Guest Post by Quest Student Bryton

Bryton is an exchange student with Quest International from Zimbabwe. He is attending high school in upstate New York and he visited the Quest staff in San Francisco during a school holiday. This is the blog post he wrote about his experience...

Studying in America as an exchange student is a dream come true filled with many expectations fulfilled and a lot of cultural experiences to learn from. However, there are a lot of things we may find weird when compared to our own cultures, which also makes the stay very interesting and even very funny at times.

I would describe America as a huge melting pot where every race has become present in the neighborhoods in various ways. What I really admire about it is the people’s right to express how they feel about the Government or about themselves, which is uncommon in most countries.

I found various things very interesting as I took a tour in San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge; basically this bridge exists as a pathway which connects Marin County and San Francisco. It’s named after the strait it covers, ‘The Golden Gate.’ Some of the interesting facts about this bridge is that, generally this bridge looks red in color and actually it is painted in orange. One of the devastating facts is that many suicidal deaths have occurred at that bridge leading to very few survivors, it is estimated that approximately 1500 deaths have occurred at this bridge.

Homelessness in San Francisco is one of the things that the city is well known for, because of its climate and temperature many people migrate from other states to live or sleep in the streets or beaches. Homelessness has become common in San Francisco, which has resulted in too much drug dealing and abuse of drugs such as marijuana.

One of the strangest things in San Francisco is their freedom to express harmony, peace and love. These people refer to themselves as Hippies, engraved from a movement during the 1960’s. This has resulted in people walking naked as a way to freely express themselves and associating themselves with naturalism. There is an annual race called Bay to Breakers, which is the only race in which one can run with or without clothes and the winner gets $100,000.

San Francisco is one of the only cities which provides an open hand to many gay people compared with other states or towns, hence it has a very large population of gay people. There are many fascinating things we can find in San Francisco, which we may find very absurd, for example a law which requires dog owners to pick up their dog’s poop in the park. And a law which enforces people to cross within a crosswalk/zebra crossing, it’s considered an offence to cross outside of that zone and it is punishable with a fine of $75. Not picking up dog poop is punishable with a fine of $160.

Being an exchange student has allowed me to see the other spectrum of life, how it feels to be an American citizen and how life goes on a day to day basis here.

Strange Comfort

As the newest member of the Quest International national office team, I figured it would be good to share some of my own international experience, and how living abroad changed the way I view the world. The following is an excerpt from my blog that I wrote during my two years of Peace Corps service in Morocco. Through sharing it, I hope to provide an example of just how different life can be when immersed in a culture that is not your own.

Thursday, April 30, 2009- Tinjdad, Morocco

                             

I have now been in this country for more than 20 months. I know this because I have a calendar that helps remind of what it’s like to have a real schedule, and to live in a world where time is more than just a concept, indicated primarily by calls to prayer and the rising and falling of the sun. Yesterday, while I was leading stretches (in Arabic) for a group of 20 young women as part of our basketball practice warm up, I was hit with a realization. It struck me that at this point in my service I have become so comfortable with the foreign milieu that encompasses me that it has reached a point of sub consciousness, in which I pay no mind to just how different my life is to that of the average American. Allow me to illustrate with the other events that made up yesterday for me:

I wake up at 8:00 to a donkey braying right outside my window. I turn to my side, doing my best to go back to my now-hazy dream involving a Boy Scout camping trip from my childhood. Just as the wood-licking flames of the campfire begin to cascade into view, the fly arrives. That fly. The one that always lands on the most inconvenient place possible, at the most inconvenient time possible, and is just as adamant on staying there as I am on killing it. After doing my best to cover my head and other parts of my body, my efforts are deemed futile against its determination to annoy me, so I figure it is time to get up.

After a breakfast of eggs, cheese, and instant coffee, I get my papers together for the computer grant I am working on and head out to the post office to send them off to Peace Corps headquarters in Rabat. After a final meeting with the association I am working on the grant with the previous evening, it appears as if I finally have all the materials together for grant approval. This is good because it means all I have left to do for this project is wait; something I have gotten very good at in my time here.

As I pull up to the post office on my bike, I see one of my hanut (small store) owner friends, Tijani, and walk up to greet him. Him being one of my better friends at the local market, I decide to go in for the classic cheek kiss greeting, starting with the right cheek “Allah aslamtik!” (Praise be to God for allowing me to see you again). Move on to the left. “Labas alik?” (Is everything good with you?)Move back to the right “Labas” (it’s all good. Back to the left again, completing the 4 kisses, which completes the standard greeting. “Wesh unta labas?” (is it all good with you?) “iyea, labas, lhumdullah” (yup, it’s all good, praise be to God).

