Exchange programs create opportunity for learning

By: Michelle Hu <mhu@hilite.org>

Last year, senior Dahlia Shvets had a stranger living in her home. Her family had never met this stranger before, but they were inviting her to live at their home for the next year.

This stranger was 16-year-old Serena, an exchange student from China who came to live at the Shvets’s home and study at Carmel High School for her junior year. Shvets’s mother, Eteri Shvets, who had just found a job working as a community coordinator for the Program of Academic Exchange (PAX), decided that the family would host a foreign exchange student for the first time.

“First, it was hard, I guess, because her English wasn’t that good. She really didn’t know what was going on for a lot of the time, so it was really hard to communicate. But, I mean, we got over that just like any normal human beings would,” Dahlia said.

Each year, her mother aims to place around two to four exchange students at this school. The students stay for either a semester or a full year, and then they return to their home countries. At first, Dahlia said they had some trouble finding a student.

“We first wanted to host a boy from Kosovo,” she said. “He wasn’t able to come over because there are just so many ridiculous regulations and papers and forms they have to fill out. During his interview, he didn’t make it absolutely clear that he was going to come back (to Kosovo) afterwards, so they were afraid that he was going to stay (in the United States.)”

However, her family did end up finding a replacement student, and Dahlia said, “It was interesting learning about (Serena’s) culture. She brought a bunch of gifts from her family because they were really thankful for us hosting her. She brought a bunch of movies so we watched Chinese movies. She cooked a lot, so it was really interesting learning about the different culture and having it in your house.”

Spengler said that her choice of coming to the United States also had to do with learning about a different culture. “I just always thought that the United States was an interesting country because there are a lot of really different people,” she said. “It just seemed really interesting, I guess, and the whole (situation where) you can drive when you’re 16 but you can’t drink (is) just really different.”

Dahlia said that, even though she was already open-minded about different cultures, the experience was still beneficial; it taught her more about global awareness.

“The more I get to know her, the more we became really good friends, the more like sisters, not just like random foreign kids from two different countries that were forced to sleep (in the same house) together,” she said.

In addition, Dahlia said that the exchange program definitely improves the students’ English-speaking skills. “(Serena) was basically fluent,” Dahlia said. “She still had an accent, but I think she became a lot more outgoing, because you have to kind of get rid of your boundaries. She met so many different people during her stay and she learned so many things, I think she became a more, well rounded person.”

Senior Anna Spengler, who is here from Aarau, Switzerland as part of the America Field Service Inter- Cultural Programs (AFS), said that she hopes to return to the United States after finishing high school in Switzerland. Since she must repeat a missed year of school and students there must attend school for 13 years, she will return as a sophomore. Afterwards, however, Spengler said she plans “to try to go to college here, but it’s really expensive and it’s hard to get a scholarship if you’re not from here.”

There are numerous exchange programs that Carmel High School participates in, including short-term exchanges such as the German-American Partnership Program (GAPP) and the Japanese Exchange Program.

Dahlia said about her experience as a hostess, “It helped me to see how people are like somewhere on a different point on the globe. We’re still humans, but we have a lot of differences and similarities.”