FAQ's

For children under the age of 16, passports are valid for 5 years. For adults 16+, passports are valid for 10 years. Make sure to look at your actual passport for the expiration date. Remember, we HIGHLY recommend that your passport does not expire until 6 months after we return from Germany. That would mean that if your passport expires in December 2025, you are good to go!

Students will have their cellphones with them. WIFI is widely available in almost all German cities and Host Families will also have WIFI. Text and call over WhatsApp is common. You can also look at getting an international plan for your student (Verizon and T-Mobile have international options). Both Frau Woodring and Herr Ernst will have phones that have access to Cellular Data all the time. Feel free to message/call them if you need anything.

We HIGHLY recommend that if a student goes to Germany, they also host their student in Jackson. However, housing situations, family life, time commitments may present this and that is OK. Frau Woodring and Herr Ernst will happily find another host for your German student. Please let them know right away when you think you will be unable to host!

If your student gets sick or injured in Germany, you do not need to come to Germany. We have health insurance for all students that would allow us to take your student to a doctor or to a hospital if needed. Also, there is a medial form and medicine distribution form. This will allow us to give them cold medicines, allergy medicine, etc. We will communicate with you if something like this happens. If you would like to come to Germany due to a student injury or illness, any extra flights for you/your family would be at an additional cost to you. However, should the injury allow them to fly back with the group, the insurance would cover any upgrades or costs associated with accommodating his needs while flying.

We would be communicating with the airline for financial compensation until they get the luggage. Until then, we would make sure we went to the store to get Lucas clothing. Plus, their host family might have things they can also borrow for the time being.

Our Partnership School is Lothar Meyer Gymnasium. We will be staying in the town of Varel. It is a town that is smaller than Jackson.

Yes! This is why we start the application process early. Once we have the applications we start matching students and their families so that you have plenty of time to get to know each other before you send your child to Germany. Some of the German families feel similarly and would find it comforting to get to know you as well. It is also possible to chat with them via WhatsApp (a messaging app) and Zoom/FaceTime to see where your student will be staying.

Your German student does not need to have their own room, unless they are the opposite gender as your US student. However, the German students do need to have their own bed and cannot sleep on the couch. 

Yes! The teachers would just need to make sure that they do home visits for both houses to make sure they are ready to host the students!

Parents/Guardians usually like to drop students off and say goodbye at the airport. Students could also carpool with other families.

That really depends on what the host family has planned. Either the day will consist of the students going on a sponsored field trip with all of the American students, their hosts, and teachers OR the students will go to school with their hosts and do something with friends or families after school OR the host families might have a small trip planned. There are many options, and communicating (via the application process) your students interests is really important!

Depending on the time of the withdrawal the student will receive all but the $250 application fee back. If they are requesting a refund in May (and we have already finalized tickets) the plane ticket cost would not be refunded, but the remainder would of course be returned as a check from JPS.