Another year at Imagine Prep and with the new year came four new exchange students. Who are they? And where are they from? An interview to introduce the four new girls from Europe.

1. Where are you from?

Weiler: “I am from Germany, Cologne.”

Carreras: “Madrid, the Capital.”

Fernández: “Madrid, Spain, the Capital.”

Rho: “Milan, Italy.”

2. How long are you going to stay here?

Weiler: “One semester.”

Carreras: “For the whole year.”

Fernández: “For the whole year.”

Rho: “Until the 25d  of December”.

3. How was your first day?

Weiler: “Scary, because I was in many classes with much older people, but it is ok for me now… There were so many people.”

Carreras: “My first day was so bad becauseI was homesick, so it was pretty bad.”

Fernández: “With my host family it was weird, because I had to get used to the home and to the brothers and sisters, because in Spain I am an only child and here I have four brothers and it was pretty weird and exciting and my first day in school was,.. I was nervous but then when I met all the other exchange students and all the people here I was excited.”

Rho: “My first day here was really nice actually because even though it was my first day, we went bowling with Alba, Claudia, Laura  and Cassidy and it was really nice for being my first day. I also didn’t text back to my friends so that I had more time to meet new people on the first day and also it  helped me for the first day of school that I already knew someone there. The first day of school  was a little bit confusing because school is really different from Italy ones and the thing that we have to change classes was really hard because I didn’t know where my classes were but Laura helped me alot because she brought me to my classes and told me where to go and also I didn’t expect people to be like how they are, I thought they were more curious or that they wanted to do more with me and they didn’t want to. But I wouldn’t say that it is a good thing or a bad thing, I really don’t know, it depends, but not everyone is like that.”

4. How do you like it so far?

Weiler: “Ahmm I like it really much and I am really thankful for my host family because I really like them and they are really open minded and they help me with any problem I have. Yeah I like it.”

Carreras: “I love this so much because it’s so different than Spain so I love it.”

Fernández: “I love it. I like comparing  Spain to this. I really like it so much.”

Rho: “So I like it but its really different from what I am used to because I live in a big city  and  it’s more easy to go like  hang out or do stuff because we have a good transportations system  so it’s easy to go from one place to  another instead of here it’s  really hard because everything is so spread out  and no one eats like at the time we eat dinner or lunch, it is too early for me and I am not used to it but except from this thing I really like it.”

5. Was it very different from what you expected?

Weiler: “Before I got my placement I thought the school would be really really big with 1,000 people, so that’s really different and I thought I would be more in the middle of nowhere and that I would see more fields and less people.”

Carreras: “Not so much.”

Fernández: “Oh not really because I have met so many girls and exchange students, who had gone to other states so I understand their feelings so no.”

Rho: “Hmm yeah. No, so a little bit. The people here. I thought they were more excited about meeting people from other countries and not all of them are and they are not really interested in making new friendships with exchange students, at least not all of them, so the making-friends part.”

6. What were you afraid of? What was your biggest fear?

Weiler: “Finding new friends.”

Carreras: “My biggest fear? My biggest fear was the grades, you know the notes, the grades but right now I think I don’t have any fears.”

Fernández: “Not having any friends or having problems with my host family but it didn’t happen.”

Rho: “Ahmm I don’t- I know that Arizona  is really famous in the world for their amount of spiders and snakes so I am afraid of that because I am scared of spiders and the first thing more like I think making no friends, like not being able to make friends.”

7. What were you the most excited about?

Weiler: “Finding friends and building relationships that I can look back to and will meet years later and I can travel to the US with my friend and they can travel to Europe.”

Carreras: “The travel. Traveling by airplane.”

Fernández: “I think like ahmm  homecoming because in Spain we don’t have that and it’s like the movies for me so yeah.”

Rho: “Going to an American school and the experience of homecoming, football games and Prom I think that was the main one.” 

8. What do you miss from your home (country) the most?

Weiler: “My city because I live close to a big city and the people there and some of my family and people from Cologne are really open minded and there are people from different countries and they are  influenced by other countries.I really like that about Cologne and I can go to the city by myself because we have a wide transportation system. And I miss my mum.”

Carreras: “The most? My family, the food, the weather. It is so much different. I mean the food is like so much more and the weather is more cold.”

Fernández: “Well my family and friends and then the food.”

Rho: “The most? I think my family, my friends and the food because here they have a weird conception of Italian food and no. But some places know some things that are really different from the real Italian recipes and I think I miss the food but I also like the food here.”

9. What was the biggest surprise?

Weiler: “My host sister. She is four years old and sometimes she is really bothering me and somewhat annoying. She starts crying fast, it’s ok because she is four but she can control it somehow but that is somehow… I didn’t think of it before I came” 

Carreras: “That my family was waiting for me with a banner.”

Fernández: “Ahmm that, I noticed that everything is like, so far, I don’t know how to explain it. That distance, because my home is, when I want to go to Walmart for example, it’s 15 minutes away and in Spain you have one supermarket next to your house.”

Rho: “The biggest surprise? The biggest surprise maybe all the things that some people don’t know about other countries. They asked me a lot of weird questions, for example if I speak French or if I speak Spanish.”  

10. What is “Bye-bye” in your language? Or how would you say goodbye?

Weiler: “I’d say ‘Tschau-Kakao’”

Carreras: “Adios.”

Fernández: “Adios or Chao.”

Rho: “Ciao or Arrivederci”.