By Renae Brown

   Four students from Tempe Preparatory Academy will be participating in the Tempe Sister Cities program this summer! As exchange students, Nathaniel Van Dahm, Sofia Monti, MinhThu Nguyen and Jaimie Jastrzebski will go to a certain country to live with a host family. Then, a person from that host family will come to the United States for a period of time. 

   Nathaniel will be visiting Sweden to live with a host brother! He is excited even though Sweden was not one of his top choices. He has not yet been told what activities he will do in Sweden, but he does know what he and his host brother will be doing in America. However, he is mainly concerned about going to a different country because of the completely different customs and culture, yet he knows that the directors do their best to make the trip as safe and fun as possible. 

   Sofia will be staying in Cuenca, Ecuador which she is happy to go to over her other choices. Although she is very excited, she is also nervous that her host sister and family will dislike her.

   MinhThu will be staying in Peru. In an email, she said, “I’m really excited about it because I’ve always been really interested in history so getting to see a great wonder of the world in person is really exciting… but boy is it a lot to take in.” 

   Jaimie will be going to Regensburg, Germany where she knows that she will visit Berlin, Munich, and the Bavarian Alps. She heard about the program from her best friend who has previously participated in the program. 

   Back in the United States, directors have something planned for almost every day during the time when the host sibling is in the US. Activities range from meeting city council members to hiking the Grand Canyon and even visiting Disneyland.

   As an added bonus, getting accepted took little effort according to Nathaniel and Sofia because only an application, some essays and a couple interviews are required. 

   In the end, Nathaniel, Sofia, MinhThu and Jaimie look forward to their exchange despite the nervousness that accompanies travel and meeting new people they’ve never talked to before.