Frederik Kehler

2008-09 Inbound from Denmark

Hometown: København, Denmark

Sponsor: Virum Rotary Club, District 1470, Denmark

Host: Pensacola Rotary Club, District 6940, Florida, USA

School: Washington High School, Pensacola, FL

Bio

Frederik's Bio

Hello, my name is Frederik Kehler!

I’m 16 years old, and I’m currently a senior at Booker T. Washington High School in Pensacola, FL! I’ve been in Pensacola for about a month now and I absolutely love it. It has been much easier making friends and developing relationships than I thought it would be. Although it’s been easier than I thought, there’s been a lot of changes in my life as well. Mostly it has been cultural things like going to church, eating a lot of fast food, etc.

Prior to my exchange I’ve been spending my time going to school in Copenhagen for a total of 10 years as well as doing all my interests listed below in the text. There was only 450 people at my school back home divided into grades 1-9, so that makes up for only about 50 people in the “graduation class”. So it's quite a shock getting to Florida and suddenly having about 500 people in the graduating class! There’s a total of 2000 people at BTWHS.

Back home I’m living alone with my mom because all my sisters have grown up and moved out of the apartment. I live at the eastside of Copenhagen, which, compared to the west, south and north part, is considered the most quiet and secure part of Copenhagen, as cause of all the embassy’s being there. I’ve got 7 embassies in a radius of 500 meters from our apartment.

I have very high expectations with my participating in the program. I hope to share some of my life experience and points of view and interests with my host family and I also hope to get something back, and being given the opportunity to develop and improve some skills that I don’t have the use for at home.

My interests are, my friends, general sports, exercise and modeling. I exercise regularly - for example, I’m running and bodybuilding all together 6 times a week. I used to play a lot of badminton in Denmark but I had to quit because of a serious knee injury.

At last I just wanted to tell all of you out there who is considering going on an exchange, whether it’s to or from the US ... do it, you won't regret it. It's going to be the year of your lifetime. From what I’ve experienced so far, I’ve learned more in the past 4 weeks than I have learned in the past 2 years back home!

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the year and I’m hoping to post some inspiring journals for you all to read.

October 28 Journal

I arrived in Florida the 11 of August 2008, after a long journey I was finally here, the place where I’ve been spending the last 5 months dreaming about. I arrived in Pensacola Airport and was greeted by the airport crew saying “welcome to the sunshine state”. Unfortunately there was no sunshine that day, in fact it was raining tropical showers.

As I stepped out of the airplane I could feel that I was definitely not at home anymore, the temperature was high, the humidity was high and it was raining. Apparently my flight was 20 minutes early, the greeting committee with my host families, members of the club etc. was nowhere to be seen. I decided to go downstairs to claim my luggage which had now been following me through the long journey of 14 hours from Copenhagen, Denmark. On my way down I suddenly saw a lady with balloons and a big sign saying “Welcome Frederik Kehler!” This was Angela, my first host mother. Soon everybody was there and I couldn’t barely focus on talking in English to one person before another came in and congratulated me in coming to Pensacola!

The first day in school.

The first day in school was weird, everything was different. This was exactly the challenge that I expected to be a part of when I first started filling out the applications back home. I remember myself thinking “wow, this is awesome!” a big high school full of students with the school busses coming in and all. Just like the movies. Finding friends is very easy the first couple of days when you are an exchange student, people are very interested in what you have to say. Of course being from a country like Denmark where rules are much more loose and teenagers generally have more freedom, I fast became a hot topic around the table in the cafeteria, things like drinking at 16 and be able to go clubbing etc. was very well appreciated by American teenagers.

The diversity between white Americans and Afro-Americans meets me at the first day in school and is clearly illustrated by the example of where people sit at lunch. There’s obviously not “hate” but people just feel naturally appealed to one another, of course there are exceptions, everybody is still friends!

One of the things in school that annoys me the most is that we have to wear ID badges and if you want to go to the toilet, the teacher has to write you a pass for walking in the hallway. This annoys me but is also quite interesting because it makes you wonder why it's necessary. The first week of school there was a “Code Red Lock Down”, it was during my 3rd of American Government and suddenly the speakers go “Code Red, Code Red – This is a lockdown.” At first I was wondering what was happening but then I was told that “Code Red” means that there is somebody on campus that has a weapon!!! I was totally freaking out after all the things I had seen in the media from back home. We were all told to go in the back of the room and turn off the lights .. Luckily it was only a drill! It was quite embarrassing, I bet everyone could see in my eyes that I was scared!

