Fourteen Chinese exchange students were treated to an American dinner of fried chicken, watermelon and homemade desserts this week as they were welcomed to their two-week visit to the Elgin area.
It was the start of an adventure in which they’ll be spending their junior years attending high schools across the United States.
“We have great expectations for the visit,” said chaperone Stephen Lai, speaking at the potluck dinner held in the gym at Fox Valley Baptist Church in East Dundee.
Lai and all but one of the students live just north of Hong Kong in Shenzhen, China’s third most populated city. The other student is from Beijing, Lai said. All are here through a program run by 40-year-old nonprofit Greenheart Exchange.
“During their two weeks in the Chicago area, the students will be attending a language camp here in the gym, weekdays from 9 to 5, where they will be learning more English, idioms, jargon, American family and culture, the differences between Chinese schools and American schools, and general overall cultural things,” said Tammy Zilinski, a local coordinator for Greenheart.
The students will be visiting Chicago attractions, Woodfield Mall, a university and an area high school, and local police and fire departments in addition to spending an afternoon doing volunteer work and checking out the Carpentersville Walmart, she said.
Zilinski’s husband, Phil, is the pastor at Fox Valley Baptist. The nonprofit is renting space from the church for the two-week program, she said.
Melinda Zhang Yueran and Bonnie Zheng said their flight to Chicago, which landed Sunday evening, took about 15 hours. Unfazed by Monday’s steamy weather, the teens said it actually gets muggier and hotter in Shenzhen.
Zheng said she will be attending a high school in Cedar Bluffs, Nebraska, while Yueran is going to Austin, Texes.
Zheng and fellow student Kathy Lao is staying with Mark and Amy Titre in South Elgin. Lao is tentatively set to go to high school in Cary, North Carolina.
“We found out about this through a text from a friend, who explained what was needed. So we volunteered,” Mark Titre said. “This is the first time we’ve done this. … My sister, though, went to Chile as an exchange student back in 1975.”
Rachael Dadabo and her husband, Rick, are hosting Yueran in the upstairs portion of their Elgin home. The couple have a daughter, Quinn, who will be a junior at Larkin High School this year. The Dadabo family also plans to host a student from Uzbekistan, who is coming to Illinois through a merit-based scholarship awarded by the Future Leaders Exchange program.
Meanwhile, Rick’s parents, Bob and Georgeann Dadabo, are hosting Junyan Li in the lower level of the same home. Li, who will be attending high school in Crystal Lake, said he was looking forward to playing sports.
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Over dinner, hosts talked about taking the teens to various attractions and restaurants, hoping to give them a taste of Chicago staples such as Italian beef, Maxwell Street Polish sausage, Vienna Beef hot dogs, and deep dish and tavern cut thin crust pizzas.
“What’s been fun about hosting exchange students is getting to see America through their eyes, to see them experience things as simple as a yellow school bus or red Solo cups,” Rachael Dadabo said.
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.