THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 26, 1996 TAG: 9607250139
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY REBECCA MYERS CUTCHINS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 282 lines
WEEKS AFTER HER friends had left for college last September, Kelly Hughes was packing her bags for Spain.
With her mind racing and stomach churning, Kelly anxiously asked herself, ``What am I doing? I'm not going to go to this place. I won't know anyone. I won't know the language. I'm going to be stuck there.''
Ten months later, Kelly speaks enthusiastically of the classes she took in philosophy and art history, fondly of the field trips she made to Barcelona and Paris, and lovingly of the family who hosted her stay as an exchange student with American Field Service Intercultural Programs.
``It was really hard for me figuring out if I really wanted to go, because it's just so much easier to do what everyone else does, which is to go on to college,'' said Kelly, a 1995 graduate of Churchland High School who opted to postpone her freshman year at the University of Virginia to study abroad.
Kelly, 19, is one of four students from the Churchland/Western Branch area who completed AFS studies this summer. She returned to her Merrifields home on July 7, exactly 10 months from the day she left.
Chris Hartman, a 1995 Churchland graduate, arrived from Germany on July 15, and '95 Western Branch graduate Carolyn Bush flew in from Italy on July 10. Only Sarah Bush, Carolyn's younger sister, has yet to return. She is expected to arrive from Argentina on Aug. 16 to complete her senior year at Western Branch.
Since 1947, AFS has been a world leader in exchange programs for high school students, according to Barbara DuPuy, treasurer of the local AFS chapter, which has been active at Churchland and Western Branch high schools for about 30 years.
Currently, about 3,000 American high school students a year choose to live overseas with host families in the 40-plus countries where AFS has active exchange programs.
Kelly Hughes joined Churchland's AFS club at the beginning of her sophomore year. During her first year with the group, she participated in a short-term exchange with students from Brooklyn, N.Y., then spent a summer in Finland.
During her senior year, Kelly and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hughes, hosted a student from Italy who convinced Kelly to go on a yearlong foreign exchange herself. She chose Spain.
``I had taken Spanish in my school, but when I got there, it was just completely different,'' said Kelly, who attended a small private school in Catalonia, located in the northern region of Spain.
``Everything I learned, it just wasn't there, so I basically had to re-learn Spanish,'' she said. ``Those little phrases that people my age use just aren't in textbooks, so it took me awhile to get used to everything.''
During her first two months of school, where she attended class with about three dozen seniors, Kelly said she tried to take notes but had no idea what was being said.
``It was like I was just watching their mouths move - like watching TV without the volume,'' she recalled with a laugh.
After about three months, Kelly felt comfortable enough with the language to go places without the help of a translator. Within six months, she was speaking with a little more confidence, but she still made occasional mistakes.
``One time while we were traveling, I was hot and wanted to open the window,'' Kelly said. But instead of expressing herself the correct way, Kelly said something close but not quite right.
Her host mother quickly explained to her that she needed to be more careful in her choice of words because she was venturing into racy territory.
Each day, Kelly attended school from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., taking senior-level classes in art history, philosophy, math, Spanish, English and contemporary history.
``The seniors there study so much more,'' she said. ``Their senior year is the hardest year of high school.
``First of all, just to pass it is a lot harder. One-third of my class failed, and I had a very intelligent, hard-working class.''
Art history was one of Kelly's favorite subjects. In fact, she even signed up for oil painting lessons in the month between the end of classes and the day she left for home.
``Before this year, I knew nothing about art,'' she said. ``Now I can appreciate it a lot more.''
Kelly also relished Spain's long, leisurely lunch breaks, which typically lasted from 2 to 4:30 p.m.
``Lunchtime was their family time because everyone goes home for lunch,'' Kelly said. ``At my house, we always ate at exactly 2 o'clock, and it wasn't a quick lunch, either. We'd sit down, and everyone would talk. I thought it brought the family closer together.''
Curious about life in the States, Kelly's friends often would ask her questions about the United States based on American TV shows popular in Spain.
``There's a lot of `Melrose Place,' `90210' and `Baywatch' there,'' Kelly said, ``so everyone sees all these tall, skinny people with perfect bodies and they ask, `Is that what the United States is like?' ''
When she returned nearly three weeks ago, Kelly brought one of her best friends, Tere Capdevila, with her.
``I met her one of the first days because she was in all of the same classes that I had, and she helped me out so much,'' Kelly said. ``I mean, with notes, with understanding things.
``I like jogging and from the beginning of the year, we went jogging together. She has always just been there for me.''
Until Tere returns to Spain on Aug. 4, Kelly wants her to ``be able to experience everything she can in the time that she's here.''
