The world is a large place with nearly 200 countries and 6,500 spoken languages, filled with diverse peoples and cultures. For five teenage students in the Rotary Youth Exchange Program, it now feels a lot smaller and more intricately woven.<\/p>\n
Two Juneau students who traveled abroad last year, and three students from overseas \u2014 two 17-year-olds from Belgium and Indonesia and a 15-year-old boy from Germany \u2014 recently sat down with the Juneau Empire to talk about the program.<\/p>\n
The international exchange students talked about falling in love with the Last Frontier, being immersed in a new place and encountering the unexpected.<\/p>\n
The Juneau teenagers encouraged other local students to do the exchange program, which strives to foster peace and understanding \u201cone student at a time,\u201d Rotary Club Youth Exchange Officer Virginia Stonkus said.<\/p>\n
But fair warning: It\u2019s not an easy undertaking. Each student had to undergo a rigorous interview process to be accepted and spent a year preparing. That included studying the foreign language to be able to converse and attend school, learning about the U.S. and training to be an \u201cambassador\u201d of the country. Then, they spent a year on a student visa enrolled in a local high school.<\/p>\n
Here are their stories:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBecoming a true Alaskan\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Marcellin Niset of Belgium, 17, sported a jacket covered in pins. He came to the U.S. with a collection of them, and then exchanges them for Alaska or U.S. ones. On the back of his jacket, he had even attached an old Alaskan license plate and a yo-yo.<\/p>\n Niset said he had put the U.S. on his list of preferred countries for the exchange program, but unlike his sister who went to California, he was bound for Alaska.<\/p>\n \u201cI had no idea about Alaska before coming,\u201d he said, adding that after he learned his assigned exchange location, he had to get a map to figure out where it was.<\/p>\n \u201cI did some research on Alaska before coming, and when I discovered there were no roads leaving, I was like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s from Wikipedia, that\u2019s not true.\u2019 But when I arrived, I learned it was true,\u201d he said of Juneau.<\/p>\n Niset, who comes from a village in Belgium of 800 people, said he doesn\u2019t understand people who say there is nothing to do in town. Since being here, he has gone whale watching and dog sledding on the glacier and is now practicing for his role of Gideon in the Juneau-Douglas High School play \u201cSeven Brides for Seven Brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n He said he loved getting involved with the community through the Juneau Rotary Club, which he described as one of the true purposes of the exchange program. Or as he put it, \u201cbecoming a true Alaskan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJuneau doesn\u2019t have the spirit of a huge city,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like the spirit of a village but with more people. Alaska will always be in my heart forever, and I would never want to do war against Alaska, for instance.\u201d<\/p>\n Niset hopes to go on visiting other places around the world, like Russia.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNot what I imagined\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Rifqi Zulfahm, 17, couldn\u2019t help but note the vastly different temperatures of Alaska compared to his home country of Indonesia, which averages at 90 degrees.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Indonesia people just think Alaska is ice and polar bears, and it\u2019s very cold. \u2026 Actually, it is very cold,\u201d Zulfahm said with a laugh. \u201cAlaska is not what I imagined. It\u2019s beautiful \u2026 and (there\u2019s) nice people.\u201d<\/p>\n Some cultural oddities did stand out for him. Everyone seems to own a dog, he said, and youth address adults casually. In Indonesia, he said, young people always call an adult Mr. or Ms, not by a first name.<\/p>\n Traveling to Alaska meant trying new things, he said: Hunting on Admiralty Island, kayaking, and seeing brown bears, moose and other wildlife.<\/p>\n After high school, he said would like to come back and go to school in the U.S., possibly at the University of Alaska Southeast. If he went on exchange again, Europe would be next.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ice fields and sea planes<\/strong><\/p>\n Florian Tanzyna, a 15-year-old from Germany, said he had always thought of America as either being East coast or West coast. After being selected to come to Alaska, he didn\u2019t quite know what to expect. He said his father told him that all houses were spread out and people did not have neighbors.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is the valley and downtown and a stretch of road between,\u201d Tanzyna said of what he found instead in Juneau. \u201cIt\u2019s hard if you don\u2019t have a ride or don\u2019t understand when the buses are leaving. In Germany, we would have a train so it would make it kind of easier.\u201d<\/p>\n He was amazed by the ice fields of the Mendenhall Glacier. He and Niset took a seaplane, which he described as his most interesting experience in Juneau.<\/p>\n \u201cBehind those mountains there is so much space that\u2019s not used because it\u2019s all ice,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on a fun trip to Las Vegas, too, during his stay with his host family. In the future, he said he wants to visit the East coast.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Schooling in Indonesia<\/strong><\/p>\n Will Blanc, 16, who currently goes to Thunder Mountain High School, went on exchange to Indonesia. He said his year abroad was one of the best of his life, and he\u2019s already applied to do a federal exchange program this summer. He wants to go to places like Cambodia and India.<\/p>\n In Indonesia, he said he experienced a different education system that here in the states. After middle school, kids go to either an SMA school, which prepares them for college, or an SMK school, which prepares them to enter the work force.<\/p>\n \u201cRifqi went to an SMA school and I went to an SMK school,\u201d Blanc said, adding that a lot of his classes focused on service and cooking of Indonesian dishes and sauce making.<\/p>\n Rifqi Zulfahm who is also currently going to TMHS with Blanc, added, \u201cIt\u2019s kind of different, the school program. \u2026 I don\u2019t say it\u2019s easy but it doesn\u2019t really press me. In Indonesia \u2013 exam, exam, exam.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meeting the Finnish prime minister<\/strong><\/p>\n Juneau\u2019s Rebecka Miller, who went to Finland, also found the school system different abroad.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of testing because every six weeks there would be finals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI took Finnish government and I got to go to parliament and meet the prime minister,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s only a country of 5.5 million people so it wasn\u2019t like, \u2018Wow, I met the prime minister.\u2019 It\u2019s kind of like everyone knew the prime minister, like everyone had seen the prime minister at the grocery store.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller described her fellow students as dedicated, and laughed about how some students would ask for help with deciphering Shakespeare in a class she assisted in, but would end up figuring it out faster than she.<\/p>\n \u201cThey all spoke really good English because they had been taking it from second grade, so it was really beautiful. They were really shy about it. They would be like, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t speak English,\u2019 and then you\u2019d watch them read Emily Dickinson in English.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller said the experience changed her perception of the world.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it makes listening to the news a lot different because I know people from everywhere now,\u201d Miller said of going on exchange. \u201cPeople start stereotyping and generalizing. I read the news and I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh my God, I know someone there.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t even faze you before \u2018cause it\u2019s a thousand miles away.\u201d<\/p>\n Now she wishes to major in political science in college and become a diplomat. She had traveled or moved with her family before her exchange, and she said she wants to travel all over the world, particularly the Middle East.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the world would be a much better place if everyone was an exchange student,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact Clara Miller at 523-2243 or at clara.miller@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The world is a large place with nearly 200 countries and 6,500 spoken languages, filled with diverse peoples and cultures. For five teenage students in the Rotary Youth Exchange Program, it now feels a lot smaller and more intricately woven. Two Juneau students who traveled abroad last year, and three students from overseas \u2014 two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":8639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8638"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}