Once we had finished our minute long greeting, Tijani was quick to remind me that later that day, in fact just a few hours from then, was going to be a soccer practice that he had been trying to get me to come to for months. Despite the fact that I hadn’t played soccer in 10 years, I had promised him that I would come out and practice some time just for the fun of it (or, moreover, to provide entertainment for the others who I would be playing with).

After killing the hours in between with reading on my roof (an aspect of just about every Peace Corps work day for me), I threw on some shorts and sneakers and took off. When I arrived to my town’s soccer field (which is essentially a giant field of dirt), I quickly realized that this was going to be no picnic. Once greeted by the coach, who was followed by a dozen other athletic guys in their early 20’s, it occurred to me that this was actually the practice location of the official local soccer team, which, it turns out, is one of the best in the region. Despite the town’s size, this team often competes against large cities like Meknes, Fes, and even Rabat, so they indeed mean business.

Before getting a chance to back out, the coach threw some cleats and a jersey at me, and insisted that I get dressed immediately. I reluctantly did as he said (not that I had much of an option at that point), and started running laps around the giant dirt field with the rest of the Berber muscle machines that composed the team. The hour and a half that followed consisted of what was most certainly the most physically intense workout that I have experienced here in Morocco. Like basic military training with a soccer ball. Never while in this country did I expect to do so many pushups, sit-ups, stretches, and ball busting drills while being yelled at in French. However, once the soccer ball drills began to get beyond my point of feasible completion, I had to check out. As I said I was leaving, and turned toward to the grimy locker room, the whole team communally turned to me and said “bsha!” (to your health!), and the coach yelled after me to come back again next practice.

After taking a cold shower and making a tuna sandwich for lunch (tuna makes up about 90% of my lunches here) it was time for basketball practice with the women from the neddy (women’s house). I rode up the front door on my bike, walked inside, and found all the women in their sweats and sneakers, ready for athleticism. This is always a great site to see, in that before my presence working with them, many of these women never got a chance to play sports or do anything athletic at all, given that all the sport areas in my town are very male dominated. The mudira (neddy director) greeted me and asked if I could lead some stretches for the women before heading out to the basketball court. This kind of request leads me to believe that the women I work with here see me as more than just a regular guy, in that normally doing stretches of any kind in front of men is considered to be highly shuma (forbidden). Perhaps they see me as the awkward adopted American brother they’ve always wanted.

After the brief aerobics session, which they appeared to be very receptive to (fortunately, given that I had just been led in stretches earlier that day, knowledge of what to do was still pretty fresh in my head) we meandered over to the basketball court. I know about as much about coaching basketball as I do about coaching rugby...not much. Fortunately, given that the neddy women are all neophytes to the world of sports, this is pretty easy to cover up. My usual drills consist of lay-up lines, dribbling, passing, and shooting exercises, followed by a brief game. Despite the fact that the exercises vary, at any point these girls are viewed during practice it looks about the same: loud, giggling, head- covered girls running around aimlessly like chickens with their heads cut off. Clearly, this makes it difficult to be taken seriously by the hoards of guys who flock to watch like a heard of hungry and critical hyenas. Yet fortunately the point is not to be taken seriously, yet for the girls to enjoy themselves and get a workout that they otherwise could probably not partake in.

Basketball practice was followed by my English class for beginners. Without time to change out of my then sweat covered clothes, I had no choice but to carry on and teach parts of the body, starting off with “head, shoulders, knees, and toes” as a warm up.

Class was followed by a meat sandwich, which was then followed by reading the rest of the night away. And so it goes. This day, despite the irregularity with the boot camp soccer practice, was not different from most days I spend here. It is what I have come to know of as life at this juncture, and, as with all routines, I have come to go through these motions without really thinking about them. If it weren’t for the point of reference given to me by the internet and speaking intermittently with friends and family back home, then I might even forget just how unusual my life has become shwya b shwya (little by little).

Harsh Language

A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from a local coordinator. One of our students (let’s call him Tim) from South Korea told another kid that he was “going to kill him.” This other student had lent Tim a pen, and when the student took it back from him, Tim threatened him. This was not the first time that Tim had made such a strong statement. In fact, Tim has a reputation for losing his temper and saying harsh things. My first response was to send him home; a student that has an uncontrollable temper is not prepared for the exchange experience, which requires maturity and self-control, among other traits.

