Exchange students touch many people on visit to Snoqualmie

Published 10:23 am Friday, February 19, 2016

Mount Si students tested their Spanish skills with seven Peruvian exchange students on Wednesday, Feb. 10 as part of their travel exam in partnership with the Snoqualmie Sister Cities Association.

Jenny Foster, Spanish teacher at Mount Si High School, worked with Tina McCollum, president of the Snoqualmie Sister Cities Association, to organize this test.

Visiting from Snoqualmie’s sister city of Chaclacayo, Peru, the seven exchange students helped in a mock airport exercise. Mount Si students had to make it through a boarding pass check, Customs, baggage claim and other airport employees completely in Spanish.

“They have to navigate through passport control, Customs, baggage claim, asking questions all in Spanish. If they don’t understand, they have to go to the back of the line and retry it,” Foster said.

“It’s to give them that idea of what it feels like to be in a Spanish-speaking country and be the minority, where it’s not their native language.”

Afterward, Foster split the class up into seven groups with the visiting students for an intercultural discussion of topics and to get to know somebody their age from a different country.

“It’s the culminating project. Honestly, this is much more important to me than any written test that these kids could ever do because this is real-life language at it’s very best,” Foster said. “Short of taking them to Peru with me, this is as close as I can get.”

Foster put in 17 hours of work just to set up that one lesson. She taught all the fundamentals the students would need to know in order to pass through all of the test stations.

“It was a two-and-a-half-week unit on all the foundational skills to be able to verbally navigate this simulation. To prep for this day was about 17 hours. I got up at 4 this morning to finish, but its well worth it,” Foster said. “It’s this celebratory time to share in culture and commonalities in language.”

The Peruvian exchange students arrived in Snoqualmie Jan. 25, when they joined students from Snoqualmie’s sister city in Korea, Gangjin, in a ceremony and cultural dance performance at Snoqualmie City Hall. The Korean group left last week; the Peruvian students leave Feb. 22.

Together, the group did several community activities, including volunteering at the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank.

Exchange students Camila Donayre, Adriana Ballon, and Mayra Arce, check the Mount Si students’ boarding passes and ask them questions about their trip in a mock airport exercise to test students’ Spanish skills at Mount Si High School.

Exchange students Yun A Song and Carmen Ruaz greet shoppers at the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank on a volunteer day Jan. 27. Both girls are used to volunteering at food banks in their respective home cities of Gangjin, Korea and Chaclacayo, Peru.

A food bank volunteer introduces exchange students from Korea and Peru to the magic of hand-warmers during their Jan. 27 volunteer shift.