8573, 5687, 4882. While these numbers may seem completely random, they are more similar than you think: these are the distances (in miles) between America and the home countries of some of Fluvanna County High School’s foreign exchange students.

This school year, seven students from around the globe were accepted and offered 10 months of the experience of attending high school at Fluvanna County. Each student has extraordinary stories to tell, exciting cultural diversity to spread, and their experience of adapting to the American life to share.

As foreigners, everything in United States seems strange, different, and exciting. This year’s exchange students have enthusiastically emerged into American high school life, with some joining sport teams and others participating in clubs or volunteering in the community. Ukrainian exchange student Diana Stulkakina successfully campaigned for Vice President of the FCHS Sophomore class. “Being a part of a team is a great feeling, but being welcomed by everyone that you meet is the best feeling ever,” she said. This is her fourth exchange experience (including England and France in previous years) and by far, she favors Americans the most because “[people here] are friendly and funny.”

Besides making good friends, these students also established great relationships with teachers. “In Kazakhstan, it is strictly educational at school,” said Junior Gleb Varnayek. “We do not connect deeply with our teachers and joke around like friends as we do here.”

The wide variety of classes to choose from with subjects ranging from science to art also fascinates these students. “We have to take compulsory academic classes for 12 years without a say in the schedule,” said German student Hannah Battige. “Now, without any restriction in the curriculum, I can explore classes and maybe find interest in a specific subject.”

While trying new things and getting used to life in America, exchange students must constantly face difficulties during their stay. As they embarked on their journeys, they immediately came up against the drawback of distance. Gleb Varnayek took off from his home country, Kazakhstan, last August 5, but he did not reach Fluvanna County until four days later. “Can you imagine how exhausting that is?” he said. “A 72- hour trip, hours on the airplane, and [a] one day layover in international airports. I’m lucky I didn’t suffer from jet lag because of the different time zones afterwards.”

Even with technology, the enormous time difference between Fluvanna and home (which can be as long as 13 hours) hinders exchange students’ ability to communicate back home. “It was very emotional to me during Christmas time,” Stulkakina said. “Since we have a different time for Christmas in Ukraine, I did not spend the holiday with my family this year. Instead, I spent it with my host family in America.”

Some of the students face language barriers everyday at school and at home. “Everybody is speaking so fast and I can’t catch some of the words from time to time,” Jueon Lee from Korea said. “I couldn’t understand anything at all during my first week here.”

According to many FCHS students, this is the first year they have seen so many exchange students at school. Victoria Zavadsky, a teacher who has six exchange students in her English classes, explained the reason for this phenomenon: “Before 2016, the school only opened two slots for exchange students each year. However, as the faculty decided to bring more cultural diversity into the school, the amount of exchange students this year is unlimited. As a result, we welcomed bright faces from around the world to our small Fluvanna County.”

One stressor for these students is that with a lot of different classes each semester, they get a lot of chances to make new friends everyday. However, this is not always a good thing to exchange students. “We study with the same students the whole day at school [at home] so I get to know my friends better and grow closer to them,” said Katya Movchanyuk from Ukraine. “On the other hand, in America I know more people, but they are mostly acquaintances and I rarely get to talk to them.”

As the school year draws to an end, these brave international students will soon have to start packing for their journey back home. But even thousands of miles away from Fluvanna, these students will hold the unforgettable experience of America and FCHS students forever in their hearts.

Note: The writer, Thao Nguyen, is an exchange student from Vietnam who is also spending a year here. She is an active member of the Fluvanna Speech and Debate Team and volunteered as a photographer’s assistant at the Fluvanna SPCA.