AFS San Diego

By Grace Micetich, freelance writer

Ramona residents, Ken and Kristy Ishmael, believe their children benefited greatly from studying abroad. Of their four children, two have been AFS students. And in 2005 & 2006, they hosted two AFS youngsters, one from Malaysia, and the other from Germany. They await the arrival in August of their next student, Francisca, a girl from Portugal. She, like all the Ishmael children, will attend Ramona High.

Son, Tim, now a student at UC Davis, studied in 2005 in New Zealand while the Malaysian student lived with his parents. Because she would be only 15 in her junior year, Brynne, their daughter, waited until she graduated from Ramona High to follow in her brother’s footsteps as an AFS student. In the summer of 2006, she left for her year with her host family in Vienna, Austria. While she was there, a student from Germany came to live with the Ishmael family.

Brynne loved Vienna. “The city is so beautiful and steeped in culture”, she said. Not only did she work to improve her German language skills, but she also had to learn to waltz, which is a big part of Viennese life. She attended one of the big Waltz Balls held in the famous Opera House of Vienna, where they remove all the seats and lay down a dance floor. “I even went to my first opera, Turandot. It was great”, she exuded, adding that she rode a cable car to school each day because her host family lived in the heart of the city. This is a big change for a “country girl” from Ramona.

But her year abroad was interrupted when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She felt she needed to be home to support her Mom during this difficult time and returned to the US in late December. She returned to Vienna in January but after six weeks made the decision to come home for good to be with Kristy. But she left with good memories and lessons learned.

Asked what the experience abroad taught her, she said she learned “not to judge a book by its cover”. Her assumption was that the American AFS students would naturally be more mature, but she learned how European kids are even more mature than the Americans of the same age. Also she said that she had pre-judged an exchange student from Mexico, by her “gothic” looks alone, only to find her to be funny, sincere and perhaps the nicest person she met in the program. “The kids in my school, Bundesrealgymnasium #614, have all been together in the same class for 11 years with the same group of 20 or so kids. They really know one another well and are true friends. There isn’t the drama amongst them as there is here with my US classmates. You have fewer friends there, but deeper friendships”, she observed.

As a result of her abbreviated stay abroad and through her interactions with foreign students in her own home, Brynne has developed an interest in pursuing a career in International Relations and Political Science at UCSD, which she hopes to enter upon completion of two years at Grossmont College, where she is focusing on her German language studies.

As for the Ishmael family, dad Ken, who is the Fire Captain at Miramar Marine Air Station, and mom Kristy, in spite of her fight with cancer, look forward to hosting the AFS student from Portugal. The eldest son, Kenneth, now in the Air Force, lives in Texas. But the youngest son, Jeffrey, will be a freshman at Ramona High. So, the young Portuguese girl will have a warm, welcoming, AFS host family and someone to show her around Ramona High School.