An International Experience Right at Home

“Facebook is key,” says 18-year-old Perpich Center for Arts Education Arts High School senior Connor Rice. He's sitting across  from a 15-year-old French teenager, Thomas Seifert, at the kitchen island in a house on Ardmore Drive. Rice and Seifert hadn’t met until last week, when Rice picked Seifert up from the airport.

“We had a couple of conversations using Facebook that just writing letters back and forth wouldn’t have allowed,” said Rice. “We wouldn’t have had any idea about each other.”

Or about their common love for music. Rice is hosting Seifert, one of two French exchange students attending Perpich through a high school study abroad/family-stay program called Language & Friendship. Seifert is from Villenoisson, France, just south of Paris. Rice and his family are accommodating Seifert for three weeks but, thanks to social media, they’ve already been in contact for months.

“It is interesting to see pictures of Connor because now I know what he looks like and his taste, and it helps a lot,” Seifert said.

Seifert is among around 30 French students who have been placed in schools throughout the metro area. For the past week, he has been attending Perpich, a tuition-free state school in Golden Valley that draws some of Minnesota’s youngest artistic talent. Seifert, a budding dancer, operate just like the other students, with academic classes in the morning and arts-focused classes in the afternoon. Seifert also attends American lessons in the French language.

“This is very different than France,” says Seifert, a modern and contemporary dance enthusiast. “There, we wake up at 6:30 and have classes all day. Here, you just have three or four classes then dance until 4:30.”

Rice is only a French novice himself, having taken his first French I lesson in the fall. But, he says the occasional language barrier hasn’t been a problem between the two teens, as their love for music—the global language—has helped them understand their similarities.

“I want to be a musician or someone who helps people speak better,” says the 15-year-old guitarist.

Rice, a Minnesota State Legislature intern, plans attending Colorado College in the fall to study pre-law, political science or music. Even before he cracks his first college books, he will have studied abroad—he travels to France in just a matter of weeks to experience the same type of culture shock that Seifert has.

“I’ve always been interested in the French culture and learning more,” he says.

Come March, Rice will spend his two-week spring break in France along with eight other Perpich students in the same Language & Friendship program.  They will travel with French instructor Trina Keller, stay with host families and attend a school in Aiz-en-Provence in the South of France, traveling to Paris fairly often.

“For kids who can’t travel, it gives them an international experience,” says Keller. “ It’s mainly the experience of kids getting that global confidence, cultural competencies and understanding cultures are different—not better or worse, just different. It’s a good way to prepare them for their futures.”

But first, Rice plans to continue showing Seifert what American culture has to offer: concerts, dance shows, the Midtown Global Market, a day at the State Capitol.

And, as Seifert says, “play music.”