Fountain Hills Sister Cities recently hosted a student exchange, this time welcoming youngsters from the Polish city of Zamosc.

During their two-week stay, Polish visitors lived with local families, attended Fountain Hills High School, toured the community, hiked Sunrise Peak, visited the Odysea Aquarium, took a trip to Sedona, Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, kayaked Lake Saguaro and capped the whole thing off with a trip downriver on the Desert Belle.

About a dozen students visited Fountain Hills as part of the exchange, partnered with local students in their host families such as FHHS seniors Michal Suchanek, Andrew O’Neil and Hayden Adams. The added benefit is that Suchanek’s family is from Poland, so he was able to help break down any language barriers throughout the visit, though most of the exchange students spoke varying degrees of English.

“First off, we picked them up at the airport,” Suchanek said.

“We made signs,” O’Neil added, before Suchanek jumped back in.

“Yeah, we made signs for them and made sure they were fed. They were all exhausted from their transatlantic voyage.”

Adams came in next.

“We tried to show them the biggest amount of American culture that we could,” he added. “Some of them wanted to experience the various fast food available in America, like Taco Bell. But other than that, we took them to the majority of Arizona sightseeing locations.”

The guys added to the list of activities the group took part in, including laser tag and plenty of parties organized by the host families.

“I would just say that an incredible amount of culture was exchanged in those two weeks,” Adams said.

Bonding

When asked how the visiting students enjoyed their time in Fountain Hills and visiting areas around the state, the guys said their partners “loved it” and “were ecstatic.”

“I told my student, look, I’m going to make sure these are the best two weeks of your life,” Suchanek said. “At the end he said, you know, bro, you succeeded in your mission. That left an imprint in my heart.”

O’Neil said that the Zamosc visitors “really loved Arizona” and he suspects none of them wanted to rush back, as they were here in time to catch the tail-end of swimming season and it’s very cold back home right now.

The guys said that their new Polish friends picked up expected souvenirs, such as cowboy hats, as well as some not-so-common keepsakes.

“We’ve got a bunch of cereals they don’t have, so that was popular,” O’Neil said. “Also, different flavors of Oreos. I got him some Ben and Jerry’s.”

“Like Andrew was saying, they don’t have a lot of the same products over there that we have over here,” Adams said. “So, for example, my kid was ecstatic about the Monster energy drinks.”

“One of the students took home so many bags of Takis,” Suchanek chimed in.

But it wasn’t all junk food and backyard shindigs. The guys agreed that there were a lot of highlights throughout the trip but, more than anything, they enjoyed spending time with their exchange students.

“My student had the exact same interest in music as me, so that was great,” Suchanek said. “He liked to go to the weight room, just like me, so we were basically just very compatible and got along perfectly.”

O’Neil said that language barriers existed, but he and his student found a way to bond without words by playing sports and games, such as tennis.

“He beat me really badly,” O’Neil said. “But I dominated him in Wii Tennis and in foosball, so that was a lot of fun. He also like taking naps, which I was totally cool with.”

Adams said his student was into photography and wanted to take as many pictures as he could.

“My most enjoyable moment was when he would have these moments of, like, shock and awe at the magnitude of America,” Adams said. “It was cool to see him so excited.”

Cultural exchange

Comparing culture was another big part of the trip, with the guys finding interesting connections in how Fountain Hills and Zamosc are so different, and yet the people are very similar.

“The part of Poland my family comes from is still very different from the part of Poland these students came from,” Suchanek said. “But they were very open, hospitable and happy. They always had smiles on their faces.”

Suchanek noted that U.S. teens maybe spend too much time “checking Instagram” even when they’re going out to see something new, whereas the Polish visitors made sure to simply soak everything in instead.

“Something I thought was kind of funny was that a language we all kind of spoke together was memes,” O’Neil said, referencing images, phrases, etc. shared on the internet that are somewhat universal at this point. “A lot of their American slang, that I was kind of surprised they even knew, came from these memes. Even though we live on different parts of the planet, for the most part our humor was pretty similar.”

Adams agreed.

“It was pretty shocking,” he said. “Having them come over was like literally having another part of the world transported into Fountain Hills, Arizona. They had their own adaptations and thoughts of American culture and ways of communicating with us.”

Connections

To complete the exchange, Fountain Hills students will make a visit to Zamosc next summer and Suchanek, O’Neil and Adams are all looking forward to that trip.

“When you host someone for two weeks, you get a lot closer to them and make connections you never thought you would have,” O’Neil said. “Like, my mom has already friended [exchange student] David on Facebook and she’s really excited for me to go to Poland next year.”

Adams agreed.

“At the end of those two weeks, I felt like I had known my student for a long time,” he said. “They grew to be such a great friend and companion and we learned so much about them in such a short time. It was like having a sibling in the house all of a sudden.”

Suchanek said those types of experiences are exactly why a program like Sister Cities is so important.

“You can make a lot of connections,” he said, adding that Dwight D. Eisenhower’s original plan for Sister Cities was to unify the globe and potentially prevent conflict through the types of connections these FHHS students recently experienced.

“It’s basically making friends from different nations, seeing what other cultures are like and how their people are different and similar,” he added. “It’s about making friends on an international basis, and you can only gain from it. You can only gain.”