Dārta Serdāne is spending her junior year here at LHS as a foreign exchange student. Serdāne is from Latvia, a country in Southern Europe.
Her favorite food is a pink soup that includes beets, kefir, boiled eggs, cucumbers, and onions. It’s a good cold soup to eat in the summer, she said.
The process of becoming an exchange student is a very long one, including a lot of questionnaires, she explained.
Exchange students get to choose the country, but they don’t get to choose the city, state, or the family they are staying with, she said. American families volunteer to host exchange students and don’t get paid to do so. After filling out their own questionnaires, host families look through the applicant options.
“They choose someone that appeals to them the most, So host families choose us,” said Serdāne, “and where the host families are, that’s where we end up.”
If she could go anywhere else in America, she would be interested in a big city like New York, or “just a national park [to] go on a hike,” she said.
Latvia has different traditions than America, as do many countries. One specifically that Serdāne could think of was the idea that “if you swing during Easter, the mosquitoes won’t get you in the summer.”
Some things that Serdāne misses most about her country include: The freshness of food and accessibility to food; trees, pine trees in particular; fresh air; and public transport.
“Here in America, I can’t drive because my contract doesn’t allow that,” Serdāne said.
What she likes most about America so far is the way the LHS classes are formatted (A days, B days) and the way the classes are longer.
“We have eight to nine classes a day and they’re all 40 minutes long, so this is different for me,” said Serdāne.
