An exchange student from Germany does not feel the cold like the rest of the shivering school children. And she absolutely loved stroking a lion cub during her visit to South Africa ...

The 17-year-old Christina Hell lives in Wachenzell, a small town in Bavaria, Germany’s largest province. Through the Rotary’s Youth Exchange Program, Christina is in the country from 7 July to 15 August. Her host family is that of  Kobus and Marietjie Barkhuizen in Makhado (Louis Trichardt), and with their daughter, Carin, at her side, she is attending classes at Louis Trichardt High School.

Christina's first school day was on Monday. “It is very nice, but very, very strange to me. We do not have school assembly and school uniforms. It’s my first time to sit at a very old desk. We have 13 subjects, whereas they have seven here. The subject Life Orientation was totally strange to me. They talked about drugs, but it was in Afrikaans, which I could not understand. The school rules here are really hard; we have no rules,” Christina said.

Before school reopened after the winter holiday, her host family took her to a lion park in Johannesburg.

“It’s my first time to see animals free. We normally see them in cages. I touched a little lion and fed a giraffe,” Christina said excitedly. They also visited the Mapungubwe National Park and world heritage site up north, the Royal Macadamia nut factory in Levubu and the Khoroni Hotel in Thohoyandou.

“We are taking Christina to the Kruger National Park this weekend,” said Carin, who will visit Germany in December.

At Mapungubwe, Christina was amazed to be driving on narrow gravel roads. She has also never seen potholes in tarred roads. At the first appearance of cracks or holes, their tarred roads are immediately redone.

From 26 July to 4 August, Christina will be on tour with the Rotary Programme and will see more places, like Mpumalanga and Durban in KwaZul- Natal. Then her host family will make a special trip with Christina to Cape Town.