The family

My 1st host family is awesome! My dad is named Robert, Mom is Angela and host brother is Stephen. Stephen just came back from Stetson University near Orlando and is now spending some time at home here in Pensacola, it's nice having somebody who grew up here to show me around. My mom teaches science at a middle school in town and my dad is a financial advisor. At first it’s always awkward being a part of a new family but after a few weeks I actually ended up feeling more and more like a part of the family.

The Inbound Orientation Camp

This was an absolute awesome weekend in Orlando, FL. Although I was driving all the way from Pensacola during a hurricane it was all worth it. Essentially nobody knows each other and this makes yet another new opportunity to make new friends! I feel like I got 66 new friends in only two days! It was awesome, thanks to everybody for making this a nice experience and I can only say that I’m really looking forward to the next trip with you all! I would like to take a moment to say thank you to all the RYE volunteers that is making camps and this program in general possible for kids like myself, this is very much appreciated and will never be forgotten, hopefully you get all the recognition you deserve for this awesome job! If not, you have least got all of mine.

Homecoming, football and much more.

In the United States, school and sport is connected with each other in a great way that makes it possible for people to get together. Going to the game is almost a standard among high school students and is lots of fun. Playing and supporting the different school teams whether it’s a home game or away game is an awesome feeling, you really get to be a part of something! Homecoming is also a very cool tradition, it’s basically a big dance which is usually on campus or in rented property outside of school. You dress up and go out to eat! I have included some pictures of my homecoming and some of the games too.

I have also joined the school FBLA (Future Business Leader of America). This is a club that promotes students skills in every aspect of leading a group or a business. We, among other things, volunteer to work at the Pensacola Fair, to cooperate with the Interact club (which I'm also a part of), hosting the “Make a difference day” where we read books to kids at elementary schools, etc. My biggest milestone in FBLA is that I’m currently part of a team that is aiming for going to the state or maybe even national competition in the category “Web design Innovation”, hopefully we will get off to a good start in early January! More about this at that time.

At last I would like to express my deepest gratefulness to both my home and host Rotary Club. Thanks for giving me this extraordinary opportunity to fulfill my dream of being an exchange student and facing the challenges that might come along the way. I could not have done this without the supports of both clubs and of course my counselors within the clubs - Axel Petersen and Scott Grissett deserve a big hand for helping me through this rather long process of making this possible. Thank you!

To all of you prospective exchange students, whether you are going to Florida or considering being an outbound student with the support of RYE team, I can only say one thing – Do it. I myself had my doubts whether it was worth leaving family, friends and maybe even a girlfriend behind. After only 2 months here I can say that so far – it has been worth it indeed!

January 29 Journal

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving I went with the Mills family to Calhoun, GA for a real American Thanksgiving. My host mom Angela’s dad is the youngest sibling of ten In the family. This makes up for a real big family when both kids and grandkids all is showing up for Thanksgiving. The drive was about 6 hours from Pensacola and we stayed with Angela’s parents through the weekend. This was the real America that I was hoping to experience when I signed up. Normally you only hear about either the really rich or the really poor in America through the media. Here you had the real American hardworking middle class, some always warm and embracing to a foreigner like me . There was SOOOO much food, everybody brought 3 dishes and we ended up having lots of leftovers. The next day was black Friday, the only one willing to even step outside the door on black Friday was my brave host dad Robert, who gladly engaged in showing me the black Friday experience. Surprisingly the mall was only slightly more busy than normal. It was a very pleasant surprise after all the horror stories about Black Friday.

Disney World

It was a slightly cold December day, Heidi Blair my district counselor rang the doorbell at about 5am, it was time for the Disney trip. The drive down to Orlando was about 6 hours, it was actually not too bad as long as we had happy people in the car. Meeting with all the other students from Florida is really a great experience, everybody made instant friends at the inbound orientation and were all anxious to see each other again. This is clearly an advantage that I did not think about when I chose Rotary, you make friends from all over the world. Being friends with the other students does also mean that you always have somebody who is going through the same thing as you are, this is very helpful when you have homesickness or just need to talk to somebody who has a “foreigner's” perspective on things. You can see pictures from Disney World in the Gallery on the RYE Florida site. We all had a great time and as always I will take a line to thank my Rotary club for the support that they have showed me.

