This year Bishop Union is hosting Carla China, a senior from Belgium. I had the opportunity to talk with China about her becoming a student at Bishop High and I also had the chance to ask her questions.

China will be playing girls basketball for the 2019-2020 season and I asked her if she is excited for the season and why and she said, “Yes I am super excited but kind of stressed too. I really like sports team and during my exchange, I wanted to be involved in some sports. I really like basketball. I used to play it in Belgium but only in PE because in Belgium we don’t play sports with the school. It is with clubs out of the school. I am not super good but I think I can improve it thanks to the practices. And the whole team is super nice with me so I am excited to play with them.”

I also asked her what her favorite thing about Bishop is and she replied saying, “The landscape, especially the mountains. In Belgium I live in a small city like Bishop but we don’t have all these lakes and mountains. It is one of the biggest differences with Belgium. In the beginning I thought that I wanted to go in a big city for my exchange but now that I am here, in Bishop, I am so glad because I really love being here.”

Even though she is having a blast in Bishop I asked her what she was missing most about Belgium and she said, “My family and especially my sister. She is 16 and we are really close. Before doing the exchange, everybody was saying that it is better not to have a lot of contacts with our family and I thought it would be an easy thing to do but I was wrong. It is rather hard to stop talking with people that you are used to seeing every single day.”

I talked to her about the differences between the U.S. and Belgium and she replied with, “The culture is not the same even if it really looks like. As I said earlier, the landscapes are really different too. I also noticed that food is pretty similar but here, for example, we don’t eat a lot of bread. In Belgium everybody eats bread at least twice a day. ”

Finally I asked her what she was most excited about living with Coach Palu for her second host family and she said, “Mr. Palu has always been nice to me since my first day at school. What’s more, it makes me more comfortable to have as a second family someone that I know. Because I have known my first host family since June so when I came to their house, I kind of already knew them. I think living with him will be pretty fun because him and his wife are nice people.”

China has fit in quickly at BUHS collecting the votes from her new classmates to be crowned Homecoming Queen. China is one of two rotary exchange students alongside Dan Sudki who is the kicker for the Varsity Football team who was also crowned as Junior class Prince. Both Sudki and China are a part of the Rotary Club’s student exchange program. Sudki has traveled to Bishop from Brazil and the town couldn’t be any happier to have two wonderful exchange students.

BUHS, Rotary, Exchange Students, Dan Sudki, Carla China, 2019