Later that week, I received an email from one of our partners in South Korea. I had written to her because another student (let’s call him James) from South Korea has been staying up very late and oversleeping every morning. The partner had spoken to his mother and translated the conversation for me. According to my partner’s translation, the natural mother, upon hearing the news of her son James, told her “I am going to kill him – I will kick his ass!”

 This led me to think: are Americans more sensitive to threats because of recent violence in schools and a culture of high homicide rates? I don’t know the answer. I haven’t designed a study to test this, but my hunch is that the answer is yes. This is not the first time that one of our boys from South Korea has been in trouble for using threatening language. In fact, this is an issue that we have had with South Korean students every year since I started in 2010. And yet, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC), the homicide rate in South Korea is about half of our homicide rate. After researching online, I was not able to find evidence of school shootings in Korea.

 This is not to say that South Korea is immune from violence. To the contrary, violence in South Korea is on the rise. Moreover, two recent school shootings in the U.S were perpetrated by native South Koreans (the Virginia Tech Shooting in 2007 and the Oakland Shooting in 2012). But perhaps South Korean culture does not shun threatening, harsh language because Koreans realize that it rarely leads to action. Threatening language has become part of mainstream discourse. Why else would a mother respond with those appalling words to a seemingly minor issue?

 Cultural differences are mostly celebrated in the Quest International Program. However, every once in while, we learn there are certain habits and cultural tendencies that are incompatible with American culture and society. As educators who are invested in international education, it is our job to edify our exchange students to these incompatibilities. Sometimes they are just not obvious.

 I am not sending Tim home. I spoke to him last week and explained to him that we, Americans, do not tolerate statements like I am going to kill you. When I asked him if threatening language like this is a big deal in South Korea his answer was, not surprisingly, “Not at all. But I have learned that I cannot say that here.” My fingers are crossed that Tim has learned and internalized this very important lesson. Shayna Ferullo

Local Coordinator Spotlight - Miranda Paul

Quest’s local coordinators are invaluable to us, as they play a crucial role in shaping our students’ experiences here in the U.S. They also happen to be a bunch of smart, caring, engaged people with a wide variety of interests and stories to tell. This new column will feature interviews with local coordinators from around the country. We’re kicking off our first interview with Miranda Paul from Wisconsin, who happens to be a host mom, too.

Quest: Why did you want to become a Quest local coordinator?

Miranda: Well, I was asked to be one -- both by the national Quest office and my local coordinator (I was hosting at the time). Neither of them knew that the other one mentioned the idea to me. But they seemed confident I was the right person for the job, and I said yes!

Quest: In addition to acting as a Quest coordinator, this is also your second year hosting a Quest student. Can you tell us about your family’s experience hosting?

Miranda: Actually, I'm glad that I became a host first and then a coordinator. Hosting is a challenging, but rewarding experience. Since my husband and I have young kids, it was a new experience to have a teenage boy in the house! And for our student, who doesn't have any siblings, it was a new experience for him as well!

Quest: What has been the most challenging part of working with international students?

Miranda: Communication. Not necessarily the language barrier (although that's often an issue), but the cultural adjustment of when to communicate, how to communicate, and what happens when there is lack of communication or miscommunication.  Even though I check in with my students every month (or more), a lot can happen in the course of a day or week if a student or parent doesn't check in.  Then things seem to "snowball."

Quest: What’s been most surprising?

Miranda: To have semester students like their stay so much they want to extend!

Quest: Most rewarding?

Miranda: When you see a host family and exchange student bond so well that you have an inkling that relationship will last long beyond the program!
 

Quest: What have you learned from your experiences working with international students, both as a host mom and local coordinator?

Miranda: How much there is to learn about other cultures, and how much is unknown (or misrepresented) about American culture!  I've also learned a lot of mediation skills, I think!

Quest: What advice would you give to new local coordinators?

Miranda: Communicate often, and make sure to do it in a variety of ways. Some students or host families prefer email, text messages, in-person or phone. Find out the way in which they are the most comfortable sharing information and speaking openly so that you can keep lines of communication open.

Quest: What do you do when you’re not “at” Quest?

Miranda: I'm a children's book author and an English teacher.

Interested in learning more about Miranda's children's books? Check out her website here.

Rebecca Troeger

Thanksgiving: a Worldly Holiday

Because eating is among my most prized activities, Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays.  Thanksgiving is like the cherry on top of the fall season; it’s the finishing touch on the masterpiece that is fall. With vibrant leaves and rich, hearty fruits and veggies, such as squash, green beans, and yams, the fall season culminates at Thanksgiving.

