under the sun
?V
THE BRUNSWKXftffACON D "
THURSDAY. APRIL 18. 1991 1 D
Exchange Students Become
Just Part Of The Family
BY SUSAN USHER
"Family" has a new meaning for three
teen-agers who arc calling the South
Brunswick Islands home this school year.
West Brunswick High School students
Patricia (Patty) Mora, Taichi (Ti) Sasaki and
Susana Viscarrct call Boone's Neck,
Shallottc and Sunset Beach home respec
tively, if only for awhile.
All three are American Intercultural
Student Exchange (AISE) students. Come
June, the three will return to their native
countries and the families they left behind
last August.
But they will leave behind family of an
other kind ? their host families. Though the
students look forward to going home, leav
ing won't be easy.
"They're beautiful kids, like your own
children. You treat them the same way and
do the same things for them," says Iris
Bellamy of Boone's Neck. She and her hus
band, K.T., arc serving as the host family
for Patty Mora and don't look forward to
the time she will go.
When, Patty, 18, graduated from high
school in Quito, Ecuador, last July, she had
already been accepted by AISE and had
been writing the Bellamys since April. Like
other applicants, she got to choose the
country she wanted to visit, but not the spe
cific location and she had passed an English
test and a psychological profile.
She arrived with few preconceived no
tions of what she would find and knowing
very little about her host family or host
country. "I had been told I would be living
near the beach. 1 had envisioned a house on
the beach with no trees," she said.
Instead, the Bellamy's rambling Spanish
style house nestles among oaks laced with
moss overlooking the Atlantic Intracoastal
Waterway and Holdcn Beach.
The Bellamys had kept an exchange stu
dent for a short while last year on an emer
gency basis, but hadn't really considered
hosting a student for the entire year. That
changed last fall.
"We decided we wanted to know what it
was like to have a girl in the house," said
Mrs. Bellamy. Laughing, she continued,
"It's different! There's more companion
ship, we share more."
The Bellamy home, friendly and large,
has become something of a gathering point
for local exchange students.
"When she leaves and we decide not to
do this again, we will be really lonesome,"
said K.T. Bellamy, a former county tax su
pervisor.
Both Patty and Taichi Sasaki ? called Ti
by his friends ? are seniors at West
Brunswick and will participate in com
mencement exercises May 29. Patty's par
im ? i iii !? i ? i ? -wrm ?
EXCHANGE STUDENTS Patty Mora, Ti Sasaki and Susana Viscarret enjoy the beaches of their home away home, as de
picted in this mural at the West Brunswick High School cafeteria.
ents, Leonardo and Marlene, will be in the
audience. He is an agronomist, general
manager of a water treatment plant that pro
duces bottled water. She is an international
operator and also owns a health food store.
Patty, 18, has enormous brown eyes that
shine from beneath long, bouncy hair. She's
interested in a career that makes use of her
artistic bent, perhaps interior design or ar
chitecture. "I want to be somebody in this
world," she said. "1 want to go to another
country to specialize."
Meanwhile she's enjoying nights out in
Myrtle Bcach, S.C., and opportunities to
travel ? Disneyworld, New York, Virginia,
and possibly Philadelphia and Canada after
graduation.
Patty's had only a touch of homesickness,
mainly around the Christmas holidays and
her birthday, which passed unnoticed here.
Ti came to Shallotte from Saitama, a city
about an hour outside Tokyo. While he had
learned quite a bit of English from a U.S.
Army solder, he wants to master the lan
guage so that he can study business at either
the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill or Penn State.
He's "fit in with the family" of Bobby
and Carolyn Lewis of Shallottc. For their
son, Ricky, Ti's presence is a big change
from having three older sisters around.
"It's like having another best friend, but
more like a brother," Ricky says, trying to
explain their relationship. "We help each
other with problems. I help Ti with his
English and he helps me with my math."
As for Ti, he's quick to add, "I'm lucky I
came to this house."
They've learned to appreciate each oth
er's tastes in music ? Ti's slower jazz and
soul and Ricky's rock and roll and heavy
metal. Ti's missed snow skiing but is glad
that he's not in Minnesota or Michigan with
the rest of the A1SE exchange students from
Japan.
For Ricky the year is also providing a
transition from being the only boy in a fam
ily of girls to being the only child at home.
"It's worked out really good," said Mrs.
Lewis.
When Ricky's sisters arc around, that's
fine, too. Ti left two older sisters in
Sailama, where his father is a stock advisor
and his mother, an artist.
On Christmas Eve, the time difference
emphasized just how far away from home
he is. At 10 a.m. here it was around 11 p.m.
at his parents' home.
When he returns to Japan, Ti, 18, will be
preparing for exams in English and
Japanese. If he passes and gets good grades,
then he can join fellow students in prepar
ing for national testing in February that de
termines admission to universities. "School
for seniors in Japan is a lot different," he
said. "After October they don't have to go
to school on a regular basis. They finish
their coursework while preparing for the
tests in February. It's very important. If you
fail you have to wait another year to take
them again."
Ti will also return to Japan as a football
player after place-kicking for the Trojans
last season. "I had watched American foot
ball on television and wanted to play," he
said.
Ti's natural sense of humor has paid off
during his stay here, especially in those first
months when he knew little English.
Classmates, teasing, tried to get him to use
words he quickly found aren't considered
"very nice".
The year has also brought the unexpect
ed: "Japanese don't use drugs," said Ti.
"Here there's a lot. I was so surprised!"
School here has generally been easy for
the exchange students acadcmically, with
language comprehension the real challenge.
Ti changed his schedule because he
couldn't understand several teachers'
speech patterns. Both he and Patty had diffi
culty in a U.S. history course. Not only was
the material unfamiliar, but the teacher was
also a fast talker.
Susana Viscarret arrived in Brunswick
County around Christmas after what she
and her friends term "Operation Rescue."
Her parents, Jesus and Begona Viscarret
of Valladolid, Spain, left their casino-type
coin machine business and horse ranch to
take Susana her out of a "bad situation"
with a host family near Seattle, Wash.
Susana's sister, Marta, is an exchange
student in Whitevillc and knew Patty Mora
and the other exchange students at West. A
Rotary International exchange student,
shared her need for a new home with mem
bers of St. Brendan's Catholic Church, and
Lee and Anne Buttrcy of Sunset Beach vol
unteered.
Susan's settled in with the Buttreys and
their daughters, Amanda, Elizabeth and
Christina, who range in age from fourth
grader to college freshman. At 16, the high
school junior is the youngest and shyest of
the exchange students. She's also the least
fluent in English.
The Buttreys have hosted exchange stu
dents before and know that learning the lan
guage and culture of the host country is an
important part of the experience. So when
Susana chose Spanish-speaking students for
her closest friends at school, it won her a fa
therly scolding from Lee Buttrey as well as
chiding from her fellow exchangers.
That's part of what being family's all
about.
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