Curiosity and wonder makes everyone want to befriend a foreigner. Girls fall head over heels for smooth talking Italian boys, and blonde Scandinavian hair will probably always melt the hearts of American boys. Most of the exchange students I befriended this year are in the exchange program AFS, and go to schools throughout and outside of Seattle. They’ve been here since summer, and by now the only thing that seems to confuse them is American slang. They’ll be completely “Americanized” by the time they leave at the end of the school year, but when their planes land in another country, the feeling of “home” will then be entirely different than what they’ve come to know here.

Austria

Neaer the border with Hungary is Baden, the home town of Bianca Dopplinger, a senior at Ingraham. Compare any small European town to Seattle and the primary difference will be obvious — size. “Everything is bigger. Even the streets are bigger,” Bianca noted. “Schools … are huge [in the United States]. In Austria we don’t have sports fields or auditoriums.” Bianca explained how the way people present themselves here is different than in Austria. “I don’t understand how some people here dress,” she said. “Some people wear dirty clothes … and look really gross. It seems to me that they don’t really care about how they look.” Despite this unflattering observation, Bianca said “there’s nothing I hate here.”

Italy

“I think Rome and Seattle are two different worlds,” Valentina Manzini, a junior at Garfield, said. “Everything is big and new here! In Rome, we have ancient cities and ruins instead of skyscrapers.” Coming from Italy, she hates the lack of sun here. “The first day I came here it was August 15, and I got such a bad cold even though it was summer,” she said. “I was the only one with winter clothes and scarves.” Though the weather in Seattle isn’t the type to rave about, Valentina loves the difference in people. “In Italy we are all white with brown hair and brown eyes. Boring! Here there are so many different people, different colors, different styles. It’s so cool.”

India

Thanks to Slumdog Millionaire, India is portrayed as a country of poverty-stricken shanty towns, which 22 percent of it is. But India can also be envisioned as an overpopulated country of geniuses. Karan Kukreja, a junior at Federal Way High and originally from New Delhi, pointed out the numerous differences between our school system and India’s. “Teachers come to our classes rather us going to theirs,” he said, “and we’re made to study the subjects that are selected by the education board until 10 grade, then we have five to seven options of subjects to choose from.”

“You people waste a lot of paper here, too, at least in schools,” he explained. “You use technology excessively, hence wasting electricity.” He went on to point out that everything in the U.S. is recorded. “Why do so many things have self service? Why not employ people for those things?” That wasn’t his only question, though. “Why are there so many people who look mysterious and dangerous and have tattoos?” he asked. “And why are people kissing everywhere?”

Befriend an exchange student at Garfield. Not only can they become a close friend, but spending time with an exchange student is like watching the travel channel, but without actually being in another country. You get a taste of what it’s like and what makes it different.