Changing families

The day arrived where I had to change host families for the first time. It was really a weird feeling because you are happy and sad at the same time. There is a happy feeling because you get to meet new people and have new experiences with them but also a very sad feeling because you are leaving the family that has showed you all the basics in how to act in America. However I knew that the bonds that were created between me and my first host family would never be broken and we will keep on meeting with each other.

My new host family was Sallis family, Scott and Janet. Scott has his own architectural company in downtown Pensacola and Janet works at the church in Gulf Breeze as a Youth Director. They have no kids but Janet is pregnant so that is quite exciting.

Christmas

Christmas in Florida is very weird, there is no snow and for the first time in my life, I decorated the tree in a short sleeve shirt and flip-flops. For Christmas we went up to see Scott’s sister in Nashville, Tennessee. She lives in Brentwood which is a suburb to Nashville in a big house with her husband and two adorable kids. I have never seen that many presents at Christmas, the whole living room was filled up at Christmas morning. I got to meet Scott’s parents as well, they flew down from Arkansas where Scott and his sister grew up. It was amazing to feel so welcome in a family that I just recently moved to, Christmas was a great experience. We spend the next day just relaxing and visiting with family at the house and one day we went to an ice hockey game! This was the first NHL game of my life and oh my god, it was awesome. Nashville Predators vs. Detroit Red Wings. Detroit is considered to be one of the top teams in the NHL and we had awesome seats where I could follow the action really close. Nashville ended up winning 3-2 which was ABSOLUTELY amazing, nobody would have ever dreamt of a Nashville win that night.

2nd semester at school

Second semester of school has now started; I have a slightly different schedule which is very good. I have transferred into all honors classes which is a huge difference. I recommend for ALL exchange students to do this; even though the academic level is slightly harder, you get to be in class with well rounded individuals who are actually do care about school probably as many of your peers in your home country do. The work attitude is way more serious and you actually learn something, instead of spending time waiting for some disturbing kid to shut his mouth so you can ask the question that you might have. The school over here is in many ways more fair in terms of grades. Where I am from the grade the teachers gives you is based very much on the work attitude that you show and how good you are to project your knowledge in the subject you are taking back to the teacher. In America your grades are strictly based on the chapter tests and the assignments that you turn in. The only disadvantage is that they have a lot of tests, often at least one in each class every week! So if you miss just one day of school you need to make up the work or else you are going to screw up on the test in the end of the week!

My personal opinion of the teaching style in America is that American kids use remembering instead of learning because the classes are so fast paced. Let’s say that you are reading chapter 1 Monday through Thursday and then on Friday you have a test. On the test you will remember whatever you read, but you actually did not learn to use the terms, formulas etc. that was described in the chapter. Next week you go on with chapter 2 and by the time you have reached chapter 3 you have forgotten chapter 1 because you actually didn’t learn it, you just remembered the techniques that you needed to in order to pass the test. It’s hard to explain but remembering and not learning very fast becomes a problem in ex. Math classes where you often have to apply techniques that you have learned earlier in order to solve a problem.

Seacamp

The trip with Rotary I had looked forward to the most: 3 days in the Florida keys with best friends and sunshine. The trip was absolutely awesome, we had sunshine and I got to see everybody again. This bond that you create with the other exchange students is, as I have mentioned earlier, priceless. They are the ones you can always rely on to cheer you up and they are the ones you turn to when nobody else understands. During the weekend we learned about the environment and we got to meet some American kids that lived in the keys. However this was the last time for everybody to see with each other. I was never good at goodbyes and the feelings that people have developed for each other were clearly shown when it was time to say goodbye after spending the last couple of hours in Key West. Some laughed trying to make the sad fact that they would never see each other again go away while others were crying on their friend’s shoulders. One thing is certain, I will remember ALL of the Rotary kids for the rest of my life and they can count on if they are ever in Denmark they have a friend and a place to stay.

The Inconvenient truth

(Everything in this section of the dairy is strictly personal experiences and opinions)

So after being here for almost half of my year as an exchange student, there is a couple of things that I feel like future, prospective and even current exchange students need to know about. These are things that I feel like was neglected and kept in the dark from me at the various orientations and presentations about being an exchange student. When I read journals about people being exchange students they often give the impression that this is just the happiest time of their life and their never had a bad day during their whole exchange. Sure, I understand why you would not want to present yourself as a whiner by saying that you actually did have bad days and that there was days where you were wishing you never went. It is not always easy. In fact I’m impressed of the bravery that I see not only Rotary students but all exchange students show during their stay.

