Welcoming home

Sunday,August 12, 2007

Welcoming home
Foreign exchange hosts have 'family all over the world'

By Keighla Schmidt
Leader-telegran Staff


The Amy and Mitchell Myers family of Rice Lake is welcoming its 10th "child" into its home.

Cedric Retzmann, 17, arrived in Wisconsin as a foreign exchange student late Wednesday night from Bamberg, Germany.

He joins the Myers' two children in the U.S. and former exchange students from Belgium, Ghana, Norway, Iceland and Indonesia as part of the extended family.

"We now have family all over the world, and it's amazing knowing that we have people who care about us and love us in all these different places," Amy Myers said. "It makes the world that much smaller."

Having taken in students since 2000, Amy Myers said she feels hosting foreign students is more than providing a place for someone to sleep. It's something the family does to foster a learning environment and improve the world.

"It's about creating a more tolerant and peaceful world," she said. "It's about being a world citizen, not just a citizen of a town."

The family hosts students through American Field Service Intercultural Programs. Myers also volunteers for AFS as a recruit for host families. AFS has students traveling around the world in 50 different countries. This year, the program is bringing 45 students to northwest Wisconsin for a yearlong stay.

Scott Hume, regional director of AFS, also stressed the idea of shrinking the world.

"It helps build bridges between different cultures," he said. "Often, these people would never have met or seen things they get to now."

Eau Claire schools will not host foreign exchange students this year due to budget cuts.

"I think that is so sad," Myers said. "I understand the problem with growing class sizes, but it's really sad that that is a program they're forced to eliminate."

Rice Lake High School will have eight exchange students this year.

"The most important thing is I find friends," Retzman, a senior, said. "Real friends."

Myers hopes to help Retzmann make friends by getting him involved with "the most important part of their stay": extra curricular activities.

"Getting to know people and other kids is so important," she said. "Kids who don't get involved have challenges and struggles."

Retzmann, who has studied English for five years, said he is thinking of joining the soccer team to get to know some faces before his classes start in September. He said he settled on soccer because he doesn't think he's built for football.

"I am tall and thin, not the American football type," he said.

He also hopes to build a strong relationship with his host family.

"I want everything to go well with them," he said. "To not have a lot of fights, but do a lot with them and also have some free time to do things on my own."

Myers also hopes things will go smoothly, and concentrates on portraying what life is like in an American family.

"It's not about seeing the U.S.," Myers said. "But being part of a family and seeing how family life is like in the U.S."

As one of four chosen German foreign exchange students to take part in a documentary project based in Berlin, the hopeful film-maker, Retzmann, will document his yearlong stay with a video camera and laptop.

"What I film will be given and used for part of a 90-minute long documentary on young students' study abroad experience," he said.

He hopes this will launch him into the film industry as a producer or editor, he said.

The Myers family also has been on the other end of the exchange.

The Myers' daughter, Lydia Bolder, 22, was a foreign exchange student in 2002 in Saudi Arabia when she was 17.