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Zach graduates at Logansport High School. |
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An exchange student, the author who is the son of Ramon Felipe Perez, and CRANE executive vice president Dolly Roa Perez, was listed among the senior high school honor students at Logansport High School, one of the top 20 schools in the USA.
It was in November 2006 when I received a letter from the Rotary Exchange Program that I was one of the few fortunate students accepted in their scholarship program for a year.
I was happy and excited but I was also nervous. There were the mixed feelings of joy and apprehension -- joy because I have read and heard a lot about life in America, the so-called Land of Honey and apprehension because I have never lived away from my parents for one full year and I was not sure whatever I could cope with the different life.
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Zach with foster parents Frank and Diana Heathcote. |
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But I had to suppress my fears because I know that it was a rare opportunity every high school student craved for. I was to pursue a formal study as senior high school student at Logansport High School at Logansport, Indiana. I was to leave September, 2005 in time for the opening of classes in the United States which end in May the following year.
My first taste of American life -- or was it culture, was as soon as I arrived at the Indianapolis Airport. A girl approached me to try to strike a conversation. She spoke in Spanish thinking I was a Mexican. I must have looked “bonito” but my counselors who would take me to my foster parents, Frank and Diana Heatcote, came too soon.
My first few weeks were difficult because I had to adjust to the time difference. As a result I was to sleepy most of the time I was to leave for school. But my host parents made me feel very much like I was in my own home and I made many friends very soon that it did not take long for me to be acclimatized to life in the U.S.
In just a few days, I was already an altar boy in our church at Logansport. Then I was chosen to manage the girls’ basketball team because I was also an avid basketball player. I even became a member of the truck team of our school. I travel a lot to other schools where I was invited to speak at gatherings of various organizations eager to learn about life in the Philippines., I think I was more active at Logansport than when I was in Naga City at the Naga Hope Christian School.
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Father Ramon “Momie” Felipe Perez (right) arrives for his graduation, shown here with Zach’s foster parents. |
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Frankly, I found my studies quite easy. Lagonsport High School is ranked among the top 20 high schools in the United States but when the list of honor students appeared in the school paper my name was there. It made me proud of my own school.
In the US we start school from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Teachers and students are just like ordinary friends who call each other by their first names. We wear ordinary clothes, not uniforms. Our tests were all multiple choices and the true or false type not like in the Philippines where you have to explain your answers. We have more rigid rules in our school system in the Philippines. In the US they follow the “no child left behind rule” such that even if one fails he is promoted just the same.
In one full year at Logansport and living with my very accommodating foster parents -- to whom I am deeply grateful just as I am grateful to the Rotary Club of Naga -- I think I developed most my self-confidence. I have realized that I am ready to face any challenge in life. I think my experience also instilled in me discipline and enough sense of responsibility which I felt everyone should have to be able to survive.
I shall always treasure this experience.
