By Richard Carrier, Contributing Writer
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When foreign exchange student Jasmin Jestel returns to her home in Germany next June she’ll miss the camaraderie of her Powhatan High School championship volleyball team, the welcoming attitude of every one she met in the County and… Pop Tarts.

Although the statuesque dark haired 16 year-old beauty is essentially a vegetarian; “it’s a family thing,” she said. “Americans really don’t eat healthy. Our family doesn’t eat meat or fast food,” the toaster-friendly American breakfast treat has captured her. But strangely, there is not much else that she finds dramatically different from her home in a small town outside of Hamburg. “Its been an amazing experience and everything is as I expected it to be. The media and the movies gave me a good idea of what it would be like,” she said.

After considerable lobbying, Jasmin convinced her reluctant parents; her father is an engineer and her mother a florist, that the year spent in the United States would be rewarding. Jasmin admitted that as the youngest of three siblings “I’m the spoiled one.”; her sister are 35 and 36.

Her sponsors, the James Roberts family, welcomed her in July and she quickly blended into the Powhatan culture. Clark Menger, PHS volleyball coach recognized that Jasmin, “has plenty of skills“; enough to have started some games on the powerful Lady Indians squad, but he was equally impressed as to how seamlessly she meshed with both the team and the school. From Jasmin’s viewpoint the volleyball team “is amazing, We were not that competitive in Germany (Jasmin played on a club soccer team) but this is very competitive. It’s really fun to be a part of it,” she said.

Educationally, she finds that “school in Powhatan is easier.” In Germany she began classes in English (she speaks very polished English with very little accent) in fifth grade and has become proficient in three other foreign languages. Her school day consists of seven classes with no electives. But the biggest difference is the German educational system spans 13 years, as opposed to 12 in the United States. She lives within two blocks of her school in Germany and that close proximity affords her more “free time.” Home work is done immediately after school and then she can hop on her bike and be off to “hang out with my friends” or return to an evening volley ball practice. “Here I have to get someone to drive me everywhere and with practice after school and then homework I’m too tired to do anything.”

That’s not quite a true statement. Jasmine is very much involved in the Relay for Like breast cancer program through the PHS Leftover’s Club as well as the Model United Nations Club; which she finds fascinating. “Its an unbelievably cool club,” she said. She also writes for the PHS school paper, the Smoke Signal, as well its counterpart at her school in Germany. She’ll have two more years of high school after she returns home, but after that “I don’t have a clue,” noting that she is interested in science and writing.

Jasmine Jestel agreed that “everything here is bigger and more exaggerated” but her visit has led to “more understanding of the American people. I’ll miss the people, the friends I’ve made and Pop Tarts.”