Walk in their shoes [2018-2019]

My name is Ulyana Pyrlik and I am a junior at Mead High School. My homeland is Kazakhstan, a country with a unique history and friendly people of different nationalities. I was attending a high school there when heard from a classmate about an opportunity to spend the whole year in the USA. This idea was really fascinating for me, considering my interest of experiencing completely new and different li...

Riccardo Frangipane, an Exchange Student from Italy, is a junior at Mead High School. His hobbies include swimming and playing water polo, going to the gym, listening to music and watching movies. At his school back home, Riccardo was always interested in reading about the United States and enjoyed learning English a lot, but the way of studying in Italy lost its previous advantages for him. “I wanted...

“Thailand is the Land of Smiles,” says Sirikanya Sripat, an exchange student from the South part of the sunny country with worth-visiting beaches and gorgeous mountains, merrily. Known as Meemee by other students, she is enjoying her stay in America. Sirikanya’s story began with the invitation from a teacher for taking part in the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange & Study (YES)  Exchange ...

Mead High School met Mikulas Hlava as a foreign student. Miki is a Czech Republic representative and sent here by the Greenheart Exchange Program to get a new experience. “My dad heard about this program and wondered if I would like to study abroad. I promptly found it a fascinating idea so we set it up soon,” he describes. The Greenheart program's purpose is to enrich cultural values of leaders t...

Ondřej "Andrew" Zahradník, a Mead High School Student from Czech Republic, Has been in the United States for three months already.  As an independent and adventurous student, he decided to take part in the Greenheart Exchange program because he wanted to meet new people, gain new experiences, and see a new culture. The United States has always been Andrew’s target destination. He explained, �...

Gabriela Auricchio is our foreign exchange student who has come here from Brazil. Gabi is a participant of the ISE (International Student Exchange) program. To be able to apply for the selection process, all interested students have to assure the organization that they preform well academically. “They don’t accept students with grades lower than C in my program,” notes Gabriela. To ensure that ...

Five years of dreaming, one moment to catch the opportunity, a year in expectations and she is in America, after four days awaiting for the flight on her half-way… Marina Mirzoyan, our FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) program student, came from Armenia, “a country of hospitable people." Her hobbies are dancing and singing for herself. In addition to these hobbies, Marina is interested in learning l...

Pia Knüppe is a foreign student of “Camps” exchange program from Germany. She has an interesting story of her applying for this opportunity to spend an academic year in the United States. “The first program I was interested in — Parlamentarische Patenschafts-Programm (PPP) — wanted to know our political interests and required knowledge of American and German history. For example, th...