Imagine walking into a deli for lunch; everyone is jampacked and in a hurry. You don’t know anyone, and are still trying to adjust to the new language. You look to the sandwich board to find something you might like, yet you don’t recognize the ingredients. Everything is foreign to you. Many of us experience this when we travel to a new country but freshman Adriana Calvo experiences this daily.
Calvo has recently experienced full cultural immersion after moving to Piedmont this last August from Spain with her family.
Her mother was raised in Piedmont and her father’s parents lived in Piedmont as well, Calvo said. Her parents saw it as the perfect place to move considering her siblings education and their personal knowledge of Piedmont.
Unlike an exchange student, Calvo is now a Piedmont resident and lives with the her immediate family. In addition to being surrounded by her family, Calvo has also found many friends in the Piedmont community.
“I really enjoy meeting new people,” Calvo said. “After living with the same people for my whole life, it has been really exciting getting to know people here.”
One of Calvo’s close friends, freshman Kiana Kasrovi, met Calvo when their families got together for lunch soon after Calvo moved to Piedmont.
“I got to know her and we started talking more,” Kasrovi said. “She is super nice and sweet and we became really close friends.”
Kasrovi said that despite the fact that Calvo came moved a different country that has a different language and culture, she’s fitting in really well and everyone really likes her.
Calvo is currently taking ELD which stands for English language development. The class is taught by English teacher Rosie Reid and is offerred for exchange and international students.
“The main goal of the class is to improve their[the students] English,” Reid said. “ I try to do that through two things; first by helping support students in their regular classes and as we’re going through that coursework I’ll teach them grammar lessons.”
In Spain the schooling is much more tough, Calvo said. The teachers are much more strict and the coursework is taught very differently.
“Since english is not my first language, there are some subjects I have a hard time in, while others a quite easy,” Calvo said. “But I think that Americans learn a lot more than Europeans do because of the techniques teachers use.”
