Exchange students settle in at Harwood
January 23, 2025 | By Claire Pomer | CorrespondentHarwood Union High School prides itself on its cultural outreach, which is demonstrated by the multiple opportunities for its students to travel to other countries and by the school hosting several exchange students each year.
This year, it is hosting six exchange students, each from a different country. Over the past several months, Harwood senior Claire Pomer interviewed and photographed each of them for the Valley Reporter and Waterbury Roundabout.
Harwood exchange student Ola Romanowska from Poland. Photo by Claire Pomer
Ola Romanowska | Poland
Ola Romanowska is originally from Rypin, Poland (population 16,500). Located in Central Poland, Rypin is “about three hours from the beach and three hours from the mountains.” Romanowska, a senior, had always wanted to study in the United States: “It was always a big dream and in all of the movies. I wanted to try life like this and challenge myself, just to do something.”
The application process for studying abroad began last winter, around November 2024, and Romanowska had to fill out piles of paperwork about her school, her family, and her medical history. “After I submitted my application, I just had to wait,” she said.
Placement with a host family wasn’t guaranteed, and she didn’t hear back from the program until the spring. Upon learning that she would be placed in Waterbury, Romanowska tried to avoid arriving with any expectations: she had never heard of Vermont, and her family told her several wonderful things about the culture there – that the people were “healthy and educated,” that the climate was nice, and that there was plenty of nature. “I like living in the mountains,” said Romanowska. “I can see something different from home.”
When interviewed, she had only been in Vermont for two months, but Romanowska said her favorite part thus far was school, its community, and its people. “There’s a lot of stuff to do. Every day, I’m surprised about how the school works.”
In Poland, she said, “No one stays at school. They leave whenever they get the chance. Here, it’s the opposite: people actually participate, and people want to be part of the school.” She has joined the school’s volleyball team, where she was pleasantly surprised at how many games could be played in such a short amount of time.
She is excited for the “constant snowboarding” opportunities within reach; in Europe, she could only snowboard on vacation. She’s since joined the hockey team having never played before, but she said it’s “the only chance I’ll have to try hockey.”
HU exchange student Elena Busnelli from Italy. Photo by Claire Pomer
Elena Busnelli | Italy
Harwood frequently hosts exchange students from around the world to experience American culture for up to 10 months. It provides a rural, mountainous opportunity for students like Elena Busnelli, who hail from populous cities. Busnelli is from Milan, the second-largest city in Italy. Home to several high-end fashion brands, Milan is warmer than Vermont, with temperatures rarely dipping below freezing.
Busnelli had never been to the United States before her flight here in early August. “I wanted to experience the feeling of an American high school,” she said. “I wanted to feel like an American, and I wanted to be in the U.S. Not everyone can do that.” She is traveling through CIEE, a popular exchange program. She had the ability to choose where she stayed, but she chose not to: “I knew that wherever I went would be the right place for me.”
She says she loves Vermont, especially scenery. She joked, “It’s like I’m discovering the mountains!”
The CIEE application process is lengthy. Busnelli had her first meeting with the agency in September 2024 and completed her application (containing information about herself, her family, and her life) over the winter. The application contained three pieces of writing: one detailing why she wanted to participate in the exchange program, one letter to her host family, and one letter from her parents to her host family. Her placement in Vermont was confirmed in April. “At first, I didn’t know about this state,” she said. “I was hoping for a warm place, but I’m in love here. Vermont is cold, but it’s nothing that I can’t survive.”
Exchange students usually arrive in the United States about a week before school starts, providing them with enough time to get to know their host families and to adjust to the time difference. Busnelli, however, landed three weeks prior to the start of school. “I did literally nothing,” she said. “I started to become familiar with English, and I got to know my host mom, but 20 days was too much.”