So far, the friends have hit the beach at Nags Head, seen a movie at The Commodore Theatre, visited the Chrysler Museum, eaten pizza at Fellini's, toured Washington, D.C., played at the Children's Museum of Virginia and taken a road trip to the University of Virginia, where Kelly will major in either physical therapy, nutrition or international business in the fall.
``Tere is telling me that I have to come back next July,'' said Kelly, who plans to return to Spain but probably not that soon.
``It was a great experience,'' she said. ``Now I know another language, and I have great friends that I'll have all my life.
``I basically learned that there's just a lot more to learn. I mean, I did learn the language, but the experience made me think there's just so much more out there.''
Like Kelly, during Chris Hartman's senior year at Churchland, he also had hosted an exchange student who convinced him to spend some time in Europe.
Though Chris had listed Spain as his first choice, he ended up in Germany.
``I wanted to go to Spain because I had taken three years of Spanish in high school,'' said Chris, 19, ``but there was no more room there, so I was sent to Germany.''
Chris had taken a year of German in school, but that had been years ago, in the eighth grade, and he had forgotten most of what he had learned. So for the first two months of his stay, Chris' host family spoke to him in English, a language that is taught in Germany beginning in the fifth grade.
``But after October, my host parents started talking only in German to me so I'd learn it quicker, which helped a lot,'' said Chris, whose host mother was a librarian and host father was a businessman. He also inherited a 20-year-old brother and a 15-year-old sister.
By Christmas, Chris understood the language so well that he actually began dreaming in German.
In his first dream, Chris was with a group of people who were speaking ``a mix between German and English, but it was more like a noise,'' he said. He later had a dream that all of his U.S. friends were talking in German.
``So I could see myself learning German through my dreams,'' Chris said. ``I could tell I understood it.''
While in Germany, the one thing Chris really missed was Taco Bell.
``That, plus the fact that you can go shopping any time you want,'' he said. ``In Germany, there's a law that says everything must close at 6 p.m. on weekdays; on Saturday, everything is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; and on Sundays, nothing is open.''
In school, Chris studied art, chemistry, biology, physics, Spanish and, of course, German.
``I took German with the fifth grade,'' he said. ``I was actually in a class with fifth-graders. That's what I needed to learn - what they were learning - so it helped me out a lot.''
Because the school Chris attended housed grades 1 through 13, he often would see the youngsters with whom he studied German.
``That was fun,'' he said. ``When I would see these little kids in the hall at school, they would holler `Hey, Chris, how are you doing?' ''
Last October, Chris traveled from his host family's home in Ulm, Germany, to Munich to celebrate Oktoberfest.
``You know the fest house they have in Oktoberfest at Busch Gardens? Well, each beer company has their own beer tent that looks almost exactly like that, but it's a tent,'' he said. ``There's like 20 of them, and they're all spread out. Everyone gets this huge beer mug that holds a liter, and there's a German folk band in the middle playing music, and everyone just drinks their beer and sings.''
Although Oktoberfest lasts about two weeks, Chris was there for just a day.
``I couldn't have handled any more than that,'' he said.
Because the drinking age in Germany is 16 and the age at which teenagers can drive is 18, most young Germans were surprised that Americans are allowed to drive at 16 but can't drink until they're 21, Chris said.
``They also asked if anybody here drove a stick shift because they think that Americans are lazy and don't want to learn to drive'' a manual transmission, he said.
Though he didn't bring anyone home with him this summer, Chris has invited about 30 of his German friends to Portsmouth next summer, with permission from his mother, Miriam, and father, city engineer Richard Hartman.
``Everyone is going to come to the States after graduation, but we're going to stagger it out,'' said Chris, who will begin his freshman year at Virginia Tech this fall, where he will continue his study of German.
``I want to go to school for two years at Tech, and then I want to do an exchange with a university and go to school over there,'' he said.
Regardless of whether Chris ever returns to Germany, he always will have a permanent reminder of his stay there: a five-inch scar on his right shoulder, the result of a snowboarding accident in the Alps.
``That's kind of like my memento from Germany,'' he said with a laugh.
After spending 10 months in Italy, Carolyn Bush describes the country's culture as ``full of free spirits.''
``They have an attitude toward entertainment, as far as having fun, that I really enjoyed,'' said Carolyn, 19, who lived in the city of Padua, which the Italians call Padova, known for having the second oldest university in the world.
``It was a great city,'' she said. ``It had all of the typical narrow, cobblestone streets, some great bars and cafes and pizzerias.''
Carolyn attended the fourth year of a five-year public high school, taking classes from 8:20 a.m. to 1:20 p.m. in Italian, English, Latin, philosophy, chemistry, history, math, art history and religion. She also had a gym class for two hours each week.
