“I stayed in touch with everyone
I hosted,” Malanga says. “We all got
along so well and we’re still friends.”
Malanga’s mother Leslie Gillen,
an interpreter at the United Nations,
believes school exchange programs
offer opportunities to realize common
bonds and humanizes people from
other cultures. She says she wouldn’t
hesitate to host again.
“The girls saw that they all loved
Forever 21 and certain pop stars, and
they had one-on-one time where they
found common ground and really
connected,” Gillen says, adding that
she offered the Senegalese girls their
own room but all three chose to stay
together. “They loved being in our
home. It was a great for all of us.”
LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE
Short of offering exchanges, many
schools invite the organization School
Year Abroad to give presentations to
students. The company sets up high
school students with schooling and
homestays in countries around the
world. While students apply on their
own, guidance counselors check in to
ensure students are staying on track
with graduation requirements while
abroad.
While those programs generally
involve one student staying a longer
term, exchange programs allow peers
to experience the excitement of foreign
travel together for a more manageable
period of time.
As head of the Foreign Language
Department at Hoboken’s The Hudson
School, which enrolls many Bergen
County students, Margarita Dominguez
has organized several foreign
exchanges.
“I believe in learning about the world
by sharing values with people from
other cultures and seeing firsthand
how other societies function,” she says,
noting the perfect way to do that is to
live in each other’s homes and spend
time in each other’s classrooms.
Though The Hudson School doesn’t
have a set exchange program each
year, Dominguez, in collaboration with
administration and parents, organizes
exchanges as often as possible.
AROUND THE WORLD Last year, students from The Hudson School in Hoboken visited Madrid.
They stopped for photos at Plaza de España, Parque de El Retiro and the Royal Palace.
“Last year we exchanged with a
school in Madrid, and we’ve exchanged
with schools in France and Mexico as
well,” she says.
This year, students will go to Cuba
to do community service and visit a
local school to hopefully establish an
exchange program for the following
year.
“Exchanges help students
understand the world and motivate
them to study other languages and
engage with other cultures,” Dominguez
says. “The students definitely want to
keep doing them.”
The Hudson School junior Madeline
Hartshorn of Hoboken would agree.
After her Spanish exchange experience
during her freshman year, she returned
to Madrid on her own over the summer
to stay with the girl, Ainhoa, who
hosted her. “They were so welcoming
and cooked me Spanish dishes and
showed me everything about their
culture,” she says. “I got the inside
scoop everywhere we went.”
When Ainhoa came to the United
States and stayed with the Hartshorns,
it was equally as fun. “We took her
everywhere and my family loved her, ”
she says. “It was so cool to see things
I’m used to from an outsider’s point of
view.”
The bond the girls formed is stronger
than the distance between them.
“It was so interesting and fun,”
Hartshorn says of the experience,
“and now I have a friend in Spain.” ●
(201) FAMILY | AUGUST 2017
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