Spain, Austria, Argentina, Slovakia, and Switzerland. That’s an impressive list of international countries from which or to which high school students are traveling through the Wilsonville Rotary’s Youth Exchange Program.
Is international travel as well as study abroad on your bucket list? Well, it has come true for four Wilsonville High School students, one Swiss and one Argentinian student.
Callan Kehoe from Wilsonville High School recently traveled to Spain for five weeks and stayed with a family in the city of Alicante on the Mediterranean coast. In mid-summer he returned home accompanied by his Spanish host brother Ruben Ibanez. The Kehoe family then reciprocated, hosting Ruben for a five week visit that included a memorable trip to the New York Finger Lakes area.
Dawson Durig, just beginning his junior year at WHS, has been in Argentina since mid June, hosted by the Berios family in Daireaux, about 250 miles west of Buenos Aires. He has been attending school with his host brother Juan Santiago Berois as it is the winter semester that far south of the equator. Dawson returned home on Labor Day and his “brother” Santiago will be hosted by the Durig family here in Wilsonville from December to February, during the Argentine summer vacation season.
Two other Wilsonville 11th grade students departed in August for the entire school year abroad. Elizabeth “Biz” Harms is presently with her host family in a close suburb of Vienna, Austria. She will have to pick up her German quickly as all her classes will be in that language. She will return to Wilsonville in the 2017 summer to resume her studies as a senior at WHS.
\Amanda Weatherly is presently with her host family in Poprad, Slovakia, and has all her classes in Slovak. Amanda is finding “Google Translate” to be of great value since she started school on September 5th as she struggles to learn the Slovak language.
And finally, the Rotary Club of Wilsonville is hosting Anna Knill (pictured above) from Switzerland for the 2016-2017 school year. Anna speaks fluent English, German (of course), and understands French and Italian. She is a senior at WHS taking Spanish, Advanced Chemistry, English, American History and other courses. Anna plans on being active by being on the cross-country team in the fall and the swim team in the winter. She is living with the first of her three local host families in Wilsonville and will move to a second family in December. The Rotary Club of Wilsonville is looking for a third host family for the March-June 2017 time interval. If you are interested in hosting Anna next spring, please contact Jake McMichael at 503-694-2127.