Leaving to Come Back

Kenny Ventress, left, and Nina Thomas will have the opportunity this fall to spend a full academic year studying abroad in Germany through the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX). Originally members of the Class of 2020, they will return to ASMSA in August 2020 as part of the Class of 2021 to complete their ASMSA experience.

Leaving to Come Back

‘Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.’

Terry Pratchett, from ‘A Hat Full of Sky,’

a novel by the popular ‘Discworld’ fantasy novelist

Students choose to study abroad, including in yearlong programs

Four ASMSA students learned this spring that they will be studying abroad through two U.S. Department of State programs dedicated to introducing youth to international cultures and preparing them to be global leaders.

Blaine Martin (’20) and Jared Block (’19) were each selected to participate in the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI- Y) while Kenny Ventress (’21) and Nina Thomas (’21) are going to study in Germany through the Congress- Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX).

While several ASMSA students have been selected to participate in the NSLI-Y program in the past few years, this marks the first year students have been chosen for CBYX since 2011.

CBYX allows students to spend a full academic year living with a German host family and attending a German school. Thomas and Ventress will leave in late August for their German stays. Thomas will be in Wiefeslstede where she will study at Kooperative Gesamtschule Rastede. Ventress will live in Jerichow and study at Bismarck-Gymnasium in Genthin.

Previous ASMSA participants in NSLI-Y have chosen to enroll in the six-week summer program. That’s what Martin chose to do this summer. He left in late June for Indonesia and returned in early August. But Block, who graduated in May, is the first to be selected for a yearlong program through NSLI-Y. He will leave in late August to spend a year in Chisnau, Moldova, studying Russian.

Spending a full year in a studyabroad program offered some challenges to Thomas, Ventress and Block. For Thomas and Ventress, they still have completing both high school and the ASMSA experience to consider. For Block, there was the consideration of whether to do the year abroad or start his freshman year of college at Baylor University.

Once he was selected for the program, Block let admissions officials at Baylor know about his desire to study Russian in Moldova. Participating in the program would give him a jump on learning Russian to use in a future career in diplomacy or social work.

“Baylor was really helpful for my acceptance to carry over for the next year and helped figure out ways for me to keep my scholarships,” he said. “I really got the love of languages from Bryan Adams (a French instructor at ASMSA). He knows a little bit of Russian and knows it is a critical language. Organizations need more speakers. It is really complicated, so I decided to try to learn it in an immersive program.”

Block said he decided nine months living and learning in a language would be a better start than jumping in cold as a freshman in college. He plans to study Russian as a major when he returns, but the NSLI-Y program will provide him with the chance to develop conversational skills and maintain fluency that more rigid study may not.

“I’ll be living with a host family. That will give me the most first-hand experience. Dropping me into a family will help me better learn about their customs.”

Thomas and Ventress had to decide whether an additional year of high school was worth having the Blaine Martin (‘20), fourth from left on the front row, spent six weeks of his summer break in Indonesia through the National Security Language Initiative for Youth. It was the first time an ASMSA student has visited Indonesia through the program.

“I really wanted to do something international before college,” Ventress said. “I’ve never wanted to major in a language but maybe in business or international affairs. I knew it would mean an extra year of high school and leaving my friends.

“I wanted to graduate from ASMSA for sure. As I learned more about the program, it became obvious I would need to graduate from a U.S. school for scholarships, but at the same time I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I’ve always wanted to be an exchange student.”

Thomas said all of the advantages the program would offer her made the choice of coming back to ASMSA for the 2020-21 academic year an easier one.

“While this was a very huge decision to make, the choice was obvious,” Thomas said. “I told myself when I began the application that if I was accepted I was definitely going on this exchange. This experience completely outweighs its drawbacks.

“I have no problem with graduating a year later or anything like that. It also helps knowing that Kenny would be going through all of this alongside me: preparation, the exchange itself, and also returning to ASMSA to a completely new set of people.”

Thomas actually credited Ventress for finding out about the program. She said the duo had bonded over their interest in languages and he shared information about CBYX after learning about it.

She said her mother speaks German and went to college in Germany as an exchange student from her university in Moscow, Russia. “I thought to myself that nothing would be more amazing than to return home and carry a normal conversation with her in German,” she said.

What might be considered a couple of matters of coincidence, Thomas said the oldest child of her host family will be participating in CBYX.