1/23/2008 - Exchange students visit St. Joseph, Arkansas, USA
Imagine spending an entire school year in a foreign country, not being able to communicate in your native language and having to place trust in people you just met.
By JESSICA BAUER
LOG CABIN STAFF WRITER
It sounds like a daunting task, but for the four girls who have been attending classes in central Arkansas as part of the American Field Service exchange program, it was a quick adjustment.
There are 35 students in Arkansas who are part of this exchange program and three of them attend school in Faulkner County. Those students, plus one from Morrilton, paid a visit to St. Joseph High School Friday to answer questions and explain the program from their points of view.
St. Joseph will host an exchange student next year and Tami Davis, English and religion teacher, said she felt it was a good opportunity for the girls to talk to her students so they can experience something outside of the box.
“There are so many kids who go to school here at St. Joseph who are surrounded by Catholic people all day long, every day and we want to show them that not everybody lives life the way we do,” Davis said. “They don’t realize what other parts of the world have to offer. And I can stand in front of a religion class and talk and talk, but until they experience other cultures firsthand, I don’t think they’ll completely get it.”
Ayse Gizem Yasar, a junior at Conway High School whose home is in Turkey, said the most interesting part of her year in Arkansas was meeting her host family.
“You don’t know anything about them,” Yasar said. “You just have to trust them and amazingly, it was so easy to be one of them. It just developed in two weeks and I was like part of the family.”
For Diana Carolina Mantilla, a senior from Colombia who attends Sacred Heart High School in Morrilton, meeting the people she would live with for a year was a little more intimidating.
“When I got off the plane I didn’t know how I was going to say hello to my host mother,” Mantilla said. “I wondered if I should hug her or if I should shake hands with her. But when I met her, I felt love from her.”
One St. Joseph student questioned the girls on their reasons for wanting to come to the U.S. in the first place.
“I wanted to be an exchange student because I wanted to learn a different language, know other cultures, try to be more independent and just have a good experience,” Mantilla said. “You are a different person after this and you are going to grow up a lot.”
Olga Bravaccini, an Italian junior at Greenbrier High School, said she chose to become a part of the American Field Service program to feel more comfortable about herself and become more mature.
The girls also told the St. Joseph students how scary the first day of classes was. Maribel Aiquel, an Argentina native who is a junior at Conway High School, said she was completely lost on her first day of school as she tried to move from class to class to keep up with the other students.
Yasar said it took her a week to get used to the school, but Davis added she still gets confused when she has to navigate through the Conway High School campus.
“On the first day of school all the students asked me weird questions and I was scared and I would come home crying saying I didn’t want to stay here,” Bravaccini said. “But now it’s better and I really want to come back. It’s amazing how you can adjust yourself in a new country.”
Bravaccini said her school day was quite a bit different in Italy. She said in Italy classes time are from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and there are no sports in school.
Yasar added school is much different in Turkey because the teachers rotate in and out of the classrooms and the students stay in the room.
The exchange students said the possibility of coming back to Faulkner County was a very good one. Bravaccini added she was already planning trips to visit her host family and her host family was already booking flights to Italy.
“I would like to come back here on vacation and I may come back to get a master’s degree or for graduate school,” Yasar said. “My mother in Turkey is already talking about ‘when’ my host family visits, not ‘if’ they visit.”
This article was originally published here, at the TheCabin.net.
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