Since it opened in 1990, Central has had foreign exchange students from all over the world. This year, Central has six foreign exchange students attending from Spain, Germany, and Mongolia.
The students from Spain are, Yago Peralta Gutierrez, Mateo Suarez Cano, Beatriz Fernandez-Fournier, and Joel Pinol Lillo. The student from Mongolia is Amin-Erdene Batsaikhan. The student from Germany is Marlo Ludes. Unfortunately, Peralta, Suarez, Fernandez, and Ludes did not want to participate in the interview for this article. However, Pinol and Batsaikhan did.
Batsaikhan is from Mongolia and she is 15 years old. She said that she misses her family and friends the most since being in the U.S.
Many of the exchange students from last year said that they would have preferred to be placed in a different state. Somewhere close to the water or maybe a big city; however, Batsaikhan said that she would not. She likes it here in the South. She says the people here are nice, friendly, polite, and help her whenever she needs. She also likes the typical American high school events, such as homecoming and watching sports like soccer; they help her to understand the culture of high school in the U.S.
Batsaikhan decided to do the exchange year because she wanted to learn about American high school life and American culture, make new friends, and improve her English. Batsaikhan says she likes the study environment here. While she’s in the U.S., she wants to play volleyball.
She wants to highlight the fact that she thinks the biggest difference between Mongolia and the U.S. is the learning system. Batsaikhan explained in the interview that she had 18 lessons a week in her home country. She said that studying 18 subjects was very difficult and it is nice to be here. However, she wants to emphasize the cultural difference. She thought Mongolia was going to be unique from the U.S.
“But, also, America has its own unique culture, civilized history, and holidays such as Halloween and Thanksgiving,” Batsaikhan said.
She believed that her home country would have a more unique history than the U.S. She realized after being here that the U.S. does have quite a bit of a unique history.
After her exchange year, when she’s done with her studies in high school, Batsaikhan wants to come back to the U.S. to study at a university.
The other student interviewed was Pinol. He is 16 years old and from Spain. He said he missed his family, friends, and the food from his home country the most.
Pinol said that he thought the size of everything was very different. He likes how big the school is and how big all the buildings are.
“Everything is so big here. The buildings are huge,” Pinol stated in an interview.
Transportation is very different from Pinol. He says that things here are a lot bigger and spread out compared to Spain. Pinol says another thing he enjoys about the U.S. is how nice the people are.
Pinol says he didn’t know all the states before coming here. He enjoys the scenery and being located in Kentucky, but Pinol said he would have liked being somewhere close to the water.
Pinol says that the people in school are nice and enjoyable to be around, but the teaching style here is vastly different from that in Spain. Pinol says the work here is more group work and the teachers help him a lot, but in Spain, it’s more paperwork and assignments.
Pinol wanted to do the exchange year because he wanted a new experience, to learn new things, and to experience new environments.
Make sure to give a warm welcome to all of the exchange students this year!
