Kim Chaean, who likes to be called her American name, Chloe, is a foreign exchange student all the way from South Korea. Chloe, a junior, has never been away from home, even for a vacation. This is her first time being away from her family. She didn’t think that she would miss her friends, family, and school while being in America, but last year, she went back to South Korea because she was homesick. She was a junior at Santa Rita and now transferred to our school. Her first host family lived near Santa Rita, but she had to change her host family because “the lady had to get a knee surgery and could not be a host anymore. I had to get a new host family.” Her host family now lives near Sahuaro. Chloe speaks Korean, is working on improving her English this year, and knows a little Chinese.

Chloe has a pretty good bond with her host family. They have three children of their own and one of them will attend Sahuaro next year. She got to go see football games (not Sahuaro’s) and her host family threw a Halloween party. Chloe dressed up as an angel for this Halloween. Halloween is different in South Korea. Instead of dressing up and trick or treating around neighborhoods, South Koreans go to a English Academy (kind of like JTED here) and they receive candy from there. She also loves the Arizona weather because in South Korea during the winter, it would get really cold.

A few things have been a big adjustment for Chloe.  For one, she has never owned a dog before and her host family currently has three. She stated, “Before I came to America, I only had a turtle. I was a little scared and especially scared of this one dog that is about one years old. He was really big and had a lot of slobber.  Now, it’s fine and sometimes the dogs will sleep with me. I sometimes have to take the food bowl and wave it in front of them to get them to follow me in my room to sleep with me.”

Her first English name was Cindy, but she did not like it because people would sometimes call her Candy. “I searched the internet for English names and found Chloe. I really liked it.” Her favorite holiday is Christmas. “I love Christmas because you get a lot of gifts and it is also the end of the year, which means a new beginning.”

The school system is different in South Korea than it is here. “We don’t move classrooms, instead the teachers switch classrooms.” Chloe is not into sports as her focus is more on improving her English, so she mostly does homework and studies English. “Learning English is very hard for me,” she reported.

She really likes Sahuaro and the people here, so much so that she is trying to come back next year for her senior year. Chloe might go to a private school instead, but she will still be in the U.S.