``It was interesting because in the high schools in Italy, you don't change classes. The teachers change classes, so I was with the same 20 classmates all day,'' she said. ``And the other interesting thing is that you cannot choose your classes, so all the students study on the same level of work.''
Carolyn said her classmates' ages ranged from 16 to 20 because the failure rate is somewhat high.
``And it's not because they don't study,'' she said. ``It's because school is very difficult, especially with everyone being on the same level.''
Student protest rallies were common at Carolyn's high school, and she even participated in a few herself.
``I remember once there was a protest rally for pollution, and we walked around with medical masks and all sorts of banners,'' she said. ``It was interesting because at the end of the march, the students were painting graffiti on these portable walls at the train station, and the police were just watching them. It was so strange.''
In December, Carolyn participated in a weeklong protest. She and her fellow classmates took over the entire school, teaching classes and cleaning the building themselves.
``It was to protest the government giving money to private high schools that was set aside for the public high schools,'' said Carolyn, who taught a conversational English class. Other students taught music appreciation, current events, conversational French and teenage issues.
At the end of the protest, the students held an assembly to reflect on their week. Carolyn was asked to speak and received a warm round of applause.
``At that point, I felt like I had become a part of them, and they were really glad that I had come,'' she said.
Participation in these protests were considered excused absences as long as the student wrote a note explaining his or her involvement in the demonstration, she said.
``I thought the students there were much more politically minded and also more active,'' she said. ``Not only were they aware of the issues, but they're aware of the issues enough to want to even try to voice their opinions.''
Carolyn's host father was a doctor. Her host mother was an Italian language teacher who taught 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds.
``I actually went to school with her one day to talk about American history,'' Carolyn said.
When she first arrived in Italy, Carolyn spoke very little Italian. It was difficult in the beginning, she said, but she never got frustrated.
``I would say in six weeks, I was able to converse,'' she said.
It also helped that Carolyn participated in a weeklong language camp, where Italian grammar and verb conjugations were studied intensively.
``After that, it was real interesting how you learn a language in a country where you're completely immersed, how it occurs,'' she said. ``It's not that you're tested so you don't see your improvement, but you just gradually understand more and more until at the end, you're finally like, `Wow, I understand everything that's going on around me!' ''
When Carolyn returned on July 10, she brought back her host sister, Elena Zoccali, 18. Elena will be in Hampton Roads until about Aug. 17, the day Carolyn's sister, Sarah Bush, returns from a foreign exchange to Argentina.
``We'll drop Elena off in New York City because her mother is coming to pick her up, and they'll spend time in New York and Boston before going home to Italy,'' Carolyn said.
During her stay in Hampton Roads, Elena will go to the beach, Busch Gardens, Water Country USA and all the other tourist spots within driving distance of the Bushes' Western Branch home.
In the fall, Carolyn will continue with her Italian studies as a freshman at the University of Virginia, but she will pursue a pre-medical major.
The entire Bush family - Carolyn and Sarah, along with their parents, Dr. and Mrs. Richard Bush, - have been members of the AFS family for as long as Carolyn can recall.
``Ever since I was little, we would always have foreign exchange students,'' Carolyn said. ``Then when I was 10 years old, we had a foreign exchange student from Spain who stayed with us for six months.''
When Carolyn was in ninth grade, the family hosted a Finnish girl for six months, and in her sophomore year, they had a girl from Malta who also stayed for six months.
Reflecting on her stay in Italy, Carolyn says it was ``definitely a great year.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by MARK MITCHELL
Kelly Hughes, left, and Tere Capdevila met while Kelly was an
exchange student in Spain. Now Tere has come to visit Kelly in
Portsmouth.
Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
Chris Hartman returned home July 15 after spending 11 months in
Germany. The '95 graduate of Churchland High lived with a family in
Ulm.
Chris visited the Alps, where injured his shoulder in a snowboarding
accident.
Kelly Hughes, front row left, hams it up on a school class field
trip to Paris. She attended a small private school in Catalonia,
located in the northern region of Spain.
Sarah Bush is coming home from Argentina on Aug. 16 to complete her
senior year at Western Branch High.
ABOVE: Carolyn Bush spent her year abroad in Padua (Padova), Italy,
but one of her special memories is her visit to Sardinia, an island
in the Mediterranean, near Corsica.
AT LEFT: When Carolyn, far left, came home, she brought her host
sister, Elena Zoccali, with her for a month's visit. Elena will
leave the same day Carolyn's true sister, Sarah Bush, is expected
to return from a foreign exchange to Argentina. by CNB