Head Style: drop30 – 30 Point, 3 deck, Minion-RegularBDN95, Plain; 93; 1 col

Body Spec: Body Text; colw: 11p0; depth:14.12 (in.)

Lessons from Abroad

What do World War II ambulance drivers have in common with teenagers living in Maine? Stumped by this riddle? I was too, until I spent a recent Sunday evening chatting with teens and parents at the home of a registered volunteer in the American Field Service program.

The AFS program was founded in 1947 by WWII ambulance drivers and promotes peace through international student and teacher exchanges. It is a founding member of the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel.

Cyril Lyle X. Enriquez, known as Lyle, is from the Philippines and lives with Mr. and Mrs. Terrence Henry and their son Cameron in Old Town. Lyle told me he saw an application at his school for the Youth Exchange and Study Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. To his surprise, he was accepted into the YES program and AFS.

“I took a chance and am very glad that I did,” Lyle said. “I was scared at first. My host family treats me as family, I learn from them and they learn from me.”

Hana Kurniawat, a YES and AFS student who is spending a year with the Wright family of Orrington, thinks there are two best things about the experience. “The friendships and the theme of peace that is part of both the YES program and AFS,” she said. She has enjoyed cheerleading for John Bapst Memorial High School and with giggles tells how much fun it has been to be part of the cheerleader culture.

Several of the teens and adults gathered that Sunday spoke of the truly international experience they have in AFS. Orhun Kose spoke of the time that he was on the phone talking to his family in Turkey speaking Turkish, his host mom was in the kitchen speaking Swiss German and his host dad was speaking English, all at the same time. Orhun lives in Orrington with the Fox family.

Francisco Figueroa, known to his friends as Memo, of Mexico is living with the Devieul family of Veazie and loves the fact that his host dad, Harry, frequently prepares meals from Haiti, his native country. Hilary Babbitt of Orono spent the 2006-07 year in French Belgium but ended up living with a Uruguayan family. James McHenry, a math teacher at Bangor High School, has been an AFS host parent for the past eight years, sharing his home with 10 different AFS students. This past summer he had the opportunity to visit Europe and reunited with five of his AFS “children.”

Living with teenagers is always a challenge, and taking on a teenager from another country adds another layer of complexity. AFS provides multiple layers of support for both the host families and the international students. That support includes planning, matching families and students, and lots and lots of talking after the placement to make sure the newly extended family is working.

Sometimes good intentions and good people don’t connect. When a living situation is not working out for a student or for a host family, AFS arranges an alternative host family. According to Nancy Grant, an AFS hosting coordinator, the national AFS average for being moved to another family is about 25 percent. Sole Harding of Chile was placed with a family in Bangor. For a variety of reasons, it was not a placement that was meant to last. Sole came to live with Elena Perrello in Bangor. Elena’s own daughter, Chelsea Quaglia, is spending the year in Germany. Originally, Sole was placed temporarily in the Perrello household but the two developed a solid relationship and made the mutual decision to make it a long-term relationship.

As you might imagine, language is an issue for just about every AFS student and family. Memo said his English teachers in Mexico were either from Canada or from Great Britain, so accents and vocabulary were different from what he learned. Hana reports the language and the pronunciation of words is the hardest thing for her. Chelsea bravely went to Germany knowing only very little German.

Pepperoni pizza for Orhun and Valerio Balio of Italy, living in Eddington with the Castiglia Family, is pizza with peppers, so they were both surprised when they saw a Pat’s Pizza with slices of pepperoni. But all of the teens report that they now think and even dream in English.

To my ear, Alex Bender of Germany, living with James McHenry in Bangor, had virtually no accent and Orhun was heard to utter a true “Maineism” – “jeezum” – in perfect context. They are also discovering that words have the power to access memory and language can be a barrier to that process. Orhun heard the date March 11 in English and didn’t connect it with anything meaningful in his life. He heard the date in Turkish during a phone call to a friend and immediately realized it was his mother’s birthday.

The teens had some interesting observations. They all agree that they were surprised to discover that male American teens are not good dancers. “They just don’t seem to understand that nodding the head is not a dance,” Valerio said. The teens from Europe love shopping here more than their American counterparts partially because of the range of choices as well as the value of the euro in comparison to the dollar. They report that their spending money goes mostly for clothes, including hats and shoes, and food.

The teens from Asia limit their material acquisitions because of the cost of shipping the items back home. They have noticed that some of their home countries are more conservative and others are more liberal than America, particularly in social practices. Lyle and Hana are still uncomfortable addressing adults by first names rather than with addresses of respect. Valerio and Alex still are amazed that the answer to “Where are you going and when will you be home?” is not “I’m going out and I’ll be home sometime.”

When asked what words of advice they would offer a teen from their hometown coming to Maine with the AFS program next year, they said:

“Bring warm clothes!” said Memo.

Alex stated, “You’ve got to make your own experience.”

“Be open, be flexible, and enjoy!” exhorted Lyle.

Sole advised, “Live every day as if it’s the last day.”

“Yeah, Maine’s the state!” summed up Valerio.

Have you extended your family with an AFS student or an exchange student from another program? Have you had one in your classroom? Have your children developed friendships with exchange students? E-mail me at conversationswithateacher@gmail.com.