On August 17th PAHS got a foreign exchange student, Elise Gilot. The last time PAHS had a foreign exchange student was the school year of 2019-2020 where there were two.

The foreign exchange student program is a way for high school students to travel to go to a foreign country to live and study abroad. The seasons of other countries are different in many ways. One country might get a lot of snow, another might not get any snow. A country might get a lot of rain which causes plants to grow, and another might not get rain for months which causes a drought.

Gilot said, “In fact, in my organization there were three choices that you could choose from. The one where you don’t know where you’re going, the one where you can choose the state and the one where you can choose the state and the school. I took the second option because I wanted to have the surprise but not too much. So I chose Pennsylvania because of all the pictures, I found this cute. And because here the seasons are the real seasons. I mean it’s quite hot in summer, cold and snowy in winter (I love snow) and yes all the seasons are well marked.”

Being a foreign exchange student means you move away from your family and live somewhere with strangers for a school year, maybe more.

“I always wanted to be an exchange student somewhere for as long as I can remember. This idea came to me when I was twelve. And in September of last year, my mom talked to me about it again.”

Preparing yourself to move to another country is a hard thing to understand fully until you’re the one doing it.

“To prepare myself mentally I didn’t do anything special I just told myself that it was going to be fun and I didn’t stress, and to prepare myself to speak English I did not do anything at all but now that I’m here I think that maybe I should have done something. And then my parents and I made the appointments and I have registered in my WEP organization.”

WEP is an organization that has students travel to another country for an education experience. Playing sports for school is a great activity to do especially if you have nothing else to do and you’re looking for a challenge to take up your time. Getting angry while playing is a very common action most people do.

“So I play tennis here and I will probably do other sports when the tennis season is over. It’s a very difficult sport both physically with the movements and especially the leg placements, and mentally because it is an individual sport which means if you miss something, or do something wrong, it gets very frustrating. I am quite nervous when I play because I always want to be doing better. I also get mad at myself and I yell a lot to vent my frustration.”