The foreign exchange students visiting Milpitas from the Philippines felt like winners when they met up at Dave & Busters in the Great Mall.
By: Melissa Nunes
Visiting a foreign place for a week is an opportunity many people do not get in their lives. So to do so in an everyday life setting rather than just visiting some tourist spots that do not capture the center anywhere sounds like an amazing experience. A few lucky students from MHS’s sister city in the Philippines were given the opportunity to come and shadow some of our students for a week on Nov. 9. A group of both boys and girls were assigned to stay with some volunteer host families, and they were able to learn about each other’s cultures and everyday lives.
Junior Alyssa Erickson found out about the foreign exchange student program through an announcement in her first period class and was immediately interested, Erickson said. As soon as she discovered there were not enough host families, she remembered her family saying it would be something they would be interested in doing.
“My mom said we might be interested in doing something like this if we had an extra room,” Erickson said. “Well, my brother had left for college a little while ago so I was able to convince my mom to do it.”
Exchange Student Lyndsey Velasquez discovered the program through a leadership organization in the Phillipines called MYA. In this organization, they hold positions such as young city mayor and young city councilor, Velasquez said.
“In our organization it’s like 70 students and there are 10 students that [came] to Milpitas,” Velasquez said. “And luckily I was one of those students.”
The exchange students did an array of different activities with their randomly assigned families on an itinerary set for them, and also visited places with their host families that were not on the itinerary such as San Francisco, Facebook, and Monterey. The students shadowed their host students for two days, and then another Filipino student who spoke Tagalog on another day.
“The subjects were really fun and so were the teachers,” Velasquez said. “Also with the other students they welcomed me. I was shocked because there are a lot of subjects you can choose from that my school doesn’t have.”
At their school in the Philippines, they are assigned classes every year, Velasquez said. There was no choosing or opportunities to take some of the elective classes MHS has, such as photography, and the population at their school is much smaller. Exchange Student Francesca Cuison shared similar views on the topic.
“I also write for the newspaper in my school,” Cuison said. “We only have about 600 students at our school so it’s a big difference.”
On Nov. 16, two days before the exchange students were set to leave to spend time in LA, a group of them met up at Dave & Buster’s to have some fun in the mall. The parents attending were very encouraging and accepting towards the foreign exchange students. Host Parent Pamela Kellas, Francesca’s host, had allowed her daughter to go through a similar program, and thought it would be a nice idea to take someone in.
“She’s very polite and interacts very well with the family,” Kellas said. “We enjoy her company.”
All of the students seem very excited just to be in the mall, and seemed especially to enjoy Old Navy. While they did purchase things in the mall, they also bought things from our student store to commemorate their time in Milpitas.
“It was a great opportunity to come [to] the US,” Velasquez said. “I am so thankful I had time with Alyssa and her family. They accepted me like their own daughter and sister, and Milpitas High is cool.”