CAMARILLO : 8th-Grader Selected for Yearlong Study Program in Germany

Camarillo High School sophomore Brook Lillehaugen became inspired to take German as she watched the Berlin Wall crumble and political changes occur throughout Europe.

So halfway through the eighth grade, she switched from studying Spanish to German.

“German was a more important language in Europe than Spanish,” said Brook, 15, who is interested in an international relations career. “I really enjoy it, and it hasn’t been hard for me.”

After only two years of studying her third language, Brook was chosen from 200 students nationwide to spend a year as an exchange student in the Congress Bunderstag program.

Brook is Camarillo’s first student to be chosen to participate in the program, a partnership that the German government established with the United States Congress nine years ago to build good relations between the two countries.

The all-expenses-paid program is funded by Germany, which spends $16 million a year to promote itself in America, said David McCarley, chairman of the high school’s language department. “They would like to make friends with whomever they can,” McCarley said.

Two hundred German students will attend various American schools as part of the program, he said.

Brook has already asked her teacher if she can transfer from her second-year German course into the advanced fourth-year course so she will be more comfortable with the language for her trip abroad.

“It will be new,” said Brook, who will live with a German family. “I’m sure I’ll be lonely when I first get there.”

In addition to this honor, Brook has scored in the 90th percentile of students taking the second-level National German Test nationwide.

Her test achievement only helps to continue what has become a Camarillo High School tradition: Students here have earned the highest scores in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties in the past 19 of the 20 years they have been taking the national test.

Nationwide, 19,000 students take the test in four levels of difficulty.

Camarillo sophomore Krystle Anderson lived in Miesbach, Germany, near Munich, as a child for 6 1/2 years. She took the fourth-level test and ranked in the 99th percentile.

To score high on the test, a student must not only speak the language well, but also read and write it proficiently, McCarley said.