From Brescia to Eudora: Foreign Exchange Student Chiaretta Canale’s Experience in Kansas

Story by Fabian Rosales »

She’s mostly known as “Chiara”, but Chiaretta Canale is the only foreign exchange student at EHS this year. She comes from Brescia, Italy.

Brescia is only an hour away from the city of Milan, Italy. It takes about 15 hours to get to the United States from Brescia. There are quite a few differences between Eudora and Brescia. Chiara’s  hometown has a center shop, historical buildings, plazas, fountains, and a castle. We may not have a castle in Eudora, but Chiara says that the people here are a lot friendlier.

“People are nicer,” Canale said, “They’re always smiling, and they’re really funny too.”

She does have one complaint, however about life in the United States.

“The one thing I don’t like about America is that there are too many fast food restaurants here,” Canale said.

The city isn’t the only thing that’s different, the schools in Italy work differently than here in America. In Italy, Chiara goes a science-only high school. There are different high schools based on what you like to do. She says school is a lot easier here than in Italy. Their school days are five hours long, but the week lasts six days, not five like us. They also don’t switch out of different classes, they stay in the same classroom all day and are taught by the same teacher. Chiara usually studies for four to five hours a day.

“School is so much easier here,” she said, “I don’t want to go back.”

Chiara’s craziest experience in America happened at Pizza Shuttle on October 20 after the football game. A random woman started yelling at all the students who were sitting outside of Pizza Shuttle, then the woman turned and spoke directly to her.

“She told me that I was blessed and that she was bullied as a kid,” Canale said.

Later, the woman was asked to leave and all the students at the restaurant cheered.

Her experiences here in Kansas have been interesting, but Chiara misses a few things from home. The thing that she misses the most is lasagna. Although she did find a food in America to fill the void – ribs.

“I’ve had ribs in Italy, but they’re not as good as the ribs here,” she said.

Chiara misses her family and friends back in Italy, as well as the food, but she already has a list of stuff that she’s going to miss about America.

“I’ll miss coming to school, and staying for seven hours every single day,” she said, “I’ll miss watching the football games, I’ll miss America patriotism, and I’ll miss seeing all the students together in the student section believing in our team.”