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How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

—Anne Frank

On Germany

See where else Joy has been

Experiences in Germany

On Germany

At age 16, Joy made her first trip outside of the US to attend a semester abroad at a boarding school, Louisenlund, located in northern Germany. Joy had learned about the opportunity through the headmaster at Dublin School when she requested a meeting with him her sophomore year. She walked into his office one day, troubled, with a long list of programs she had contacted that offered several study abroad opportunities in Europe but no financial aid. Joy was puzzled by the smile on the headmaster's face as she was expressing her trials and tribulations, when he finally stopped her mid-sentence to share that he had literally just gotten off the phone with a representative from the Round Square conference. Joy stared on blankly. The headmaster continued that the representative from Round Square was introducing a pilot exchange program and had called to offer three Dublin students seats at boarding schools in Europe the following semester!

Joy listened on in gleeful astonishment, as the headmaster explained two openings were available in England and one in Germany. He then went on to share that if Joy were to get accepted to the program, her scholarship at Dublin would be in lieu of any tuition due to the school abroad. Joy's eyes lit up and wheels were already turning about how she could earn the money for the plane ticket. Joy sprung from her chair and almost hugged the man, but he cautioned her not to get too excited, because he had to allow the entire student body to apply for the opportunities and there was no guarantee Joy would be chosen. But there was no stopping Joy now. She damn near skipped out of the office, headed to the library, and started researching all there was to know about Germany. Afterall, she thought, "Why go to England when I already know English?"

Joy's acceptance to the Germany program came several months later via fax from Herr Philip Town, the Round Square rep and administrator at Louisenlund, who welcomed Joy to the program and asked her to return a photo copied picture of herself via fax, so that he could recognize her at the airport when she landed. On one momentous day, the 8th of September, Joy would board a plane out of Boston to Hamburg on Sabena Airlines with a stopover in Brussels. Herr Town greeted Joy with a big hug and said he recognized her right away because of her giant smile; it was her only feature he could detect from the botched fax he had received.

Joy was thrilled to finally have landed in Germany and was shocked how similar to the US it was. She had worked the majority of the summer to pay for the plane ticket and the Director of Development at Community Prep collected $395 from faculty for Joy to purchase a Eurail Flexipass which was valid for 10 days of travel within any 2 month period. Board members of the school also offered a rain jacket and other travel gear. Joy was prepared to brave the elements, to dance to folklore songs, and to chase people in lederhosen. Little did she know.

Joy embraced dorm life in Eichenhaus. She had a roommate from Stuttgart who wore a Barbour jacket, smoked cigarettes, and was nice to Joy mostly when no one was looking. Joy took whatever she could get. It wasn't long before Joy found the only other native-English speaking student in the school besides, Fletcher Farrow Previn, the son of Mia Farrow and André Previn, who also attended at the time. Natt from Australia would become Joy's best bud over the coming months. Joy and Natt would have profound philosophical talks while combing out their hair and cutting their split ends with desk scissors. They also roamed around campus quite a bit. Joy still has fragments of a rock that Natt gifted her, a great find on a hike they took in some nearby woods, and a $10 Australian bill with a note from Natt saying a Coca Cola shouldn't cost that much by the time Joy makes it to Australia for a visit.

A handful of German girls were really kind to Joy and patient with her broken German. After all, Joy's only German teacher was the woman with a Bavarian accent on her audio cassette tapes she had borrowed from the Providence Public library the summer prior. Joy had no idea what she was in for with all 13 of her classes being in German. The only class she had in English was English! One German girl invited Joy to stay with her family over the holidays, and Joy was so grateful to her and her family. Joy remembers the first home-cooked meals she had with the family, her first film in German at the movie theaters, her first taste of gebrannte mandeln and Gluehwein at the Weinachtsmarkt, and her first prayer in German at church.

Joy remembers befriending other German girls who invited her back to their homes during long weekends and other breaks. One young woman took her back home to a beautiful farmhouse that sat under a blanket of bright stars come night time. The house was full of hearty food, and the family had a huge freezer where they stored all their meat for the year. Joy remembers one day watching through squinted eyes as her friend's father insisted she witness how to castrate a pig.

Another young woman was a diehard fan of David Hasselhoff, and Joy remembers trading language lessons with her. One rainy night Joy practiced the German "ü" sound a hundred times in exchange for the English "th" sound a hundred more.

Joy also took up teaching private English lessons to two younger girls in the lower school. Joy learned so much from the two as they shared their perspectives on the States and world at large in a more basic, unadorned use of the German language than that of her peers in the upper school.

Karina, a former exchange student back at Dublin, also invited Joy to spend time with her family in Frankfurt. Joy has fond memories of zipping around the Frankfurt streets at night, shopping for clothes with Karina and her friend, and connecting with Karina and her parents back at their home. It is this early experience of surviving, completely submerged in a foreign language and culture, and getting by largely with the help of kind strangers that has supplied Joy the courage to keep exploring new places throughout her life.

When Joy returned to Dublin to complete the second half of her junior year, she came back with a broader world view and sincere compassion for the international students, who shared many of the same challenges in the States that Joy had experienced overseas. Joy was happy to be paired in a room with German exchange student, Ann Katrin, in Main House (now referred to as Lehmann, after the founder). She would later become close to several other exchange students her senior year in high school and throughout college.

Joy's next opportunity to study abroad would come her junior year in college. Joy received a scholarship to spend the entire year in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. The first semester would be with the IES EU Program and the second semester would be at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.

When Joy arrived in Germany the second time she had acquired a more solid grasp of German, having aced several courses in college. She had no problems finding her way to the IES program office and getting to her dorm room at Engelbergerstrasse 41e 03/31B. B was not a room, she would learn. It was a bed in a room she would share with Emily, a pretty girl from Texas who went to school in Washington, DC. That year in Germany was one of Joy's favorite to date. The people she met that year remain some of her closest friends to this day. When not picking up dinner at Neukauf and Pennymarkt, the crew was likely challenging themselves to finish "ein grosses Teller Spaghetti Bolognese" at Brennessel for the incredible bargain of DM 3,50.

After school and on the weekends, Joy worked at one of the beloved student bars in the Engelbergerstr. complex, called Mudom. She mopped the floors, cleaned the toilets, and emptied the trash. It was not a glorious job, but Joy was grateful for the extra cash she earned to shop downtown at Münsterplatz and to go on field trips. Joy earned enough to fund a trip to Munich for Oktoberfest. She also was happy to have extra spending money for the group field trips throughout Europe, the main Germany attractions being Deutsche Bank and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

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