They wake up early to get ready, they take one step outside and are immediately hit with a blast of freezing cold air. It’s winter now in MN and some of the foreign exchange kids haven’t even felt temps colder than 50 degrees.

“Brazil is way different, it rarely gets below 24 degrees Celsius (about 75 degrees Fahrenheit). Here it is like -2 Celsius (28 degrees Fahrenheit),” said Francisco Lavelle, who is an 18-year-old foreign exchange student from Brazil. “I want it to snow so much because in Brazil we never get snow. Here you guys get snow every year. I also want to go snowboarding, skiing, and sledding. I think those things would be super fun to do with my friends.”

“Where I’m at in Spain, I can get to mountains that are nearby and see snow but it takes a lot of money and work. I’m so excited to be able to experience the snow without having to pay for it,” said Vico Serra, a 17-year-old foreign exchange student from Spain. “I wasn’t expecting it to be this cold here, I knew that it was cold but this cold really surprised me. I don’t know if I packed enough thick clothes for this.”

The foreign exchange program is a program where students in their secondary part of school (high school) where students do a year of school in a different country. They’ll have new opportunities in their new country. Such as learning the history and culture of their new country. They will also have the opportunity to make new friends and make huge personal developments, students also grow a larger personal perspective of the world that they live in.