On the week of 24 April to 30 April, a group of sixteen Chinese foreign exchange students visited Somerset-Berkley Regional High School.  Each student stayed with a volunteer student’s family for the week and had the chance to experience American life and culture.  In the students’ school in China, they are able to choose whether they would like to go into a foreign program or a Chinese one.  One student, Jiayu Chen, who chose the American name Kitty temporarily while she visited America, chose to embark in the foreign program, run by the Cambridge Institute.

Fifteen-year-old Kitty lives in western China with her mother, her father, and her seven dogs.  Her father is a businessman while her mother stays at home.  The students in this foreign exchange program volunteered because many of them want to attend universities in America.  Kitty aspires to be a lawyer or a veterinarian and go to college in New York City.  Besides Somerset, the Chinese foreign exchange students have visited New York City, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles.  Kitty says that New York City has been her favorite out of all of them because “there are a lot of people, and it is lively and prosperous.”  She hopes that by the end of the trip, she will be able to understand the daily routine of American students in different areas of the country and to improve her English in order to prepare for the possibility of a life in the United States in the future.

Kitty’s life in China is very different from the life she has seen in the United States, especially through cultural differences.  “In mathematics,” says Kitty, “Chinese students of the same age as American students will be at a much higher level.  However, in science, American students have learned more than Chinese students.”  Lifestyle changes have impacted Kitty the most, challenging her ability to integrate into an unfamiliar family and culture and then be able to adapt to it.  She wishes that she could have the opportunity to teach American students about the different history and habits of the Chinese.  The biggest differences that she has been able to identify are lifestyles, eating habits, and time differences.

The Chinese foreign exchange students’ trip to Somerset-Berkley Regional High School has impacted the SBRHS students as well.  Olivia Lucianno, a Sophomore who volunteered in guiding an exchange student and demonstrating what life is like in the United States, says that exchange program increased her awareness of differences between schools in the U.S. and schools around the world.  “It has also made me want to learn and speak Chinese,” says Lucianno, “even more than I had before.” Cameron Filipe, a Junior at Somerset-Berkley who also volunteered to have one of the foreign exchange students shadow him, says that it was “very rewarding and an honor to be the representatives of America to them.”  Filipe says that he has learned the importance of language and how much the language barrier that existed between the Chinese and American students limited communication.  “It was tough,” says Filipe, “but at the same time it taught us all a very valuable lesson and gave us a great and once in a lifetime opportunity.” SBRHS Sophomore Micaela Rennick, who volunteered to house Kitty, states that she has “always wanted a sister, and now I feel like have one, even though she may be living in a different country.”