By Christy Scott
The Alpine Sun

     ALPINE — For the next nine months, Russian exchange student Ksenia Altman will be calling Alpine home.
     Ksenia is here in the United States as part of the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX). FLEX is a scholarship program administered by the U.S. Department of State, which provides opportunities for high school students from Eurasia to spend a year in the United States, living with a family and attending an American high school.
     Ksenia, who is attending 10th grade at Steele Canyon, is living in the Alpine home of Steve and Loretta Bourgeois, and their daughter Stephanie. She arrived early this summer and will be living here until July 2009.
     “I like living here,” Altman said. “Everyone is nice to me, and my host family is really good. I’m happy with them — I feel like I’m the part of the family.”
     Ksenia is from Kazan, the capital city of Tatarstan Republic, in Russia, where she lives with her parents and her 8-year-old brother, Kostya.
     “I miss my family, but I communicate with them,” Ksenia said about the year away from home. “I text them but it’s kind of expensive, so I just go on Skype and call them. It’s free to call from computer to computer.”
     Ksenia is enjoying going to school here in the United States, where she is taking humanities courses like history and English as well as journalism at Steele Canyon High School.
     “Journalism is my favorite because I want to be a journalist,” she said. “I like school here, the system is very different. In Russia I have about 16 subjects, not all in one day but still — and we study on Saturday. I like lessons here, it’s always fun.”
     Ksenia plans to attend university in Russia after graduation and wants to become a journalist.
     “I want to become a journalist and travel through countries writing stories,” she said.
     The Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) was established in 1992 as the centerpiece of the NIS Secondary School Initiative with funding from the State Department and USAID. It came out of former Senator Bill Bradley’s conviction that the best way to ensure long-lasting peace and understanding between the U.S. and Eurasia is to enable young people to learn about democracy firsthand through experiencing it. Its goal is to provide an opportunity for high school students from the countries of the former Soviet Union to experience life in a democratic society.
     Since its creation, more than 14,000 students from the former Soviet Union have spent one academic year attending schools and living with host families throughout the United States. Participants are chosen through a multi-layered selection process, based upon English ability, personality factors, social skills, academic achievement, and leadership potential.
     “I had to take many tests on speaking English and write essays,” Ksenia said. “I was the best English speaker at my school in Russia.”
     More than 50,000 students throughout Eurasia took the FLEX pretest and almost 17,000 scored well enough to move on to Round 2. Of that group, less than 15 percent of the original applicant pool (approximately 6,200 students) were invited to complete applications. From those 6,200 applications from all participating countries received in Moscow, 1,200 finalists were selected for the program.
     Of the thousands of students who applied for the FLEX program, only about a dozen from Kazan ultimately ended up coming to the United States. They are scattered all across the nation with host families in many different states.
     “I’ve never been to the U.S. before, it’s my first time,” Ksenia said. “I’ve been to Italy, Great Britain and Turkey before. In Italy and Turkey I just went sightseeing, and in Great Britain I was improving my English for three weeks.”

International Education Week
     This week marks International Education Week, Nov. 17 to 21, which is an opportunity to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide. This joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education is part of our efforts to promote programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences in the United States.

     There are many exchange opportunities available for American students as well. There are also resources for families who would like to offer their homes to host an exchange student. Check online at http://exchanges.state.gov/index for more information. Other sources include www.pieusa.org and www.pie-flex.com.