Youth exchange program on hold, eyeing restart in ’22

Youth exchange program on hold, eyeing restart in ’22

BY MATT MACKINDER
Clarkston News Editor

While there will not be a youth exchange program this school year in Clarkston due to pandemic-related international travel restrictions, the Clarkston Rotary Club is aiming to restart the program once restrictions lift.
In the past, Clarkston students have traveled to foreign lands and students from other countries have come to Clarkston.
“Rotary International sponsors this program, and it’s unlike other exchange programs where money is involved,” said Clarkston Rotary Club Director Joel DeLong. “There are expenses to be incurred, but Rotary International and the host club, in this case Clarkston, does all of the necessary paperwork to get it through for visas and all of the paperwork needed to go out of our country. Then, it’s up to the club. There are a number of kids in Europe and Asia who want to come to the United States and there is the same thing with our outbound students. You have six or seven choices of where you think you want to go, and you don’t necessarily end up where you wanted to go, but then it’s up to the host club to find a host family.
“In our case, we try to find three or four families so they don’t wear down one family for the whole year. It allows the families to get to know the child and the inbound student the opportunity to see other activities and get involved in what those families do that they would not see if they stayed with only one family. Some will take them to Disney World, some will take them up north, some will go skiing, so we hope they’ll get to do things they wouldn’t normally do in their own country.”
DeLong said Clarkston Community Schools has always readily accepted exchange students, including Esteban Granja, from Ecuador, who lived with the Banks family in town during the 2018-19 school year and graduated from Clarkston High School at DTE Energy Music Theatre.
“Being with three different families here gave me three different experiences,” Granja said. “It was amazing, actually. You have to change how you live and get out of your comfort zone. Just go ahead and take what comes to you. If it’s good, you love it, but if it’s bad, you’ll have something to learn. My time here was amazing. There were some problems, like with English and things like that, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed just by asking.
“Just a great experience, and I wouldn’t say no to another one. The food was the biggest adjustment for me, with the big meals at night. That was rough for a couple weeks, but then I ate normal. What made it hard to leave was the attachment to people. You don’t get that in big cities, but here, you meet people and you want to keep in touch your whole life. It all depends on how open, how sociable you are with people. When I stay in touch with (the Banks family), it makes me think back on all the memories and they all come back.”
Stephanie Banks, who has hosted exchange students and had two of her daughters, Sara, who graduated from Clarkston in 2019, and Grace, a 2021 graduate, travel to other countries, called the program “top notch.”
“Sara ended up in her third choice, Peru, which was amazing,” Banks said. “She got to swim in the Amazon, she got to feed piranhas, swim with the pink dolphins, and go on lots of cool excursions and see historical sites and monuments – just things I’ve never been able to do.
“Grace went to Argentina, and she said she just wanted a good empanada, and nobody makes them like her host mom. In America, an empanada is a dessert. In Argentina, they are different, so I told her I guess she needed to get a plane ticket and go back to Argentina to get an empanada.”
Grace beamed when she talked about taking the plunge and became an outbound student.
“I was nervous to go at first, but it was so amazing,” added Grace. “I left in June 2019 and came home in August 2019, and I loved every second of it. I got down there and I was super nervous because the seasons were different – it was winter there even though it was summer here. My host family was so nice, the most welcoming family, and I could not have asked for a better host family.
“I decided to go after hosting all of the exchange students. I was like, ‘This is amazing, and I want to do that.’ So I decided to go and I absolutely loved it. I was homesick the first few nights and I called my mom crying. I was freaking out. That was only for a little while and then I found ways to communicate.”
Banks said in her time being involved with the program, she has realized her family, which also includes her husband Chris and younger daughter Julie, is a lot like South American families.
“We have a big family and we’re loud and huggy and everything is centered around food,” she said. “Some of the European students we have had have been a little intimidated by those family gatherings, but the kids are trained about culture and things like that before they go, like what to do if you get homesick. My husband says they’re our kids. Once they are in our house, they’re our kids.
“He says he has sons and daughters all over the world, and we do. We had a girl in 2018 who got homesick and went home halfway through the year, but we still keep in touch today. She’ll go to a restaurant and tell us we need to come to Italy and check it out.”
For Julie, who said she was only nine years old when her family hosted its first student, having older “siblings” is now a way of life for the Clarkston ninth grader.
“When I was little, I didn’t really know what was going on at all,” she said. “It was always cool to have a different older sister and brother for little periods of time. It didn’t seem that different after a while. It kind of seemed normal because we kept on doing it. I can’t explain it to my friends. I’ll say we have someone from another country living in our house for a year and nobody knows what I mean unless they have done it.”
“My husband said it was always the coolest thing because he said he was coming home to the UN,” added Stephanie. “I never know who’s going to be at our house.”
DeLong summarized the program succinctly.
“Our Rotary District hosts a lot of kids from all over the world,” said DeLong. “We feel like our Clarkston Schools students gain as much as the incoming student does as both groups learn that the world is smaller than we think.”

PHOTO: From left, Clarkston Rotary Club Director Joel DeLong, Esteban Granja, Grace Banks, Julie Banks, and Stephanie Banks reminisce at Depot Park about days gone by with the youth exchange program. Photo by Matt Mackinder

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