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Students from Hong Kong and Spain Talk About Their Foreign Exchange Experience
Description
One student traveled more than 7,000 miles from Hong Kong and another 5,400 miles from Spain to have the experience of a lifetime, living in Utah and going to school in Jordan School District.
On this episode of the Supercast, we hear the fascinating stories of two Bingham High School students participating in the Foreign Exchange Program.
Find out how the experience has changed their lives and what they grew to love about Utah and their time in the United States.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. One student traveled more than 7,000 miles from Hong Kong and another 5,400 miles from Spain to have the experience of a lifetime living in Utah and going to school in Jordan School District. On this episode of the Supercast, we hear the fascinating stories of two Bingham High School students participating in the Foreign Exchange Program. Find out how the experience has changed their lives and what they grew to love about Utah and their time in the United States. We are here in the Alumni Room at Bingham High School to speak with two of our foreign exchange students here in Jordan School District. Jordan School District supported a large number of students who had been scheduled to come here and attend school with us. And despite the pandemic, we were able to make things work. There were some cuts in funding at the State level, but we were excited to still offer a spot for some students to live here and learn here. So we're excited to get to know them and I'll let them introduce themselves. Let's start with you, Kenny.
Student:
My name is Kenny and I'm from Hong Kong. I'm 16.
Student:
My name is Sophia and I'm from Spain and I'm also 16 years old.
Anthony Godfrey:
And then we have Heather Ellis here from Bingham High School. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Teacher:
Hi, I'm Heather. I teach German and Spanish here and I was an exchange student myself in Spain, Chile and Germany throughout the years. So that's why I teach foreign languages and like to be involved with exchange students.
Anthony Godfrey:
And as I said, I'm Anthony Godfrey, the Superintendent. And I actually lived in France for a year. It wasn't a foreign exchange thing, but my dad taught French here and we exchanged homes and jobs with an English teacher in France. So I lived in France when I was in sixth grade and my whole family moved over there. So we've all had an experience like this. Tell me what surprised you most about school when you got here.
Student:
Americans in Spain, we just stayed in the same class and the teachers are the ones that came to your class. So you're always with the same people. So my class, my friends in school, I have been with them for like 9-10 years, maybe 12. I don't know. But you got super close because you spend the whole day with them. But it's so fun that here you change classes every hour and you have eight different classes with completely different people and you get to know a lot of people. Also, in Spain, the schools are more studies and then you get out and then you go do whatever you like. But here you can do both. You can study and then if you like playing soccer, you play soccer in the school team. And it's all this team work or spirit. That is something I think is really cool. I really like it.
Anthony Godfrey:
It sounds like you've had a great experience here at Bingham.
Student:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. How about for you, Kenny? What surprised you most about school here in the States?
Student:
What surprised me most is no uniform. In Hong Kong, we have to wear a uniform everywhere at school, but here we just have to wear your casual clothes. Also in Hong Kong, we can't change. We can't choose our class. We can choose o