This year, RHS has had a multitude of foreign exchange students walking its halls. Next year, one of our own, sophomore Lydia Bagnall, will be travelling to Peru as a foreign exchange student.

“You get to pick your top five countries on your application. I got my first choice, Peru. I am going to be studying there for a year, and I’ll come back and do my senior year. I’m going through Rotary Youth Exchange. At the beginning of this school year, I put in an application. I found out in November that they had accepted me into the program. I moved on from there, and got accepted by my club, and the district. Right now I’m waiting for my application to be accepted by a club down in Peru,” Bagnall said.

It is generally agreed among many students that being accepted into a foreign exchange program can prove to be rather hard; Bagnall says otherwise.

“It could be difficult [getting accepted] if you had bad grades through school or if you didn’t really care to be in the program, or if you were doing it just for laughs. If you really wanted to do it though, it’s very easy to get accepted, especially through Rotary. They’ll take a large number of people who are well qualified for it,” Bagnall said.

After the application process is over, the student has a period of waiting ahead of them.

“There’s a lot of waiting just to find out where you’re going, or if you got accepted because it is such an international program. They have to talk to these people and those people. As I said we started in November, and we’re still waiting for complete confirmation,” Bagnall said.

            While the foreign exchange program can be rather costly, most of the expenses are covered.

“It costs me and my parents $4,000 for me to be there. But while I’m down there they pay for all my food, all my housing; depending on the host parents they’ll pay for shampoo, body wash, anything that I really need. The club will pay for school lunch, and I get $100 a month from the club [for spending money],” Bagnall said.