A strong desire to get a first-hand look at the culture of a country other than their own has landed six international students in school at Fort High.
Three of them are here for 10 weeks. They’ve each been linked with a district host family that includes a teenager who will head overseas for a similar time period in mid-February.
The other three are each slated to spend 10-12 months in Rainy River District.
The students have come to Canada through the Canadian Education Exchange Program, and most have an average of seven years of English language training. But mastering their “p’s and q’s” is of top priority during their stay.
One of the only “drawbacks” to their visit here will be the educational stalemate it will put them in within their own school system. Courses they take here won’t be recognized as school credits back home.
But that glitch didn’t seem to faze the enthusiasm of the six teens, who hae been busy sponging up everything they can about the Canadian way of doing things–even though some of those things come with a bit of culture shock attached.
< *c>For the long term
Daniel Ribeiro, 17, has been in the exchange program longer than the rest, with just over nine of his 12-month stay here already under his belt. He returns home to Sao Jose Do Rio Pretto, Brazil in early January.
Ribeiro, whose native language is Portuguese, lives with Emo residents Ken and Peggy Mason and is enrolled in Grade 12 at Fort High.
“I was pretty shy at first. Like when I would open the fridge, I would ask ‘Can I do this or do that,’” he recalled during a lunch-hour interview at school last week.
“But now it’s my second place, my second family. Now everything is easy,” he smile, noting that included making fast friends with his high school peers.
Like most of the other exchange students, Ribeiro said the Canadian weather and food had a biggest impact on him. When he arrived in early January, for instance, he was introduced to two of Mother Nature’s wintry conditions for the first time in his life.
“It was 40 C (104 F) when I left [Brazil]. It was a big shock when I got here,” he chuckled. “It was my first time seeing snow and it was very cold!”
Ribeiro was aghast at the ingredients in baked beans and shook his head at fast food. But he has gained a fondness for gravy.
“The brown sugar you put in beans–oh my god, it’s terrible,” he said. “And you have too much McDonald’s and A&W . . . too much junk food.
“But gravy, that’s pretty good stuff,” he smiled, adding he planned to take some home with him.
Exchange student Tea Vahamaki, 17, a native of Tampere, Finland, had been waiting patiently for her turn to experience a foreign culture ever since her older sister went to the States.
She arrived about a month ago and is living out her 10-month stay with Dave and Glenda Lloyd of Emo while she attends Grade 12 classes at Fort High.
“I wanted to open my view to things . . . to a different culture and, of course, the [English] language,” Vahamaki said last week, noting she also speaks Swedish and German.
“And it’s nice to have a year’s break from [my school]!” she laughed.
Benedikt Weiss, 17, of Idstein, Germany, is enrolled in Grade 11 classes and lives here in town with Jan and Gary Countess for his 10-month stay.
Since his arrival three weeks ago, he’s noticed some major cultural differences, including a more congenial atmosphere and an abundance of natural surroundings.
“All Canadians are friendlier than Germans, and there is a lot more space, nature, lakes, and forests,” said Weiss. “You can’t find [those things] in Germany.
“And [at home], you have to be 18 years old to drive and it costs $1,600 (Cdn) to get your driver’s licence,” he noted. “It is very expensive.”
< *c>Learning the ropes
On the other side of the coin, Lucio Robbiano (Bellinzona, Switzerland), Jorge Gracia (Zaragora, Spain), and Clement Panard (Boncourt, France) already have roughly half of their 10-week exchange completed.
Robbiano, 16, was paired up with teen host Steve Foster, also 16, and his family in Emo. Foster will head to Switzerland in February to live with his guest for three months.
Robbiano can speak four languages (including English) in addition to his native Italian, noting it was commonplace to learn many dialects in his country.
“It is normal. If you want to find work, you must know many languages,” he said, adding that being immersed in an English-speaking environment here had dramatically improved his pronunciation.
Gracia, 17, echoed the same improvement in his English but noted difficulty in length of expression. “It’s hard to express things in English. Words are very long in Spain,” he said.
Gracia is staying with Aimee Pelletier, 17, and her family in Barwick. She’s trying to pick up a bit of Spanish before she heads over to live with him and his family early next year.
“I’m really interested to see what their culture is like,” she smiled, noting she already had learned that in Spain the outside, not the inside, of a cucumber is eaten.
“And we never eat spicy things, and we don’t mix our food together on one plate,” interjected Gracia. “We have three different kinds of plates.”
Panard, 17, was paired up with local resident Melanie Halvorsen, also 17, who probably won’t have much trouble with the language when she travels to France in February. She has been in French Immersion since kindergarten.
“She is easy to understand. She speaks really well,” said Panard.
Panard, who will return to a private school in France come early November, was more than pleased to have a chance to study in Canada. But like his foreign counterparts, he found at least one taste he didn’t like.
“Here the milk is like water and I don’t like the smell [of it],” he said. “In France, we take milk at the cow, we cook it, and after we can drink.”
“He calls it biological milk [here],” smiled Halvorsen.
< *c>Limitless impact
Fort High guidance counsellor John Rogoza and teacher Al McManaman share responsibility for various aspects of the exchange program here, and both said its positive impact is limitless.
“We never fully understand the impact of our education as we are taking it,” Rogoza reasoned.“ The undertones of this experience may well be life-standing for [the exchange students].”
“It allows our students to see the world with an open mind brought in with [six] other students and helps prepare our kids for overseas,” McManaman added.
“It helps us all to see the world in a better light. We really need that in the community,” he stressed.
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