Emilia Helbig is a foreign exchange student from Munich, Germany, spending her sophomore year of high school in the United States. She is starting her second semester on the Etched in Stone staff, after taking Journalism 1 last semester. She is excited to write on the staff again and explained how much she loved journalistic writing as it is so unique compared to the usual type of scholarly writing in schools.

Helbig moved from Munich at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, moving in with her host family in Fort Collins. She says that it has been a pretty smooth transition so far, and she has been loving her time in Colorado. “I obviously miss my family and my home, but my host family has practically become a second family to me and they’ve been so supportive and kind.” She also explains that life in the U.S. is very different, as teenagers have more freedoms like being able to drive, and even picking their classes in school, which is only a privilege for upperclassmen in Germany.

Now, in the U.S., she finds herself being able to explore even more opportunities than in Germany. Journalism, explained Helbig, was not a class opportunity for students in Munich. Now, she participates in extracurricular activities like Speech and Debate and is super excited to explore Journalism even further this semester.

Outside of just Journalism though, Helbig explains that she absolutely loves spending time with her friends and family, and her host family’s dog, a Welshie named Tigger who, ironically, is overly eager and jumps a lot. Helbig loves her family–both her host family and her family in Germany–and explained with a laugh that she has two younger brothers in both of her families that she loves very dearly.

Helbig has some uncertainty surrounding her future, but she is excited to reunite with her family and friends when she returns to Germany at the end of the school year. “I’m not sure what I want to do about school in the future. I mean, Germany is so different from the U.S., so I’ll have to work on finding ways to continue with my interests when I go back,” explains Helbig. No matter what she ends up doing she knows she wants to stay in touch with the friends she has made in Colorado and she is extremely optimistic and excited to take on the rest of the year.