsburg or in anywhere close by. But we were lucky. We met a nice Indian lady on a train. At first he was not very enthusiastic about our idea but as we told her, that we were really in need she agreed to help us. We could interview her but as she heard that everything will go online, she did not want us to publish her photo.

We thank everybody who assisted us, to make this project possible.

And here are the interviews: