Ever since she could remember, Emma Thornton has been going to Germany to visit her family.

When Thornton goes to Germany, she is only there for a couple of weeks over the summer. Some of these trips she doesn’t even remember.

“My mom would bring me when I was a baby,” Thornton said. “I remember they spent like six months in Germany when my sister was two, my brother was four and I was a baby, so I’ve been going for a long time.”

Thornton has over twenty cousins in Germany and even though she doesn’t get to see them as much as she wishes, they are still very close.

“I’m actually a lot closer with my family in Germany than I am with my family that lives in the U.S.,” Thornton said. “Even though my cousins here are much closer [in distance], I’d say that I’m emotionally closer to my cousins in Germany.”

Family is very important to Thornton and she hopes that she can visit them for longer periods of time when she is older.

“I wish I could visit them more often,” Thornton said. “But I think it’s cool because since they learn english in school we can still talk to them and communicate. It provides kind of like an extra fun aspect that we don’t fully understand each other. So you kind of have to work to communicate, but it’s always really fun. So yeah, they’re really important and I’m hoping that when I’m older I can spend a year or so with them.”