Ritenour students from around the world
Sophomore Anna Schmidt joins Ritenour
Sophomore Anna Schmidt takes notes during French class.
Ritenour has gained many new students in all of the years it has been standing, but one thing it does not often get is a foreign exchange student.
Sophomore Anna Schmidt, a transfer student from Germany, joined Ritenour in September for the 2013-2014 school year. A lot of things may be different to her because of her far journey here and how things work at Ritenour.
“I like it pretty much; the students are pretty nice and I made some friends,” Schmidt said.
Leadership and Spanish teacher Tavonda Palmer leads American Field Service (AFS), the group that welcomes foreign exchange students with open arms.
The group helps students adjust to their new life at Ritenour, and even when there are not any foreign exchange students at Ritenour, they still meet to discuss world cultures.
The group will be meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 23, and Schmidt will be a focal point of the meeting.
“Anna will be presenting on Germany and she will make a traditional treat for us to try,” Palmer said.
Schmidt was initially welcomed to the Ritenour AFS group in a meeting at Chimis during the week of Oct. 7. In addition to the Ritenour AFS group, the local adult AFS chapter also welcomed her to the community.
Since Schmidt arrived at Ritenour, she has noticed many things that occur at Ritenour that she did not experience at her old school in Germany.
“There are many differences, the school system is different. We have other classes, and at my school the middle and high school were together,” Schmidt said.
Aside from the differences in the structure of the school, Schmidt has noticed a lot of different rules that exist at Ritenour that she did not have in Germany.
“At my school we were not allowed to chew gum, and also were not allowed to use our cell phones,” Schmidt said.
Palmer is not planning on Schmidt being the only person on display at her meetings, but has a plan to introduce even more culture to the club members,
“I will be bringing in people from other countries who will share their culture with us as well,” Palmer said.
While Schmidt will be sharing her culture with Ritenour, the students of Ritenour come from many different cultures, and are sharing theirs with Schmidt. While all of the new experiences could have seemed odd to someone who was not used to them, Schmidt believes that she is adapting well.
“I have been here for a week and I am pretty much getting used to it,” Schmidt said.
Charles is a seventeen year-old writer, aspiring actor, producer, and pretty much that cool, chill dude. This is also Charles' forth semester on the PepperBox...
