By Olivia Ledford

Reporter

South students always get to hear about the foreign exchange students who come here, how different their lives are back home, and how weird it is for them to go to school here. Something most people don’t know is that there is a student at South who was a part of the foreign exchange program; not by hosting a student from a different country, but by actually traveling to a different country and living with a family he had never met.

Most people can’t imagine going to a different country alone, knowing no one, and having to start over with a new family and a new school, but senior Sam Derksen wanted to give it a try. Derksen decided to be a foreign exchange student in the Netherlands to learn more about his family history.

“My great-grandpa is from the Netherlands, and I have family there, so I always wanted to go back and relearn my roots and see where my family originally came from,” Derksen said.

Of course it would be hard to, basically, be starting a new life in a foreign country, but Derksen pushed through the rough beginning. Derksen said how it was awkward with his host family at first, but then things got better.

“My host family was super nice and were very generous people. At first it was really awkward, because it’s never easy to go into a house of someone you don’t know and live there for a year, but throughout that year our relationship developed, and we are very close now,” said Derksen.

Starting school in a new place is always hard. There’s the pressure of trying to make new friends, figuring out how the school works, and trying to get good grades. This is even harder in a different country. Derksen said how hard school was and how different it was from school here in Blue Springs.

“School was so different there. No one drove cars to school. We all rode bikes, so there was probably over a thousands bikes in the parking lot. There were three levels of education, and it was very difficult. I didn’t even get A’s on the English tests they were so difficult,” Derksen said.

Derksen spent a total of 11 months in the Netherlands, leaving August 21, 2014 and returning in July of this year. Derksen said it was hard to transition from life in Blue Springs to life in the Netherlands.

“The transition was really hard. I was very homesick during the first two months and really just wanted to come home, but I stuck with it and really enjoyed it. It was the best year of my life,” said Derksen.

This experience had a tremendous impact on Derksen’s life. He said he loves the Netherlands and plans to return there next year for college.

“I like the Netherlands better than here. I loved the freedom I had. I could come home at 5 am on a Saturday and no one cared at all. I took trains across Europe all by myself and I just felt way more grown up and independent,” said Derksen. “I’m planning on returning to the Netherlands next year for college.”