Southern Lehigh’s new foreign exchange students, Man-Ling Huang and Carolina Soria, arrived at the start of the school year from their native countries of Taiwan and Argentina.
Southern Lehigh High School has acted as a host school for foreign exchange students for a number of years. “It’s a great opportunity for us to learn about their culture, their education, their religion, and for them to learn about ours,” Principal Christine Siegfried said.
Huang and Soria are both seniors at Southern Lehigh. Even though they have only been in the United States for a few weeks, they are adjusting well to the cultural differences and are very happy to be in the United States.
“There aren’t many opportunities to do this in Argentina, and I was one of three chosen,” Soria said. “This] school is much larger than in Tucuman . [I] think I’m going to adapt well here, because everyone is so nice.”
There are a variety of reasons why a person would want to come to the United States. “I wanted to learn English and [the] American culture. [Also] to let America know of Taiwan culture,” Huang said.
Soria and Huang have noticed how different their cultures are compared to the United States.
“The U.S. is way more advanced, not just in school, there is a lot more technology. [Everyone] spends a lot more time in school,” Soria said. “It’s completely different from back in Argentina. The family and the customs are very different from home and, of course, the food!”
People from other countries also have their own thoughts about what the U.S. is like.
“At first people [in Argentina] told me that if I wanted to make friends, I had to go talk to them because everyone here is cold,” Soria said, “but when I came here I learned that everyone is so welcome and would come up and talk to me, and would help me understand if I didn’t know what they were saying.”
Soria noticed that her weekend activities are very similar to what the students at Southern Lehigh enjoy. “For example, I love going out with friends,” she said, “and I noticed that people do that a lot on the weekends, and in Argentina we do that too, except we also go out on school nights because we go to school way less.”
Almost a month into their arrival in the U.S., Soria and Huang are living up their senior years.
“[Southern Lehigh] is awesome,” said Huang, “I joined cross country and we ran a lot around the school. I like it very much. It’s tiring, but it’s great and I met a lot of people.”
Both Huang and Soria look forward to spending a lot of time with friends and host families this year.
