Spanish 5 students at Lawrence High welcomed three foreign exchange students from Paraguay on Jan. 19. Seniors Maddie Baloga and Quillen Eichorn and junior Katie Gaches each hosted an exchange student for the duration of their stay of three weeks.

Eichorn admitted that hosting her exchange student Debora Moser was awkward initially.

“I was really shy with Debora at first,” Eichorn said. “But now we talk about boys and what not.”
Moser piped in, “It’s fun. We like to talk.”

Fellow exchange student Ale Garcia agreed with Eichorn that initially living with a host family is uncomfortable.

“It’s different. You feel shy, but you can deal with it,” Garcia said.

Despite any initial discomfort Garcia felt, she quickly recovered.

“I like the school,” Garcia said. “The people are very nice.”

Garcia and the other exchange students quickly came to love American culture.

“[The Paraguayan exchange students] don’t want to do crazy things,” senior Maddie Baloga said. “A lot of times they just want to go and eat at a fast food restaurant that they don’t have in their country — simple things.”

The exchange students went bowling, ice skating, visited the Kansas Capitol and even went to a Lady Gaga concert in Kansas City.

To fully immerse themselves into American culture and the English language, exchange students were required to study a minimum of three years of English before their trip to Kansas. Their time in Kansas has helped them to learn English further.

“I learned American phrases that we didn’t use before,” Moser said.

The exchange program not only improved exchange students’ English, but it improved the Spanish of host families.

“Having someone who speaks Spanish really well helps me with my Spanish,” Eichorn said.

While Baloga’s Spanish has improved, she believes the most important thing she’s learned as a host family is patience.

“I’ve definitely learned how to be patient and how to communicate with people that don’t speak very good English,” Baloga said.

Exchange students said goodbye to their host families on Feb. 9, but they left some parting advice.
“Don’t eat spicy food,” Garcia playfully advised.

Eichorn’s advice to students considering hosting an exchange student is simple: “Do it. It’s really fun.”