Exchange students James Arnott, front row left, and Gabrielle Merritt, front row right, are pictured with their hosts, AFS sophomores Jonah Fine and Amira Parker.
Exchange students James Arnott and Gabrielle Merritt, who hail from a land with live kangaroos, were welcomed at AFS on January 22 and began taking classes with our Upper School students. The program was created under the AFS Center for Experiential Learning as one of its global travel initiatives.
James and Gabby, who are rising sophomores, attend the Friends School in Hobart, Tasmania, which is now on summer vacation. They were hosts to two of our students, sophomores Amira Parker and Jonah Fine, last summer, and now Amira and Jonah are hosting them here. There is yet another AFS-Down Under connection. AFS alum Nelson File ’78 is head of the Friends School in Hobart, which enrolls 1,330 students.
The Tasmanian students arrived in the United States on Thursday, January 18, after what James said was 28 hours of travel in the air and waiting in airports. That Sunday, they joined our students on a trolley tour of Philadelphia’s famous sights, and yes, stopped for a photo op at the Rocky statue.
Asked what Americans might not know about their country, both James and Gabby brought up the wildlife found in Tasmania. James rattled off this list: “We have kangaroos, koalas, wombats, platypuses, wallabies and echidnas,” which he described as looking like a cross between an anteater and a porcupine.
Both students said they would have an opportunity to study a subject at AFS that is not available to them at their home school. For Gabby, it was a sculpture class, while James was looking forward to getting some hands-on time in robotics.
In addition to attending classes for three weeks, the pair will be taking a field trip to Gettysburg on February 7, where they will meet up with fellow Hobart students who are exchange students at the Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland.
Experiencing the local culture is part of the exchange, so they’ll be trying Philly cheesesteaks, and getting a taste of sandwiches that are an American staple — peanut butter and jelly. “In Australia, we never put them together,” James said.
Because they are in the U.S., they’ll be missing Australia Day, a major national holiday, on January 26. If they had been home, Gabby said, she’d be cooking “sausages on the barbie.”
On their first day at AFS, they were given a bag filled with Spirit Wear — an AFS sweatshirt, scarf and socks with kangaroo logos.
“I found it incredibly fitting that an American school has a kangaroo as their logo,” James said.
