As a student in a small Iowa town, sometimes it can be difficult to experience other cultures. At Mount Vernon, we are fortunate enough to have these cultures brought to us via our foreign exchange students.

Trym Anderson,Yi-Hao ‘Alex’ Huang, Mike Siegmund, and Fynn Utermark are this year’s guests from other countries, and they have been tossed full force into American life. Fynn and Mike are both German, Trym is Norwegian, and Alex came all the way from Taiwan.

As a young adults from a different country, they all had preconceived ideas of what America would be like. Expectations ranged from thinking every American would be overweight and toting a Big Mac meal combo, to the more extreme concept of every American would be carrying gun. Some of their predictions were correct, while others were proven to be not true. Mike came to realize that America’s passion for fast food was very real, just not to the extreme that he had imagined. When reminiscing about food back at home in Germany, he said he was disappointed by the amount of fast food here in America.

Traveling to a country that doesn’t speak your language can be hard enough even as just a vacation, but for these four, they are living in a completely new and unique place. To add to the difficulty of a new language, the students all face challenges such as learning names of students, peers and staff around the school. When he first arrived here, Alex recalls that while everyone knew his name, he still didn’t know anyone else’s. He said it’s weird having people say hello in the hallways and not knowing the person talking to you.

While here in Iowa, part of the exchange student experience is to be a student. All four of our exchange students this year agree that school here is a lot easier Mount Vernon doesn’t have as difficult of classes, we assign less homework, and we go to school for fewer hours. Alex Huang for example, can speak four different languages, and bits and pieces nine. So school is easier in some aspects, but they have one problem that other Mount Vernon students do not have to worry about. Every one of our classes are in English (save for Spanish and German classes). This adds a certain degree of difficulty. Having to translate new material in addition to learning it is a daunting task, but nothing the exchange students can’t handle.

Recently exchange students had the opportunity to go to Xavier High School to gather with many other foreign students and discuss their experiences. Each student has a unique stay here in America, but they also have many similarities no matter where in the world they come from.

Our culture can be difficult to adapt to for numerous reasons. We do things differently than the rest of the world and they do things differently than us. Some of these differences become apparent as soon as they step off the plane to arrive here. When going to meet their host family the first thing to do is greet them. An American greeting typically starts with a handshake, or an occasional, brief, hug. It would certainly be unacceptable to kiss a stranger on the cheek moments after seeing them for the first time, but in many European and South American countries, that is what is expected.

Sports are similar in a way. Football is constantly being discussed in American culture. Football is also a topic of conversation throughout the world. These sports only have the name in common but other than that they are a far cry from the same. But these differences give exchange students another opportunity; to play a new sport on their high school team. Trym took full advantage of this after school sport and plays on the Mustang football team.

Sports and other extracurriculars bring the exchange students and the other Mount Vernon students closer together. Fynn brings his musical talents with him all the way from Germany to play in the Mount Vernon Band. He plays at football games and numerous other performances through the fine arts.  Many friendships can be formed with exchange students, even through the foreign accents, language barriers, and cultural differences. Exchange students can learn while having new experiences and making new friends. What they bring to us is something that we can all appreciate and always remember.