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Exchange Students Getting New Perspectives

Cheryl Bentley/SUNCOAST NEWS

Beatriz Fontes is an exchange student from Brazil living in the Trinity area.

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By Cheryl  Bentley | The Suncoast News

Published: December 15, 2007

For Thanksgiving this year, the Bigelow family ate brigadeiro for dessert.

The chocolate balls are a specialty of Brazilian cooking, and they were made by Beatriz Fontes.

Beatriz is the 16-year-old exchange student from Itabuna, Brazil, who is living with Kristine and Jeff Bigelow and daughter Lindsey, 10, in Trinity. She attends River Ridge High School. She arrived in August and will return to Brazil in July.

Beatriz's hometown, Itabuna, is a city of about 200,000 in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia.

Beatriz is part of the Rotary Youth Exchange program and is sponsored by the New Port Richey Rotary Club.

The club is in Rotary District 6950, which covers Pasco, Pinellas, Citrus and Hernando counties. It has participated in the exchange program since the early 1980s.

Trading places

While Beatriz has been in Trinity, Leesa Froelich, 18, of Tarpon Springs, was in Itabuna living with Beatriz's family: mom Clara, dad Claudio, and sisters Elisa, 13, and Carolina, 12.

Because Rotary exchange students live with two to three families during their time abroad, Leesa has just moved to a new family. Beatriz will move to the New Port Richey home of Lisa and Brent Simon later this month.

Leesa is the daughter of Laurie and Andy Froelich. She decided to use the experience as an extra year in high school after graduating from Clearwater Central Catholic High School this year.

In Trinity, Beatriz sits on a window seat stroking cat Shadow in her room in the Bigelow home. With face free of makeup and dark springy curls framing her face, she appears younger than her 16 years.

For Beatriz, the long journey across continents was her first time out of Brazil.

With brown eyes sparkling, she explains in a few days she will attend her first U.S. style professional football game, one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In Brazil, futebol, the game most people in this country call soccer, is the dominant spectator sport.

Beatriz has also been to Georgia to see the autumn leaves and will go skiing later in the winter.

She's looking forward to that. "We don't have snow in Brazil."

Inscrutable Americans

The Brazilian finds the Americans' ceaseless activities puzzling. "Here, American people have something to do after school, on weekends.

"In Brazil, we hang out."

Although she finds it "really cool" that Americans can drive at 16, driving is one of the four Ds, along with drinking, dating and drugs, forbidden to Rotary exchange students.

As a result, Beatriz has had to rely on host family and friends for rides to and from her activities.

Although she had had five years of English in school, she found speaking English difficult at first. "When I talked with other teenagers, it was hard," she remembered about her first days in Trinity.

But after several months in this country, Beatriz appears to understand and communicates well in her Brazilian accented English. In Brazil, various dialects of Portuguese make up the dominant language group.

The experience has helped her grow up, she says. "Here, I'm more responsible and more independent. I don't have my parents to do anything."

She attends Rotary Club meetings about once a month and participates in Rotary activities of interest to her. In return, Rotary members are encouraged to include Beatriz in outings and other activities.

Beatriz's host mom, Kristine Bigelow, describes experiencing American life through the young woman's eyes. She has seen Beatriz witness her first roller coaster ride and her first Halloween trick-or-treating.

Exciting firsts

Experiencing with Beatriz all those firsts has been the best thing about having her live in their home, Bigelow says. "She gets very excited."

Having an exchange student has widened the world for the Bigelows. Kristine describes how the family recently ate at a Brazilian restaurant in Tampa. "We've driven by it a million times, but we never thought to go there."

Beatriz meets regularly with Laurie Froelich, the mother of Leesa Froelich. In her role as district youth exchange committee incoming chair, Laurie Froelich serves as liaison between exchange student, host families and Rotary Club. She tries to deal with difficulties such as homesickness before they escalate.

Leesa is enjoying her year abroad but her mother has learned to accept her daughter's regular bouts of homesickness.

"She gets homesick about every six weeks," she smiles.

But the family has found a solution to that. They talk to Leesa online, via Web cam, when the homesickness bug bites.

"Once she hears our voices, she's OK," Froelich notes.

Last year, the Froelichs had a Rotary Club German exchange student living in their home.

Exchange benefits

Leesa, Laurie Froelich says, recognized the benefits of a year abroad through that experience and decided to take the plunge of living away from home in a foreign country.

Thus far, Leesa appears to have enjoyed her experience in Brazil. Her mother senses her daughter has matured.

"I can tell from her voice she has grown from this. She's had to make decisions on her own."

But Laurie herself has had trouble adjusting. "The first week she was gone, I felt lost," she remembers.

But through her experience in the Rotary exchange program, she had learned productive ways of coping. "I kept myself busy just like students have to keep themselves busy to keep from getting homesick."

The Rotary exchange student for teens from 15 to 18 and host family programs are also open to non-Rotarians. For more information on the program, visit the Rotary Youth Exchange Web site or call Susanne Nielsen at

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