On Friday October 2^nd, 12 Danish students traveled 3,918 miles to Urbana High School, where they all attended multiple classes for two days. The students, ages 17 to 20, spent five days with Urbana host families, and then spent their last five days at a grand hotel in Washington D.C. where they all got the opportunity to go sightseeing.

Getting here early Friday evening the Danish students were able to attend an Urbana Hawks football game and also the Homecoming Dance on Saturday night. “It was a lot of fun. We have themed parties like that at our school that are less formal than the homecoming,” said 19 year old Astrid.

The two days that the Danish kids spent at Urbana High School were very different from those spent at their home school, also known as Gymnasium. The differences in education varied from teaching styles, class sizes, and extra – curricular activities.

“It [Urbana High School] is very big compared to ours. There are only five or six hundred kids [in our school.] It’s very small,” said 19 year old Maria, when explaining some of the huge contrasts between schools.

“How your teachers teach, you don’t use computers, at least not often. We use computers all the time,” said 18 year old Ida.

Twenty year old Alex said, “And speaking to the teachers with Mr. and Mrs. we don’t do that, we call them by their first name and we discuss a lot. We use dialogue instead of a lot of monologue. We have much more talking and discussing.”

After the long exciting weekend, the students attended a variety of different classes on Monday and Tuesday. The first day the students went around to 2 or 3 different classes each and gave presentations on their own education in Denmark. Many Urbana people were intrigued with these presentations.

One of the four presentations that were given was on the daily lives of the Danish students. “I think it was so interesting because of the [different] educational systems. At the age of 18 they get paid to go to school, and the amount varies with the different students depending on their circumstances at home,” said senior Anne Leatherman.

On Tuesday the students were able to pick the class of their choice, and many of them chose to attend dance class. “It was really awesome and they were really great and the teacher was so sweet the level was so high they were like professionals,” said 20 year old Trine.

“I am looking forward to meeting next year’s foreign exchange students,” said junior Alyson McKee.