International opportunity awaits

Jay County residents have a great opportunity this year.

You can learn about Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan and India.

You don’t even have to open a book. All you need to do is say hi.

Jay County High School has welcomed 14 exchange students this year through the U.S. State Department’s Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) and Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) programs. (Yes, YES is named for former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana.)

We introduced you to Juste, Camelia, Alina, Habet, Aisha, Misaal, Gana, Ghida, Omar, Nayade, Chema, Aidai, Aizada and Amaan this week.

Now we’re asking you to do a bit more than just read their names in the newspaper. 

When you see them at various events around the county, stop and say hi. Introduce yourself. Have a conversation. Learn something about them. Help them learn something about you.

After all, learning — not just in the classroom, but about each others’ cultures — is one of the top goals of the exchange programs that brought them here. 

Too often we can become stuck in our own little bubbles — the U.S., Indiana, Jay County or even our own city/town. (It’s striking to learn from some local residents who live in one city/town in the county and haven’t ventured to one, or more, of the others, for years.) These students have traveled from around the world to visit us. It’s our responsibility to take that small step of reaching out to them now that they’re here.

Some seem shy. But remember, they’re thousands of miles from home, from friends, from family. Welcome them and that timidity will fade away.

Others — Misaal, Juste and Aisha, this means you — are not shy at all. After a few minutes, you feel like you’ve known them for years.

And then there’s Omar. It quickly became clear that the 16-year-old Palestinian is the focus of the group’s good-natured ribbing.

He responds with a laugh and giant smile.

When interviewing these 14 exchange students earlier this month, we asked them each to answer a series of questions: name, age, home city and country, favorite thing about the United States, least favorite thing, what they miss from home and what they are looking forward to the most.

You read some of their answers in these pages earlier this week. 

But we saved our favorite for last.

Chema Pradigta, a 17-year-old from Indonesia, said the thing he’s looking forward to the most is asking every single friend he meets to sign their name in a book he’s making so that he will never forget this year.

Let’s do everything we can to make sure it’s a year to remember — R.C.