Newtown Student To Spend Year

In Germany As Ambassador

By Tanjua Damon

Sarah Letson recently graduated from Newtown High School, and instead of heading off to college like her friends, she will be going abroad to live in Germany for a year as an American Field Service Ambassador.

On September 3, Sarah left for Washington, D.C., with other northeast Ambassadors to prepare for their September 6 departure to Germany, where she will live with two host families as she learns the language and the culture of the European country.

“For a while I’ve wanted to go to a place where I didn’t know the language or the culture,” Sarah said. “I think the best way to learn the language is to live in a place.”

Sarah admitted it was a little strange to see her high school friends buying all the things they needed for college and leaving to start their college careers. But in a year she will join other college students at the University of Chicago, where she may major in biochemistry or biology.

“I’m in a different mindset,” she said. “It’s still the whole thing that everyone is leaving at once.”

While in Germany Sarah will spend four weeks with her first host family in Oldau, where she expects it to be time for intensive language learning, since she knows about five sentences in German. Once the four weeks are over she will move to another host family in Luneburg, where she will attend gymnasium, which is similar to high school in the United States. German students attend 13 years of school before having the opportunity to go to a university.

“People say ‘oh you’re going to high school again,’” she said. “And I think ‘Yeah, I am.’”

But that is okay with Sarah, because she has lived in Newtown her whole life and wants to experience what is out in the world. This is the prime opportunity for her to do that.

“I’ve known this all my life. There is so much more out there,” Sarah said. “You can read about it some, but the best way to learn about it is to be in it.”

Sarah hopes to experience many things during her year abroad. Seeing the world is a dream that she is making a reality.

“I hope to be fluent in German. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable goal to me,” Sarah said. “I think I’ll be broadened by this. I’m an observer. Make comparisons, defining who humans are, relationships with other people. When you learn about other cultures you learn more about the human condition.”

Sarah is the daughter of John Letson and Barbara Myers-Letson. She has a brother, Dan, who is a student at Newtown High School.