{"id":1543,"date":"2023-03-10T18:35:34","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T22:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/?p=1543"},"modified":"2023-04-01T00:03:03","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T04:03:03","slug":"all-across-the-world-to-achs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/2023\/03\/10\/all-across-the-world-to-achs\/","title":{"rendered":"Around The World To ACHS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

Lilliana Escobar<\/p>\nStaff Writer <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From Vietnam, Chile, Singapore, and Afghanistan, students from different countries have participated in foreign exchange programs or immigrated to the United States to attend Alexandria City High School. International exchange students Kent Ngyuen, Florencia Vidall, Eliza Inkema, and Kabir Kabir have adjusted to changes between ACHS\u2019s environment and that of their previous school systems.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former exchange student Kent Ngyuen attended ACHS from 2020 to 2021 as a junior. Ngyuen is from Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, and loved ACHS. The exchange program assisted him in studying in the U.S. for one year. He returned back to Vietnam for the summer. Once he returned to the U.S., he decided he wanted to experience boarding school. He is currently finishing his high school career in Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter a week in AC, I [felt] so welcome and made friends even though there\u2019s a [large] amount of students,\u201d Ngyuen said. \u201cThey are completely different [compared to his old school in Vietnam, The International Asian School]. I can choose classes that I like and [receive help] with my major in university\u2026the teachers are supportive and understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophomore Florencia Vidall moved to Alexandria in 2021 on account of her Navy parents from Chile. Vidall says that at first, she did not feel welcome at ACHS since the language barrier made it difficult for her to meet new people since she didn\u2019t speak English \u201con a regular basis.\u201d However, she says that extracurricular activities helped her adjust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of my favorite activities would be the sports that the school offers, since in Chile, there were only four basic ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another difference between ACHS and her school in Chile is the way that students dress as well as class size, \u201cIt was obligatory to wear uniforms whether you were in a public or private school [in Chile, and there are] smaller classes but bigger schools since [they hold] kindergarten to 12th-grade students.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ngyuen also described how ACHS was the home for electives and school activities that weren\u2019t in Vietnam. \u201cI loved spirit week, the play, and the musical. They did such an amazing job, and I was shocked in a positive way because I couldn’t find [anything] like that in a Vietnamese school,\u201d Ngyuen said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophomore Eliza Inkema moved to Alexandria in 2021 from Singapore, where she attended the Singapore American School, on account of her father\u2019s Microsoft job. But her experience in different school systems does not end here: Inkema has attended the Western Academy of Beijing, the British School of Beijing, and Stamford American International School. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy old schools were mostly Western schools, so the curriculum was similar [to ACHS\u2019s]. However, those schools had longer breaks and more of a focus on visual learning,\u201d Inkema said. \u201cOne thing I found difficult was that at my past schools, there were a lot of students who were similar to me. We moved around a lot all over the world. So the schools were very understanding of that and gave us longer breaks. Having less of those breaks and less of a community like that was difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophomore Kabir Kabir is from Afghanistan and moved to the U.S. with his family to escape violence by the Taliban. \u201cWe had been planning to move to the U.S. for four or five years. We knew there wasn\u2019t a bright future for us [in Afghanistan]. We did not want to leave, but we knew we had to,\u201d Kabir said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kabir says the community he found with Afghan students in ACHS\u2019s International Academy made him feel welcomed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are many Afghan students and I got excited. I knew it would be a great experience,\u201d Kabir said. \u201cBut there are many differences. The time is 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. [for school in Afghanistan]. You just stay in one class, and the teachers would change. Here, it is much better since you change classes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit to Lilliana Escobar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Vietnam, Chile, Singapore, and Afghanistan, students from different countries have participated in foreign exchange programs or immigrated to the United States to attend Alexandria City High School. International exchange students Kent Ngyuen, Florencia Vidall, Eliza Inkema, and Kabir Kabir have adjusted to changes between ACHS\u2019s environment and that of their previous school systems.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23,436,93],"class_list":["post-1543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-achs","tag-exchange-program","tag-international-academy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/IMG-3100.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1543"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions\/1675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2022-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}