It is day 20 in the United States of America as a Swiss girl. My name is Chanel Kinzl, I’m a 17-year-old girl who left her home country Switzerland for one year to come to live the American dream here in Gretna, Nebraska.
America is crazy. And it’s crazy different from Europe. I will share my experiences and differences in this article with you, but first, some facts about me.
As mentioned before, I’m Chanel and I was born and raised in Fribourg, Switzerland. My mom used to be an exchange student back in 1993 at Logan View High School in Hooper, Nebraska. She kept in contact with her host family, and now I am staying with the next generation of friends, the Kilgore family, and that’s basically why I ended up at Gretna High School.
I flew out on July 29 and went to orientation in New York City for a couple days. We had workshops and visited the city, which was so fun! Then finally, on Aug. 1, which is the national day of Switzerland, I continued to Nebraska. I was so scared and excited at the same time. I was lucky enough to know my family already a bit, although everything is new anyway. Luckily, everything went great, and I am so happy to be here.
In my opinion, the biggest difference to Switzerland is the food. Back home, we eat homemade meals at least once a day, which is definitely not the case here in America. Usually, lunch is the main dish of the day, while here it seems to be more like a snack. Besides that, we go home to eat lunch throughout high school; we don’t even have a cafeteria until college.
That brings me to the next point: the school system. However, I have to clarify that back home, I’m already in college. Our mandatory school is until ninth grade, then we go to college, and afterwards we go to university. In high school, we usually have school from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., but we have breaks in between the periods. We have one 15-minute break in the morning and a two-hour lunch, which helps us to recover in between classes. In addition, we can’t choose our classes. We have all of them, but only two to four periods a week.
The next big point is religion. The Swiss are usually pretty reserved and private about religion. Most of the people are part of a church but are not really active, except for “free churches.” Public businesses, like schools, are strictly separated from church. Here in the States teachers can’t give you homework on Wednesdays because it’s church day, for example, is something that is new to me.
My whole life, I have been really into track, and I specifically specialized in the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints two years ago. Back in Europe, we don’t have school sports like students here do, but more club track all year-round. Because of that, I am used to training all year-round and had to search for an opportunity to train here like I’m used to.
Regarding sports, we are a lot different from below, for example, we don’t have cheerleading, football or baseball.
Also, Switzerland is considered really safe, and we don’t have officers in the schools. When I saw Officer Lance for the first time, I was so worried about what had happened and kind of scared, too. We also don’t have thefts so often, so when I was told I had to hide my iPad under the seat in the parking spot at Walmart, I was so surprised.
Thank you, everyone, for being part of my journey and wishing for a great year to come!