She had to wait for the other exchange student that she was to live with to arrive, and the difference between Milan – where there’s “always something to do” – and Vermont was startling. She also left early. Harwood’s first semester ends in mid-January, but Busnelli’s flight back to Milan was scheduled shortly after Christmas. Her exchange only lasted one semester, so it was coordinated with the start of the Italian semester, which started on Jan. 7. “I might have trouble sending my grades back home, which is hard,” said Busnelli, “but I also can’t miss a month of school.”
Busnelli quickly became busy in Vermont. She joined the JV Volleyball team, saying she was thrilled to try something new. “I’d never played before, only in gym class. I like volleyball a lot, but the practices every day are too much,” she said.
Like many Vermonters, Busnelli has been skiing since she was a toddler. She has skied in Italy and Switzerland, and always made time for it back home. When interviewed, she said she was looking forward to getting in some skiing in Vermont before she had to head home. “I want to try these mountains, even though I think everyone’s going to be really good,” she said.
Emil Calmervik | Sweden
HU Exchange Student Emil Calmervik from Sweden. Photo by Claire Pomer
Many of the exchange students that Harwood hosts come from slightly warmer climates. They must adjust to Vermont’s cold winters while simultaneously adjusting to the culture and the people. One of Harwood’s six exchange students this year, however, comes from a country that can rival Vermont’s winters: Sweden. Emil Calmervik comes from Linköping, Sweden’s sixth-largest city with a population similar to Worcester, Massachusetts.
Sweden has a “similar climate” to Vermont, according to Calmervik, but it’s slightly colder here. “I flew here during the Swedish summer,” he said, “but it was already fall here.” Calmervik, who applied for his exchange program through Rotary Youth Exchange, flew in later than the other exchange students. In June, thanks to several executive orders regarding international students, his visa to study in the United States was denied and would not process.
Everything over the summer was “very uncertain” for Calmervik, who had to start to make plans to stay in Sweden for another year. In mid-August, he received a call from Rotary that his visa had been accepted and that plans for his exchange had been set into motion. Calmervik and his family drove “as fast as possible” to the embassy in Stockholm, and he found out that he would be placed in Vermont on August 20, just before Harwood’s school year began. “We were supposed to know everything two months in advance,” he said, “but we found out two weeks ahead.”
Calmervik applied for his exchange because he had never visited the United States before. “I’ve seen all of the high school movies,” he said. “It’s a very special place – we always hear about America in the news –and I wanted to see it for myself.” During his application process, he was hoping to be placed somewhere warm like Texas. Since his arrival, however, Calmervik has come to love Vermont: “I like the people here; they’re very nice and outgoing.”
His biggest struggles thus far have been at school: Harwood implemented its phone-free policy last year, and cellphones are prohibited in the building during the school day. These are the most convenient hours for Calmervik to speak to his family, who live in a time zone six hours ahead of Vermont. “We only talk right before school and right after, when they’re about to go to bed,” Calmervik said. School lunch has also been an adjustment. At Harwood, students receive one plate of food and can take one carton of milk. In Sweden, students could take as many plates as they want, and could take several glasses of milk at the milk dispensers.
Calmervik joined the Cross Country running team in the fall, which he described as “fun and pretty challenging. I didn’t do anything similar in Sweden.” He is hoping to participate in track in the spring and cross-country ski this the winter. He’s skied before in Sweden, but the closest mountains were six hours away. “The mountains may be different,” he said.
Matheo Semmelroth | Germany
Exchange student Matheo Semmelroth from Germany is at Harwood this school year. Photo by Claire Pomer
Many exchange students come to the U.S. to experience different climates or regions, and Matheo Semmelroth is no exception. Unlike many other European exchange students, though, he didn’t want to experience somewhere warm, like Texas or Arizona. Semmelroth, who is from Germany, applied for his exchange program with the goal of studying somewhere forested.
“I lived my whole life in a city,” he said. “I wanted to experience something different, a more quiet life. I enjoy being in the forest – it’s quiet and nice – something I don’t get in Germany.”
