The 17-year-old Queens High School pupil and Otago Daily Times Class Act 2009 recipient won a New Zealand Institute of International Understanding scholarship and will spend 12 months living just outside Hamburg.
"For the last three years, I really wanted to go on an exchange to Germany."
This year, she had an exchange pupil stay with her for five months and she organised to live with her family on the exchange.
Because of Germany's different school system, Amber's peers will still be in high school so she will join them for another year.
Though not too fussed about the extra learning, she thought it would still be fun and more worthwhile than going to work.
"My main focus is learning the language and getting to know people my age," she said.
Travel was also on the cards, as her host family had a holiday home in Italy.
After initially taking German at school because her mother had, she found she really liked it and thought it was "so cool to be able to converse with people from the other side of the world".
The scholarship was worth $8500 and covered everything except flights and spending money, which Amber had been saving for by working at Pak'N Save.
When she returned she planned to go to the University of Otago to study law and anthropology.
Her sights were set on international law and she knew her bilingual ability would assist in her career.
She was awarded a Victoria University of Wellington Excellence Scholarship for her first year of study there, worth $4500.
English, film and theatre were subjects she intended to study.
