Exchange Students on Teams

[Ian W.]

Ok, this isn't exactly important, but we had our first big team meeting today, and apparently my school has a French Exchange Student this year, who would like to join the team.

This got me thinking, I know there's teams in Europe, Brazil, Canada, and we've had exchange students from Germany, but have we ever had any from France, or any other countries at all?

This is the perfect opportunity to spread FIRST, and I'm trying to figure out how hard it would be for this kid to go back and start a team in France, because that's something I would help with if I could.

Does anyone else have exchange students on their teams? I think that if anything, it'll help us, unless of course, it comes to making measurements in Imperial/English Units .

[Gamer930]

Kind of surprising that you brought this up.

Our family this year is hosting a boy from Germany. He came on Aug 8 and will be leaving June 28. We have been learning a lot of Germany's Culture and Food (the food is like American in most part but spicier) He will be around at Midwest Regional and most likely nationals :-)

About the student from France. I think it would be a great experience for your team Ian. Over seas (Europe) has a lot of interest into engineering. He may already know a lot about it and could teach your team a lot of tricks.

The only problem i see about this is that in France I don't think they teach English that heavily. We were looking at getting a student from France and that is what turned us away. In Germany although they start taking English in 5th Grade and EVERYONE has to take it.

I would be interested to hear what organization the exchange student is from and how he is doing. . . . . Our high school has a total of 6 Exchange Students and all are doing pretty good.

Gamer

[Ian W.]

My high school actually has lots of foreign students (exchange students or entire families that moved), but none really did much with the robotics team.

I was talking to the French student (I forget his name, and I doubt I'd be able to spell it if I did remember ), and for the first five minutes his accent threw me off, but otherwise his English seemed to be pretty good. Much better than my Spanish ever was when I had to take it .

[Ricky Q.]

Our team's rookie year, we had a German Exchange student as the driver, he led us to a 3rd place finish at the Midwest Open in 1999, when we were paried with Chief Delphi. He now works with Porsche back in Germany. I believe he was also the first one to post pre-ship pics of a robot on here.

Back during the 2000 season we had 2 foreign exchange students. One was from Germany and the other was from France. The German student was actually staying with the student leader that year and the leader actually invited the exchange student from France to join later in the year. At the end of the season they both agreed that the expierence was rewarding and that they were going to attempt to start teams in their respective country's, but so far we haven't heard anything from them.

[Elyse Holguin]

Originally posted by Gamer2028
Our family this year is hosting a boy from Germany. He came on Aug 8 and will be leaving June 28. We have been learning a lot of Germany's Culture and Food (the food is like American in most part but spicier) He will be around at Midwest Regional and most likely nationals :-)

please don't be mad at me if i borrow him in midwest.... i was once an exchange kid to germany myself.. :-D

and don't be discouraged because of accents... i was so self concious of that when i was over there, but people understood me if they actually took the time to listen, and after a while i made sense...i think :-P. odds are that they understand us more often than we do them. (i know this one from experience) we've had people from brazil on the team before.

Encourage your exchange students! I hope FIRST can spread all over the place eventually.. think of all the ideas!!




**By the way... if anyone's on a team up in Sarnia, Canada and goes to St. Patrick academy or something like that, say hi to your exchange student Irene for me. And encourage her to join the team, she's my host sister... and i mean, if Sarnia's that close to detroit and detroit has a lot of teams... someone should be able to get her on a team heehee!

[JudyVandy]

84 had an exchange student from Germany on the team several years ago. David was an active member of our team. Plus, he volunteered on one of the fields at the Championship. Another student from his school was also an exchange student and was with a California team. They were able to get together at Nationals!

David keeps in touch with a few team member as well as keeping an eye on the FIRST website. (Don't know about CD.) Thanks to the wonders of the net, he keeps in touch with how Chuck is doing and sends us messages... :-)

[Ashley Weed]

Originally posted by JudyVandy
84 had an exchange student from Germany on the team several years ago. David was an active member of our team. Plus, he volunteered on one of the fields at the Championship. Another student from his school was also an exchange student and was with a California team. They were able to get together at Nationals!

David keeps in touch with a few team member as well as keeping an eye on the FIRST website. (Don't know about CD.) Thanks to the wonders of the net, he keeps in touch with how Chuck is doing and sends us messages... :-)

... years back we also had 'Chan', sorry completely drawing a blank on what his real name was, since no one realized it wasn't his name till Regionals.. LOL anyways - he was from the Phillipines I believe, but from what I have heard, that he loved America so much, he decided to stay and study college here. That would deffinately expand FIRST to a new place if it started in the Phillipines.

[Gadget470]

Last year, one of 470's programmers was a Korean Exchange Student. He's back in Korea now though. Ted was a huge help to our successes last year.

[Aaron Lussier]

During our 2001 season we had a Exchage Student from Denmark, He was a pretty cool kid, help out alot with the team, and an all around nice person.

[Digo]

There is also a team from Porto Rico (in 2000 the only ones to score balls between the bars, I guess) and I'm afraid there used to be a team from Jamaica too.

There was some talking about starting a team in another South America country, but I can't remember now.