3/4/2008 - North, South mark 55 years of AFS 'families'
Wisconsin No. 1 in number of students hosted last year
By Doug Carroll
Sheboygan Press staff
Luca Pellegrini is a soccer player, so he knows the sport that the rest of the world calls football.
And now he knows football, Wisconsin style, in all of its green-and-gold glory.
“Lambeau Field, Green Bay Packers,” Pellegrini, 17, said when asked for highlights of his year as an AFS exchange student at South High School. “Seattle, that was the best game ever. I went to the Washington and Seattle games and we won both.”
Pellegrini’s use of the collective pronoun is indicative of the experience he has had living away from Italy. He says he misses home but isn’t homesick. Like everyone, he has had enough of the winter weather, but the social climate seems just right for him and the other 10 AFS students at North and South high schools.
The assimilation of such students is old hat to the two schools, which were recognized recently by AFS for 55 years of affiliation with the program. In fact, Wisconsin ranked No. 1 last year in the number of AFS students hosted, with its total of 260 representing nearly 10 percent of the national total.
“It’s interesting,” said Gayle Hulsebus of Plymouth, the host of a student from Australia who is attending Plymouth High, where AFS has been in place for 50 years. “Maybe it is the generosity of the people who live here.”
South High’s principal, Pat Flaherty, hosted two exchange students, from Sweden and the Ukraine, when he lived in Manitowoc. His wife, Marcia, went to Chile as an AFS student during her school years and her family hosted five students.
“It’s always about the quality of the people,” Flaherty said, “and the people who work with the hosting families are terrific.”
Carol Senkbeil and Linda Elmergreen are the AFS volunteers who serve as chapter representatives at South and North, respectively, making sure that the matches work and providing support to the students, the host families and the “liaison” families charged with contacting the hosts monthly.
The bulk of the responsibility for adjustment, the women say, rests with the visiting students.
“AFS believes that the student needs to adapt 90 percent and the family needs to adapt 10 percent,” said Senkbeil, who has been with the program for 16 years and has hosted students from Japan, Chile, Turkey and the Dominican Republic.
Senkbeil gets so attached that she refers to her visitors as her children and has even traveled to meet their families of origin.
“This gets in your blood,” she said. “Once you get into these families, you’re not just somebody they’ve met. You are family to them.”
The competition to come to the United States for an academic year can be intense, say the students, who are given a psychological evaluation to determine their suitability for the program.
Jackie Severino, 17, a student at South High from Italy, said that in her home school “many tried but not many were chosen.” The year abroad usually is treated as an academic hiatus from their studies at home, although the students are given senior-class standing here and allowed to participate in graduation exercises.
The year can bring a number of surprises: American food is really sugary, making weight gain an issue. Calling home makes adjustment worse, not better. School seems much easier here. And it’s difficult to dream at night in two languages.
“I can’t dream about my family in English because they can’t speak it,” said Onrawin Niyatiwatchanchai, 17, a North student from Thailand.
Another Thai student, Jidapa Chantharasombat, 17, who is at South, was surprised to find so many Asians in the school and community. She also expected Americans to be less provincial.
“I know this is a big country,” Chantharasombat said, “but you don’t really talk so much about other countries. More of the news is the local news.”
Most of the students have blended in well enough that they’re no longer seen as a curiosity. Participation in sports and other extracurricular activities helps with the process.
“Now I’m just a normal student,” said Lukas Kellner, 17, a North student from Germany. “Some of them think I was born here. It feels weird speaking German now, because I have the English sentence structure.”
Janet Fischer, whose family has hosted Frederic Rustige, 16, a South student from Germany, already is dreading goodbye at the end of June. Parting ways can seem like a death in the family to the hosts, according to Senkbeil, who organizes a support group around the issue.
“Freddie’s not a guest, he’s part of the family,” Fischer said of Rustige. “We call him our golden child. It’s been an awesome experience.”
Republished with permission. This article was originally published here.
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