My name is Janneke Waenink, I’m 17 years old and I’m from the Netherlands. I am an exchange student, which means I’ll be living and going to school in the US for 10 months.

The first day of American High School was quite exceptional. There were a lot of differences compared to my high school in the Netherlands. I immediately noticed how much bigger this school was than my old school. My old school had about 900 students and only one building.

Here it was a maze trying to find my classes, so eventually I started asking people for directions. Another big difference is the fact that you can get breakfast and lunch at school here. In the Netherlands we have to bring our own lunch because they don’t sell any food at school. Also in the Netherlands we have much less subjects than this school offers. We don’t have subjects like forensic science, interior design, American Sign Language, astronomy or yearbook.

We also don’t have all the different kinds of math you have here; we only have Math A and Math B.

Furthermore, in the Netherlands they don’t play sports at school like you do here. If you want to play a sport, you’ll have to find a club that provides that sport. That’s why I’m so excited to be in the soccer class at this school.