Exchanges

The students have been staying with their host families all week and going to school during the day. I have been staying with Dave and going to school as well. We have all been learning about the culture and educational community here at St. Cyprian’s. The students have been having a fabulous time and they have discovered so many ways our families, schools and cultures are the same and many ways they are different. They have been so absorbed in the social world of the school that they barely say hello when they see me in the morning. The classes are similar but they take different subjects including an economics class from elementary on up. The Chadwick students have especially been enjoying sitting in on language classes – student here, in addition to English, take Afrikaans and Khoisan (the click language– as spoken in The Gods Must Be Crazy). There have been several assemblies – in the lower school a musical concert in the high school an operetta that takes place in a modern high school classroom about HIV/AIDS.

Because it is an all girls school, our boys are like celebrities with gaggles of girls giggling and talking to them they don’t seem to mind the attention.

We had an assembly where both the St. Cyprian’s girls and the Chadwick students presented their preconceived ideas about each other before the exchange and what they have learned by living together and going to school together. The discussion ranged from things like “we thought all Americans ate nothing but fast food” to what does “colored” mean in each place. Because 10 students exchanged there are 10 times 5 days of stories and lessons learned – too much to put here. Suffice it to say I think this experience has shaped their view of the world in a positive and complex way - I feel like my work is done J.