We are taught in the U.S. that Thanksgiving was about the pilgrims and the “Indians” setting aside their weapons for one day and sharing a meal together.  The original Thanksgiving meal supposedly celebrated a bountiful harvest during that particular year. While I believe that story and I respect the historical significance, I think the holiday is more about gathering together with family and friends and recognizing all of the blessings that we have in this life. Specifically, we celebrate and show gratitude for food. In this way, it is not distinctly an American tradition.  Rather, this is something to which anyone from any part of the world can relate.  This thought led me to wonder: do other countries celebrate Thanksgiving?

A quick search on Google led me to the following results about celebrations of thanksgiving in a few of the countries from which QuestInternational receives exchange students.

China

The Chinese celebrate their version of Thanksgiving, Chung Ch’ui , on the day when the full moon falls within the 8^th month. The traditional meal includes a roasted pig, and several other traditions accompany this three-day ceremony. The celebration focuses on the idea of the bountiful harvest.

Korea

The Korean celebration of Chuseok, like Chung Ch’ui in China, is a three-day festival. It takes place during the Autumn Equinox.  In celebration of harvest, Koreans typically return to their birth-towns and celebrate with traditional food and variations of their famous rice wine.

Germany

Emtedankfest, or the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival, is celebrated in early October, usually on the first Sunday. The celebration is usually centered at the Protestant  Johannesstift Church in Berlin, and includes a few religious services, food, dancing, and a lantern and touch parade.

Canada

The Canadian Thanksgiving is held on the second Monday in October.  Some historians claim that the celebration dates back to 1578 (for context, the U.S. holiday was said to have originated in 1621) when the explorer Martin Frobisher arrived in Canada on an exploration for a northern route from Europe to Asia.

While the distinctly American tradition of eating turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and squash on the fourth Thursday of November might be a new experience for our students, the celebration of giving thanks for the gift of food and family will be quite familiar.  If you would like to elaborate on any of the traditions outlined above, or share your own culture's version of Thanksgiving, please leave us a comment - we would love to learn more!

We wish students, host families, coordinators, and our school partners a wonderful day tomorrow.  We are grateful for everyone who helps to make this program a success!

Shayna Ferullo

Economic Crisis Spur Spaniards to Prepare for a Different Future

It’s hard to avoid the headlines these days about the turmoil and unrest in Southern Europe, namely in Greece, Portugal and Spain. Truly, economic indicators in Spain are bleak.  Unemployment has been hovering around 25 percent since January 2012, and unemployment for residents under the age of 25 is estimated at over 50 percent. With echoes from the US presidential election, whereby the discourse focused on the “deplorable” unemployment rate of 8 percent, it’s hard to imagine a world in which one in four of your adult friends are without work.

With the burst of Spain’s own housing bubble in 2008, international factors like the imminent recessions in the U.S. and Eurozone only contributed to a rapid downward spiral that has essentially lasted until today.  Spanish banks, once noted for their trustworthy, conservative practices, loosed restrictions during the housing bubble to encourage more home-ownership; therefore a financial crisis accompanied a recession in 2008 (very similar to what we experienced here in the U.S.). The announcement of a European bail-out plan this past summer calmed some fears that this important European economy would fall further into crisis. Of course, austerity measures are part of the plan, and this threatens to slow the recovery with sharp reductions in government spending or “stimulus.” Some forecasts say that there won’t be any improvement in Spain until at least 2014.

Spain has been noted, and often criticized, for its very liberal immigration policies compared to its European neighbors. Typically a large recipient of mass-immigration, especially in the early 2000s from South American nations, Spain today is experiencing net emigration, with residents seeking opportunities and employment abroad.  According to estimates by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), approximately 178,021 immigrants came to Spain in the first 6 months of 2012, and approximately 269,515 emigrants left the country, seeking opportunities abroad during that same period.  Foreign workers from Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia are returning home to find more opportunities in their growing South American economies.

How will this affect student exchange from Spain?  One might think that a weakened economy might lead to families tightening discretionary spending and opting not to send their students abroad. However, Quest International is seeing noticeable signs that high school student exchange is following emigration patterns: that is, the number of students seeking exchange experiences is seemingly increasing!  According to one of our trusted partner agencies, Spanish residents are considering every and any opportunity to advance their education and employment prospects.  This means that learning and perfecting English language-abilities and immersing themselves in a new culture are overt goals of more and more Spanish residents. They see abroad experiences as the key to a successful future both for themselves and for Spain on a whole.

