The Prowler

Chilton hosts AFS weekend

Sunday, March 11, 2012 By Briana Reilly

This past weekend, foreign exchange students from around the area gathered in Chilton to visit with the local AFS club and stay with a Chilton host family for two nights during the annual AFS weekend. The students involved gained a lot from the experience. Alyssa Peik, a CHS sophomore and member of AFS, said, “It was very neat to see that teens from other countries are no different from the teens in the U.S., even though they grew up with different traditions and conditions.” Six students—Giacamo Imberti, Annamaria Orcese and Alessandro Pieri from Italy; Benedikt Jaegar from Germany; Laura Jagear from Denmark and Emilia Nordstrom from Finland—made the journey to Chilton on Friday evening, braving the snowy weather to reach Chilton High School. There they met the high school AFS club and the AFS adult chapter for a tour of the building. Afterwards, each visiting AFS student went home with their host family. The next day kicked off with a visit to Kaytee. After getting the opportunity to see a wide variety of birds, a chinchilla and a couple of ferrets, the group went their separate ways to eat lunch. Then they reconvened at Chilton Middle School in order to take a bus to Skate City. After a few hours of rollerblading, they headed off to Rock K Ranch Hayrides in Greenleaf where they all enjoyed the recently fallen snow by pelting one another with snowballs before going on a hayride as darkness began to fall. Following that, they ate a quick meal and headed off to Brillion to join the Chilton fans as they watched the high school boys basketball game. Although Chilton lost, that didn’t dampen the group’s spirits as they headed from Brillion to a gathering at Phillip Buelow’s house; Phillip is president of the Chilton AFS club. On Sunday, everyone gathered for a brunch potluck at Chilton City Hall. After the meal, many group pictures were taken and goodbyes were said as the visiting foreign exchange students were picked up by their host families.