Originally from Göttingen – a city with twice as many people as Burlington – Semmelroth applied to his exchange program in last January. He had to fill out basic forms about his health and family, and when he was accepted, he had to create what he said was like “a Tinder profile” with information about him.
Last February, about two weeks after creating his profile, he was contacted by his host family, and they remained in contact over the summer, exchanging pictures of Germany and Vermont. “Sometimes exchange students come to the U.S. and don’t know their host families at all,” Semmelroth said.
“I was lucky. I knew where I was going, so I could prepare myself.” The spring before his exchange was “the most challenging part.” He needed to travel to the American embassy in Berlin to interview for his visa. The interview itself was short, about two minutes, but the embassy worker talked with him about Vermont and its cheese. “It was the first real experience I had with the U.S.,” he said.
Semmelroth has always been a good student, but in Germany, he was getting bored. “I didn’t know what to do with myself after school and I wanted to experience new things, meet new people, and improve my English.” His school used numbers as grades, ranging from 1 (the highest) to 6 (the lowest). Harwood’s proficiency-based grading scale is the opposite, ranging from 1 (the lowest) to 4 (the highest).
Semmelroth admitted that the grading system here is “interesting” and that it took some time for him to adjust to, but otherwise, Harwood is one of his favorite parts about his stay in Vermont. “It’s not very big. I would’ve enjoyed playing football, but it’s fine. The school assemblies here are awesome—we didn’t have anything like that in Germany.”
He played on the boys’ varsity soccer team in the fall, and while he loved the experience (he mentioned playing soccer as one of his hobbies on his exchange profile), he disliked staying at school while he waited for practices to start. Germany has an exceptional public transit system, and Vermont doesn’t. In spring, Semmelroth hopes to play lacrosse: his host brother plays, and they’ve practiced together in their backyard. “Lacrosse doesn’t exist in Germany,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the stick before. I hope that it makes up for not being able to play American football.”
Germany gets cold during the winter, but not as cold as Vermont. “The amount of snow we have now,” said Semmelroth, referencing the four or so inches on the ground when he was interviewed, “is about the most we get there.” He said he misses German food, especially sausages (a summertime staple), but he appreciates the food that he can find here: “I’m really into fast food and burgers.”
Semmelroth has never skied before and was looking forward to giving it a try. He rented skis for the season and wants to try Nordic skiing and snowshoeing, “everything related to snow.”
Exchange student Marta Souto Naveira from Spain is at Harwood this school year. Photo by Claire Pomer
Marta Souto Naveira | Spain
Spain, like the United States, is a country with incredibly distinct regions, dating back to the medieval era, when the modern-day country was split into several autonomous kingdoms. One of these regions, Galicia, is represented at Harwood this year by an exchange student.
Marta Souto Naveira hails from A Coruña, the second-largest city in Galicia, with a population roughly equal to that of Buffalo, New York. The city lies on the northwestern coast of Spain, directly north of Portugal. “Portugal and Galicia are like best friends,” joked Souto Naveira, noting that the languages are mutually intelligible.
She describes her city as full of beaches and parks, with its residents mainly living in tall apartment buildings. “There’s a lot of little kids and dogs,” she said, “and it’s much warmer there. Since it’s coastal, it doesn’t snow. I’d never seen snow before I came here.”
Souto Naveira applied for her exchange program through CIEE, the popular nonprofit Council on International Educational Exchange that’s the oldest and largest non-governmental study abroad organization in the U.S.
“Europeans always see the U.S. as a super-huge thing,” she said of her decision to study here. “I wanted to see what it was like, and if it was like the movies. I also like learning more about the language, the culture, and meeting new people… I also wanted to escape Spain. Something new, please!”
She began her application in September 2024 by reaching out to the Spanish branch of CIEE, and she found out that she was placed in the U.S. by December 2024. She didn’t find out that she was placed in Vermont until August, two weeks prior to her departure. “I was kind of stressed! Each state is so different, and I was scared that I was going to be placed somewhere like Texas.”
