On Monday, October 24^th the foreign language department held an open reception in the upper IMC immediately after school for Kennedy’s ten foreign exchange students.   This event was offered as a time for the Kennedy students to get to know our foreign exchange students a little better.   Cookies and juice were offered to entice students to attend—and it seemed to work as they were cleaned out in no time and the entire upper IMC was full to capacity.    Regardless of why each student attended, once conversations began there seemed to be a very sincere interest and everyone was eager to learn more about each the exchange students and ask questions.

Each of the foreign exchange students took turns sharing information about who they, their home country, and their thoughts on their experiences so far this year and how they feel in general about the United States.   In addition to the conversations, each of the exchange students was invited to play a sort of a guessing game where they were shown an object from our culture, and they were then to guess what the object was and how it was used.   Their friends and/or host siblings also then were asked to guess something from the exchange student’s culture. At the end of the event students were allowed to ask the exchange students questions.   

The ten exchange students who were spotlighted, included:

Anika Filipiak, jr., (Germany); Chaya Sritongkim, so., (Thailand), Elena Ji, sr., (China), Elise Makela, jr., (Finland), Emmi Hamalainen, jr., (Finland), Keitaro Mori, jr., (Japan), Margrethe Heggenheim, jr., (Norway), Paula Delgado, jr., (Equador), Setsuna Yokota, jr., (Japan), and Yujin “Mandy” Choi, jr., (Korea).