Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy just welcomed back four Tologs from an exchange trip to Marburg, Germany. These young women returned with broadened worldviews, new friendships and valuable memories.
Anna Ralbovsky ‘29, Karina Munoz ‘29, Brooke Cole ‘29 and Verena Saied ‘27 returned to campus on August 25, 2026, after spending three weeks in Marburg. There, the girls stayed with host families, who generously offered to board and look after them during the trip.
“They were amazing,” Anna Ralbovsky ‘29 says of her host family. “The parents were so welcoming and kind.”
Anna and the other Tologs began attending school during their second week in Germany. The first week was spent with their host families, who took them each on a trip to another part of the country. Anna traveled to Bavaria, where she got to further immerse herself in German culture.
Karina Munoz ‘29 went to Frankfurt during her first week trip. There, she walked around the city, visited German history museums and explored castles.
At the start of the exchange’s second week, all four Tologs had their first day of school at Steinmuhle, a boarding school in the Cappel district of Marburg
While Steinmuhle has similar values of curiosity and community to FSHA, the norms and structures there are very different from what Tologs are used to.
“There wasn’t any homework. Ever. But the school days were usually longer. They also had a lot of breaks throughout the school day,” said Anna.
There are subtler differences between Steinmuhle and FSHA, too, such as the way that hands are raised to speak in a classroom.
Brooke Cole ‘29 says that, “they just put up a finger, instead [of a hand].”
Despite the cultural differences between Steinmuhle and FSHA, the students at Steinmuhle still gave the FSHA exchange students a warm welcome and made them feel at home.
“I was worried that I wasn’t going to understand anything, or that people weren’t going to talk to me,” Anna recalls, “but everyone was so friendly. They exceeded all of my expectations. I had both guys and girls come up to me, introduce themselves…[and] ask about Los Angeles. People were very, very interested in LA.”
As for the actual educational experience, most of the FSHA exchange students did not find keeping up to be as impossible as they had thought it would be. Even though the lessons were taught in German, diagrams and previous knowledge helped Anna, Verena, Brooke and Karina understand what they were learning.
The students at Steinmuhle also spoke English well, which helped foster connection and friendship between them and the exchange students.
“All of the kids at the school spoke perfect and fluent English because it’s a bilingual school,” Anna explains, “so they all had been taking English [classes] since they were seven or eight.”
Fully involved in school life and campus activities, Tologs even attended a three-day class trip to Cologne with the Steinmuhle tenth graders. There, they stayed in a youth hostel, used free time to explore the city and even went to the largest amusement park in Germany.
The students all agree that their experience on the exchange trip was undoubtedly positive, and was filled with unforgettable memories and opportunities to learn about Germany’s culture and history.
“I think it was such a great experience. It was eye-opening, because you’re in a different country and you don’t know anyone,” Karina says.
In a world where most teens’ perceptions of foreign countries are based on what they see online, experiencing the culture of other countries first-hand and building genuine international connections is a valuable experience for any young adult. Student exchanges, like this past one in Germany, are a great way for students at Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy to partake in an immersive experience.