Ultimately, she’s pleased with Vermont. She said she loves living in a different climate, and loves Harwood. Her school in Spain (where she started in seventh grade instead of ninth) had roughly the same student population, but the building was smaller. She enjoys the variety of classes offered to all Harwood students. In Spain, students can only begin choosing the classes that they take in 11th grade.
Her favorite part of her stay, however, has been getting the opportunity to meet new people. “Every day, I meet someone new,” she said.
She said she’s surprised that she’s been less homesick than she expected, but she’s struggled with expressing herself in her third language. “Sometimes, it’s super-difficult expressing myself in English,” she said. “Sometimes, some people don’t want to try to understand you. They won’t listen.”
She said she misses the ocean – although she visited Boston and loved it. It looked “like the real city,” she said. And she misses Spanish food. “I miss all Spanish food. For me, that’s real food,” she admitted.
Souto Naveira is playing hockey for Harwood, which she says she’s “trying her best” at. She used to rollerblade in Spain, so she already knows how to skate, but she’s never played hockey before. “It’s difficult, but I have so much fun,” she said.
She recently went skiing for the first time, and said she enjoyed it. In the spring, she said she’s looking forward to playing tennis – another sport she’s never played before. But she said, “I always say that I’m here to try.”
Thalia Boyer-Little | Switzerland
One of Harwood’s six exchange students this year is visiting not only to study abroad, but also to discover her own culture. Thalia Boyer-Little is from Geneva, Switzerland, but was born to American parents and holds American citizenship. “I’ve never lived here, and I just want to know what it’s like to be American,” she said.
Thalia Boyer-Little is a Harwood Union exchange student this year from Switzerland. Photo by Claire Pomer
She applied through FLAG International, an exchange program similar to CIEE or Rotary International, last January. The application process mirrors the American college application process: her application could be rejected for any reason, so she had to answer “lots of questions, and some of them were very personal, like, you’d wonder why they needed to know this,” including why she wanted to study in the United States.
After completing the questions, she participated in an interview with a FLAG representative, where she was told that she was eligible to study in the United States. She was originally placed with a host family in Fort Worth, Texas, in May, but that fell through in July. She found out that she would be staying in Vermont on Aug. 22, less than a week before her flight. “Vermont was actually the only state I didn’t want to go to,” Boyer-Little admitted. “I saw a documentary [Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age] about a woman who was cyberbullied in Vermont, and everything looked cold and gloomy. I had that idea when I came here, and I was originally excited for the hot weather in Texas, so I was a little sad, but the first day I came here, everything changed.”
The weather here is similar to Switzerland’s, if not a little colder, and ski mountains are more accessible–albeit traveling in Vermont without a car is difficult, and exchange students are not allowed to drive. Geneva is an urban area in western Switzerland, close to the French border, and the closest mountains are around an hour away. “The mountains are so close here, and I feel like [skiing] is a big deal,” she said. She’s excited to try Vermont skiing and compare it with Swiss skiing; people may use different techniques here.
Being in Vermont has felt like “a holiday” for Boyer-Little: “Everything is always an adventure. For you guys, this is normal, but for me, there’s so much to discover.” She’s loved American food so far (although she hasn’t found anything yet that can rival Swiss chocolate or cheese), and she’s adored the sense of community she’s found. “School feels more like a community. People here are more friendly, and they’re trying to make things better for their community.”
In the fall, she was a member of Harwood’s JV Volleyball team. It was her first time playing volleyball. “It was really good to be part of a school sports team. I’ve never done that before,” she said, adding that she’s also looking forward to playing tennis in the spring.
Despite her first impression of the state and the hoops she jumped through to arrive here, Boyer-Little says she is pleased to be in Vermont. “I’m really happy here. Even with all of the difficulties I’ve been through, I’d do it all over again to be placed in Vermont.”
Claire Pomer is a Harwood senior from Waterbury.