New London hosting 30 teens this month
New London – In the United States for just one day, some of the 30 teenagers from Chengdu, China, who are staying with host families in the area, had already dined American, walked aboard a submarine, and got their toes wet at Ocean Beach Park.
And their American counterparts, students of the Science & Technology Magnet High School of Southeastern Connecticut, discovered their new friends are eager to try new things. They are also thinking of traveling to China one day themselves.
“At first they thought pizza was strange, but then they really liked it,” said Dimitri Crespo of Groton, whose family is hosting two students. He was surprised when they ate only one slice each.
Milagros Frontal of New London said the three students staying with her family loved her mother’s cooking.
“We had chicken, beans and rice,” she said. “They loved it, but they eat small portions. It was like feeding a newborn baby.”
The students, ages 11 to 17, are part of the STEM high school’s international program. Last year students from Liceo C. Salutati Montecatini Terme in Italy visited New London, and in April a group of New London students went to Italy. The school also has a relationship, via the Internet, with Nchuui Secondary School in Kenya, according Louis Allen, director of STEM.
“At the magnet school, our Italian exchange student program was so popular this was a natural progression,” Allen said. “It’s so powerful for our students to see what’s going on across the globe.”
The Chinese program is run through Spiral International, an educational organization in Vermont. International students pay for the trip through Spiral, and Spiral provided New London with a $20,000 budget to cover teacher salaries, tickets, transportation and other costs. Host families also received $200 per student for the 10-day stay, Allen said.
The STEM school became involved after Allen got a call from East Lyme, which has participated in the program before, looking for more towns to host students.
“We’re trying to develop a whole menu of options with international students to really expose our students,” Allen said. “This was the next logical progression for us.”
Wednesday afternoon the Chinese students and four STEM students – supervised by two Chinese chaperones and two American chaperones – tried the water slide at Ocean Beach. Beforehand, a few descended on the gift shop at the beach to buy bathing suits.
Chengdu, in Sichuan Province in southeast China, is not near any ocean water.
“It’s really cool. The kids are really awesome,” said Sarah Champ, a Spanish teacher at New London High School who is coordinating activities
Earlier in the day, they had visited the Nautilus museum in Groton.
But the language barrier is huge. The dozen host families don’t speak Chinese and only a few students know a little English. There’s a lot of gesturing and head nodding and calling up Google Translate, said Crespo.
Even the lifeguard at the water slide managed to convey to the kids that they were not allowed to wear goggles. When two of the girls eventually took their goggles off, the lifeguard gave them a thumbs up and they smiled and nodded.
Anticipating that the Americans would have trouble with their names, the Chinese students assigned themselves American names on the plane ride here, choosing Anna, Jenny, Sue, Bill and Steven in place of Yang, Chen, Liu, Mao and Zhu.
The students are visiting until July 21. Other destinations include tours of Yale University and Connecticut College, a visit to the state Capitol and the Basketball Hall of Fame, Brownstone Park and Roger Williams Park Zoo. Each morning the teens attend English as a Second Language classes at the high school.
For the local students being exposed to a new culture has been fascinating, but they are also going places they’ve never been before.
Neither Crespo, Frontal, nor her sister Chayanne Carrasquillo, had been to the Nautilus, or to Roger Williams zoo or the Basketball Hall of Fame.
“What a great opportunity,” said Shalimer Wuyke, vice principal at New London High School, who coordinated the program.
Thank you for the resource from The Day by Kathleen Edgecomb.
http://www.theday.com/article/20130711/NWS01/307119536/1079