For foreign exchange students at South Lenoir, English just one of many lessons learned
Two admittedly shy teenagers – one young woman from France and one from Germany – took a leap of faith and landed in Lenoir County last August as foreign exchange students at South Lenoir High School. Their courage has been rewarded with new friends, new experiences and a new perspective on the wider world.
Mary-lee Bouzeran and Sara Ihin, both 17, are in the waning weeks of an experience that by any account would be memorable and, by their own account, has been life-changing.
“This year has changed me,” said Sara, whose home is in southern Germany. “I am a shy person. I don’t like to go up to people and speak; but since I am here I am getting more confident in making friends and talking to them.”
This from a young woman who spent her first two months here in the throes of homesickness. “Everyday, I just wanted to go home,” Sara said. The phrase “out of your comfort zones” takes on real specificity when you are thousands of miles away from family and all you know.
“It’s like you have your life and you’ve left everything for something completely different,” said Mary lee, whose hails from the south of France. “You’ve left your family, your friends, everything, and you came here and you don’t know if it’s going to be good or what it’s going to be. So everything is out of your comfort zone.”
The list of differences is long and varied, particularly for teens introduced to American culture through the movies. “It’s not like in the movies, for sure,” Mary-lee said.
She and Sara both come from the city, where walking and biking and public transportation are at least as popular as taking the car. At their high schools at home, the teachers change classes, not the students, and the class schedule is less structured. The atmosphere at South Lenoir, compared to what they know at home, is “more chill” and accommodates students’ interest in sports, music, drama and other extracurricular activities. Pick-your-own pumpkin patches are not something you’d find where they come from. American movie houses are much more luxurious. Living in a household with other children is itself different if you are an only child back home.
Serendipity brought Mary-lee and Sara together and into the rural home of host family Anthony and Victoria Graham and their three children. When the young women were accepted into their foreign exchange program, they were sure only that they were coming to America – not to North Carolina and certainly not to Lenoir County.
“I had not high expectations. I don’t put high expectations because when I put them I’m going to get disappointed when they are not reached,” Sara said. “When I got the place (with the Grahams), I was very excited because this was over my expectations.”
Wherever the sibling-less city girls expected to end up, it probably wasn’t a small farm in southern Lenoir County with lots of animals and children. “They really got to learn what being a part of a big family is. We have five kids and about 50 animals here, so it’s very different from their life in Europe,” host mom Victoria Graham said.
The surprises were significantly fewer for the Grahams, owing to their familiarity with foreign exchange programs. This is the third year Victoria Graham has hosted students from other countries, although the first since she and her husband moved from Sneads Ferry.
“We just love bringing our children up with that diversity,” she said. Both Sara and Mary-lee have “blossomed” during their stay, according to Graham, with Sara growing more independent and Mary-lee growing into an empathetic extra hand with the three Graham children – an 11-year-old son, a 1-year-old daughter and a second son born just two months ago.
Foreign exchange experiences are “a part of our family,” the host mom said, adding that she is still in close touch with the earlier exchange students, as the Grahams expect to be with Mary-lee and Sara – and whoever comes next.
Hosting, she said, is “definitely something we will continue. It’s really incredible how people all over the world are really the same and it’s so easy for them to come into your house and for you to love them. I would encourage more people to get involved because it really is rewarding.”
LCPS, by policy, “embraces the cultural diversity that foreign exchange students bring to the school system.” The benefits work both ways, according to Dr. Amy Jones, the district’s director of high school education.
“Bringing students from around the world into our schools is an experience that benefits our entire school family,” Jones said. “Welcoming these students not only broadens horizons but also strengthens the values of inclusivity, curiosity and connection that we strive to instill in every student. Through foreign exchange programs, we hope to increase our students’ capacity for global mindedness.”
District policy sets standards for approval of foreign exchange programs and lays out the responsibilities of these approved programs for screening prospective students, selecting suitable host families and communicating with the school district. The policy also sets rules for admission of students, who are required to have “adequate command of the English language” and be 16 to 18 years old.
For both Sara and Mary-lee, the practical goal of their student-exchange year was to improve their English language skills, preparing for a career in diplomacy or international business where fluency in multiple languages is a prerequisite. That’s worked out as planned, they say. But the big memory they’ll take home with them won’t come from English class. It will come from the auditorium.
“The big memory is going to be the play. We are in a play,” Mary-lee said of their roles in South Lenoir High’s production of “Peter Pan.”
“At the beginning of the year we didn’t have a lot of people talking to us and since we are in the play, our life has completely changed at school. We make a lot of friends, we meet a lot of people, the teacher is very nice and we just enjoy it,” she said.
The curtain goes up on “Peter Pan” on May 15. The curtain comes down on Mary-lee and Sara’s adventure in America in June with, according to our young heroines, an appreciative bow. They’ve learned things here that they couldn’t have learned as well elsewhere.
Shy and homesick Sara settled in. “My host family was more like my real family, she was more like a sister,” she said of Mary-lee, “and the life here was reality. It was my life for one year.”
“It’s not only about academic progress,” Mary-lee said. “It’s about your progress.”
Sara Ihin, left, and Mary-lee Bouzeran – foreign exchange students from, respectively, Germany and France – find a fitting place for a souvenir photo in a classroom at South Lenoir High School.
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