Foreign exchange students learn different cultures

Ruth Gordon went to Bulgaria as a foreign exchange student during her senior year of high school. Now, she has a high school senior from Switzerland living with her.

"It was a great experience for me to learn the language and to see a different culture," she said. "I always said I would host one when my kids were old enough and this is the last year that they'll both be home."

Mateo Meyer, who Americanized his name to Matt, arrived in Carson City in August to live with the Gordon family.

"It's pretty cool," he said. "The people here are more open. You make more friends in a short time."

Meyer said he chose to come to the United States because of the appeal.

"In Switzerland, America is great," he said. "All the new movies come from America."

One of the novelties of American life for Meyer is going to football games.

"We don't have this at home," he said. "I just saw it in the movies. But the people just sit there. They don't look at the game, they just talk. It's fun."

In Switzerland, where he speaks his native Swiss-German, Meyer starts his school day at 8 a.m. and gets out at 4 p.m. He spends about one-half hour every day studying but says some of his classmates spend up to two hours studying each day.

"I like the school here very much - you have more fun," he said. "The teachers are very nice. You have more time for yourself and your friends."

However, he said that many have misconceptions about his native land.

"A man came up to me at a football game and said, 'I hear you're from Switzerland. Do they have freezers there?'" he related. He said he's been asked if they have mobile phones and newspapers as well.

"American people think Switzerland is mountains and that's all," he said.

Back home, Meyer has one sister - which he says is enough - and here, he has one brother and one sister.

"They're really nice," he said of his new siblings. "I have much fun here."

He misses home, a little.

"I miss living with my family and I miss my best friend but I'm not really homesick," he said.

If anyone can understand how Meyer feels being a stranger in a foreign country, Megan Elliott can.

Elliott, 19 of Carson City, spent her senior year of high school in Belgium through the Rotary Foreign Exchange Program.

The culture shock did not hit her immediately.

"When I first got there, I was just ready to have a new experience. It was amazing how similar everything was," she said. "Three or four months later, the realization really hit me how different it was, that I was really in a foreign country."

The lessons she learned in Belgium will be with her forever.

"It opened my eyes to how different people lived," she said. "You can't learn the same things by just reading about it or seeing it on TV that you do when you actually live there."

Elliott said her interest was piqued in middle school health class when she learned a little bit of Spanish and a little French.

"I decided I loved the French language," she said. After spending 11 months in Belgium, she is now fluent in French and is minoring in it at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She said her experience in another country helped her make the adjustment to moving away to college after graduation.

"Emotionally, I just feel more mature," she said. "I feel like I can take anything."

Next quarter she plans to add Spanish to her studies and wants to spend her junior year in an exchange program in either Mexico or Brazil.

Although she said she would like to continue to travel throughout the rest of her life, her permanent home will always be in the United States.

"I'm proud to be an American," she said. "I realized how much my family, my friends and my country meant to me."