QuestInternational is currently developing a short-term academic program, whereby students will come during the academic year for programs that last 1 to 3 months.  The idea is that younger students can have an American experience without committing to studying for a full year or a semester overseas.  They can enjoy a flavor of life in the US, practice their English skills, and engage with an American family.  Initial responses from Spain are quite positive, and in fact, there are already organized groups of students ready to come to the US as soon as we give them the go ahead!

Quest International values our partnerships in Spain as well as our vibrant Spanish students that we receive yearly into our F1 program.  While we certainly empathize with the dire economic conditions that Spain faces today, we are encouraged and inspired to learn that Spanish residents are looking to the future and investing in their own education and cultural experiences. We agree that this will pave the way for better individual career opportunities and a better Spain on the whole. We are excited and honored to help develop affordable and enriching programs for both children and adults seeking experiences in the U.S.  Please contact us at info@questexchange.org if you would like to play a role in developing an exchange program for Spanish students in your community!

Shayna Ferullo

Chinese Students in the U.S: Lost in the Masses

The number of Chinese students studying in American high schools has grown exponentially in the past few years, due to a perfect storm of factors – China’s rising middle class, changes in U.S. student visa policies, a growing emphasis on global education here in the U.S, and some schools’ struggles with decreasing enrollment. According to the Department of Homeland Security, in 2005-2006 there were just 65 Chinese students studying at American high schools; during the 2010-2011 school year this number increased more than 100 times to 6,725 students.[1]

As the Chinese market has opened up and the popularity of international student programs has grown, some schools have become so focused on the financial benefits of enrolling more Chinese students that they’ve lost sight of the human elements of cultural exchange. At some high schools, such as the Knox School in NY, over half of the student body hails from China.[2] When a particular nationality is disproportionately represented in this way, it is likely that international students will be seen by local students, teachers, and administrators as an indistinct mob rather than individual children with fears, hopes, and very different personalities and needs. As a result, resentment may build; there may be a perception that Chinese students are “taking over,” or “taking opportunities away” from local students. An important opportunity for cross-cultural communication, friendships, and understanding is then lost.

It is also nearly impossible for international students to experience American culture in a meaningful way when their school is saturated with students from their home country. One Chinese student, who I’ll call Jack, applied to Quest’s program last spring with the explicit goal of transferring to a school with fewer Chinese students; his first American school had upwards of 80 students from China. Jack told me that he had absolutely no idea his American school would have so many Chinese students prior to his departure for the U.S. When he arrived he was severely disappointed to find that his dorm roommates were Chinese, as were the majority of his classmates. He rarely had the opportunity to “touch” American life, he told me. He was diligently studying English but had few chances to use the language in “real life” situations with Americans his own age.

I believe that high schools should embrace the opportunity to bring Chinese and other international students on campus, but that they should do so thoughtfully and with a measure of caution. Below are some factors high schools may want to keep in mind while developing an international student program:

• Consider setting a nationality cap. Is there a maximum number of students of a given nationality that you could accept before it will become difficult for them to integrate into American life? If so, what is that number? Consider starting small and increasing your maximum number slowly, based on your school’s experiences and observations.

• Examine your international student support services. Whether you have staff dedicated solely to serving international students, work with an organization such as Quest, or employ a combination of these methods, think seriously about the support infrastructure you have in place and whether it is adequate to provide robust care to the number of students you decide to accept to your school.

• Re-evaluate goals. Reflect on why you want to bring international students to your school in the first place. Is your goal to give local students more global exposure, complement foreign language curriculum, or increase diversity? Is it to build enrollment and bring in more revenue? All or none of the above? Seek to continually define your international student program’s raison d’être as it grows and changes. There’s nothing wrong with being driven by goals that benefit your immediate community, as long as you don’t forget the importance of serving your international students and giving them a real chance to feel a part of your community, too.

Chinese families are choosing to send their children to American high schools because they hold our system of education, and the flexibility, creativity, and encouragement of individual expression it offers, in high regard. We need to honor the trust these families have placed in us by nurturing their children’s individuality and making a commitment to providing them with personal care and support. With more Chinese students flocking to U.S. schools every year, our handling of this issue will not only shape the lives of many individual students, but may also influence China’s perception of the U.S. at a time when strong Sino-U.S. relations are crucial.

-- Rebecca Troeger

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[1]Gao, Helen. “How China’s New Love Affair with U.S. Private Schools is Changing Them Both.” TheAtlantic. 28 March 2012. Web. 7 Nov 2012.

[2] Golden, Daniel. “Chinese Students Lose as U.S. Schools Exploit Need.” Bloomberg News. 19 Oct 2011. Web. 7 Nov 2012.