Before I left home I had this picture of me half way through my year with friends that I trusted and spend as much time with as the ones I had before I left. The only fact I didn’t think about is that those friends I have back home and who I care about the most, are the ones that I have known and spending a lot of time with during a period over 5-10 years. I have not been able to create the same kinds of connections with people over here that I have back home, and in fact when I’m thinking about it, there is nothing wrong with that. You cannot expect people to take you in and make connections with you similar to the ones that you have spend 10 years on making. It’s my experience that people are very nice to you at first, asking questions, being interested in who you are – I cannot count how many times people have been like “We should totally hang out” or “Just call me if you need a ride” but all that is really just something that they say without really meaning it, it is only very few times that my phone has actually been ringing with people asking me if I want to hang out.

However those few times it actually has been happening that people are so nice and caring about a foreigner like me to call, it has turned out to be one of the few really good relationships that I have build over here. It might sound like American kids are just cruel and selfish but actually I can say, although I’m embarrassed about it, that if I had not been an exchange student and I met an exchange student in my city I would probably not be the one to call him or her. We can all point to one person at our school, who’s name we know and we have heard a little about them but other than that we take no real interest in them because we all have our small social circles and why should we spend a second trying to make him or her a part of ours? I can only encourage everyone who has an exchange student in their home or in their school to do everything to get them to spend time with you, I guarantee you that they will not refuse and they will with 99% certainty appreciate it more than you will ever understand.

“A stranger is just a friend that you haven’t met yet.”

It is very important to understand that I certainly do NOT mean to take the hope away from any of the future inbounds or outbounds, I am simply just trying to explain my experience of what it has been like being in a country where you have no roots or no basics to rely on. Rotary exchange students especially are very thoroughly screened to make sure that they have the personal qualities that is needed to make it in another country and that they have the social skills that is required to be able to make it through that program. I am sure that all students will do just fine during their year; this section is really just written because I feel like nobody is really telling the truth and everybody claims that a year abroad is just a dance on roses. There will be ups and downs; fortunately everyone I have talked to including myself says that the ups takes the pain away from the downs.

I’m writing this so all of you future students, in case it happens to you, can know that it is nothing that you are doing wrong and that there is nothing wrong with the way you act. The inbound students got this handout with an “exchange student cycle” where it shows the ups and downs students are most likely to have. When I first got it I was like “nobody can tell me when I’m gonna be sad, it's gonna be completely random,” but the scary thing is that I’m following the line like clockwork. This is a great tool. The only thing to do if you are having a bad period of time is just to hang in there and think about this text:

it will be alright.

March 18 Journal

On March 1 I changed families, I am now living with my old club counselor Scott and his wife Lindy and their two kids Will (3 years) and Lane (4 months). It’s a nice change of pace; the last two families I have been staying at have not had any kids.

My team and I have won the district competition in the Future Business Leaders of America Web Design Development category which means that we have qualified for State Competition (SLC) which is held in Orlando in mid April! I am super excited to go; it is supposed to be a lot of fun!

I was also nominated the top senior in the area of Business Education at Booker T. Washington High, I am very excited, and there is an award dinner at the 18th of April in Downtown Pensacola that I will be attending with my family.

The pictures are from a Monster Truck show in the Pensacola Civic Center that I went to a couple of weeks ago, it was simply awesome! I actually got a little scared of hearing how loud the trucks really are, it’s amazing compared to the experience you get when watching TV!

Life goes on here in Florida, the sunshine has started to show and the beach is ready for me every weekend. “I live where other people go to vacation”. It’s simply amazing, I’m sure that I am going to miss it, Denmark is mostly grey and rainy, however I still have 4 months left and there is a lot of exciting things coming up such as Spring Break, District Conference in Panama City, Prom, Graduation, trip to Vancouver, Belo Western Trip etc. I am sure I will be well occupied.

To future inbounds reading, do not fill up your two allowed suitcases, you will buy so much stuff that you can’t get everything back! I am experimenting with ideas of vacuum bags etc. to make it all fit!

The appreciation line goes to my home club Virum Rotary and to all of multi district RYE-Florida, you guys have done an amazing job.