From Egypt to WHS
For the past 14 years of his life, Mazen Abu-Alainin has lived in Cairo, surrounded by the rich history and culture that Egypt has to offer.
Now he is walking the halls of WHS, observing American culture and making lots of new friends along the way.
Mazen is part of a foreign exchange program called AFS Intercultural Programs in which he will study at WHS for one year and return home to Cairo in June.
AFS is a worldwide, nonprofit organization that has been leading international high school student exchanges for more than 60 years. According to AFS, it sends about 2,500 exchange students to the United States every year and has more than 42,000 AFS volunteers worldwide.
“[The program] is outside of school. There is no relation between it and my school,” said Mazen, a 16-year-old junior. “My mother’s friend’s daughter traveled before in this program so we knew that it was a good opportunity.”
Mazen is currently staying with the Hager family, but will be transferred to another family in the upcoming months.
“In the organization, the family who decided to host you has two options. They can choose to hold you for the whole year or they are a ‘welcome family’ where I will change to another family halfway through,” he said.
Mazen has only been here for a little over a month, yet he has already spotted some differences between school in Egypt and in the United States.
“In Egypt, you stay in one class and take all the subjects in one classroom, but in the U.S., you take each subject in a different classroom,” he said.
The language of Egypt is Arabic, which means that Mazen’s reading and writing classes are in that language. He has taken English as a foreign language in Egypt.
But the school systems are not the only main difference he has noticed. The sports here are very different than what he sees in Egypt on a day-to-day basis.
“There are different sports like American football and baseball that you don’t experience in Egypt,” he said. “I’ve watched American football once before, but I didn’t understand it at all.”
And while Egypt has American fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s, Mazen believes the McDonald’s in the United States has to be “cooked differently because it tastes so much better.”
Most people traveling to a new country are unaware of what their experience is going to be like, but Mazen’s exposure to American culture through many TV programs and movies has prepared him for life in America. In particular, he learned a lot about the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan through the Night at the Museum films.
“I definitely need to go to that museum before I return to Egypt,” he said.
Mazen currently plays inter-county soccer with the new friends he has made at WHS, and has already joined the Community Service Club as well.
“I do a lot of community service and volunteering in Egypt like giving and delivering used and new clothes to families that couldn’t afford to buy new ones, so the Community Service Club sounded good for me,” he said.
As Mazen observes aspects of American culture, he is trying to teach people about Egyptian culture and history as well.
“My goal is to let the people know about my country and culture, and about all Egyptians, how we live, basically everything about Egypt,” he said. “I’m also trying to solve all of the stereotypes about Egyptians like how everyone thinks we just ride camels everywhere.”
Mazen wants to become an engineer when he grows up, and while the odds of him studying in the United States are rather low due to the high cost of attending an American university, he said it is definitely something he’d like to do.
He also added that he would like to be the boss of his own company, so he can “travel all over the world and help poor people live more comfortably and more luxuriously.”
Mazen definitely plans to return to the U.S. in the future. “It’s like my second home,” he said. “I’ve got family and friends here, so I’m definitely going to come back.”
Mazen is part of a foreign exchange program called AFS Intercultural Programs in which he will study at WHS for one year and return home to Cairo in June.
AFS is a worldwide, nonprofit organization that has been leading international high school student exchanges for more than 60 years. According to AFS, it sends about 2,500 exchange students to the United States every year and has more than 42,000 AFS volunteers worldwide.
“[The program] is outside of school. There is no relation between it and my school,” said Mazen, a 16-year-old junior. “My mother’s friend’s daughter traveled before in this program so we knew that it was a good opportunity.”
Mazen is currently staying with the Hager family, but will be transferred to another family in the upcoming months.
“In the organization, the family who decided to host you has two options. They can choose to hold you for the whole year or they are a ‘welcome family’ where I will change to another family halfway through,” he said.
Mazen has only been here for a little over a month, yet he has already spotted some differences between school in Egypt and in the United States.
“In Egypt, you stay in one class and take all the subjects in one classroom, but in the U.S., you take each subject in a different classroom,” he said.
The language of Egypt is Arabic, which means that Mazen’s reading and writing classes are in that language. He has taken English as a foreign language in Egypt.
But the school systems are not the only main difference he has noticed. The sports here are very different than what he sees in Egypt on a day-to-day basis.
“There are different sports like American football and baseball that you don’t experience in Egypt,” he said. “I’ve watched American football once before, but I didn’t understand it at all.”
And while Egypt has American fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s, Mazen believes the McDonald’s in the United States has to be “cooked differently because it tastes so much better.”
Most people traveling to a new country are unaware of what their experience is going to be like, but Mazen’s exposure to American culture through many TV programs and movies has prepared him for life in America. In particular, he learned a lot about the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan through the Night at the Museum films.
“I definitely need to go to that museum before I return to Egypt,” he said.
Mazen currently plays inter-county soccer with the new friends he has made at WHS, and has already joined the Community Service Club as well.
“I do a lot of community service and volunteering in Egypt like giving and delivering used and new clothes to families that couldn’t afford to buy new ones, so the Community Service Club sounded good for me,” he said.
As Mazen observes aspects of American culture, he is trying to teach people about Egyptian culture and history as well.
“My goal is to let the people know about my country and culture, and about all Egyptians, how we live, basically everything about Egypt,” he said. “I’m also trying to solve all of the stereotypes about Egyptians like how everyone thinks we just ride camels everywhere.”
Mazen wants to become an engineer when he grows up, and while the odds of him studying in the United States are rather low due to the high cost of attending an American university, he said it is definitely something he’d like to do.
He also added that he would like to be the boss of his own company, so he can “travel all over the world and help poor people live more comfortably and more luxuriously.”
Mazen definitely plans to return to the U.S. in the future. “It’s like my second home,” he said. “I’ve got family and friends here, so I’m definitely going to come back.”
