When 16-year-old Apinya Simasthien learned she would spend the school year in the United States, her first thought was a warm one: “Texas!”
Instead, the petite, bubbly teen-ager – whose native Thailand averages 92 degrees year-round – shivered when she found her destination was frosty Minnesota. She says she found a different kind of warmth here, friendships that now feel very much like extended families.
But she did wear long johns all winter.
She had flown from her home in Phitsanulok, Thailand, through Japan and then on to Minneapolis. The aircraft that carried her on the final leg of her journey was by far the smallest. She sat in the last row, feeling very tiny. Despite her 10 years of English study at home, she worried that no one would understand her because of her accent. When she stepped off the plane, she says, she had no idea what to do next.
But, welcomed by the first of three local host families, she plunged into American life. After accompanying her temporary family on a trip, she dived into the dizzying life of Moorhead High School. “After school, all I did was sleep,” she confesses. “My host mother was afraid I was sick. Jean Hannig [the Rotary exchange program director] explained that my brain was just overwhelmed.”
Now, nine months later, she’s overwhelmed again by how much she’s learned, the friendships created, the American foods that have sustained her (she loves cheese, but pizza’s not a favorite) and the discoveries she has made about herself.
Apinya – her friends call her Tangkwa, a nickname that means “cucumber” – comes from a media family in Phitsanulok, a city of 800,000 on the southern edge of Thailand’s northern region. Her father works with the state radio enterprise based in Bangkok. Her mother, a veteran of radio too, now operates her own computer store. Her younger sister also attends high school.
“At first, I just wanted to go far away from my mother’s rules,” she says. “America is freedom … so big, and Thailand is so small.” She’d grown up hearing about Rotary’s international student exchange through her mother’s 20-year involvement with the service organization. Mom told her, “Just go!”
As she stepped off the airplane at Hector International Airport, Apinya was struck by the sight of the other travelers around her. “In Thailand, everyone has black hair like mine,” she says. “I came here and what did I see? Every color, with me the only one with black hair.”
At home, her school of 3,000 students is 90 percent female. The more-or-less even mix among Moorhead High’s 1,700 students pleased her (“girls can be so picky”). “Though there aren’t as many here, it seemed much bigger to me. There is so much more freedom. I knew no one at first, and my English wasn’t very good.
“My first class on my first day was Mrs. (Bonnie) Stafford’s sociology. I was so scared to open the door.” She took a deep breath, stepped inside and said “hi” to the first students she met, one of whom turned out to be an exchange student himself.
From then on, Tangkwa realized that her initial ideas had been wrong. “I had thought no one would be interested in me. They were very much nicer than I ever expected. They got Thailand confused with Taiwan and asked me lots of questions – ‘do you speak Chinese?’ – but they were curious about everything.”
At home, she had taken ten years of instruction in English, as well as some Japanese. Her favorite English teacher was a North Dakota native. In Moorhead, she was enrolled in a variety of classes that suit her enthusiasm for math, distaste for science and the creative talents that emerged early in her life.
She has studied traditional dance, Thailand’s main dramatic art, since she was 5; during her time here, she continued her passion by dancing along to Youtube. In Moorhead, though, art teacher Mick Dunn and choir director Kathy Brekke ignited an even broader love of the arts.
She found out about theatre from a poster advertising last fall’s performance of “Tarzan.” “I told myself that if there was another one, I wanted to be in it,” Tangkwa recalls. And there was. When the theatre department staged “Julius Caesar,” she was cast in a small role as a protestor. “It was really fun to be a part of it. I’d never done anything like this in Thailand,” she says. “Theatre makes you part of a new family.” Fellow cast members even christened her with another quintessentially teen nickname, Apinya Colada.
Other favorite classes? Jeremy Blake’s advanced algebra and Ben Taylor’s American literature. “He has helped me so much,” she comments. “I’ve asked all kinds of questions, and he has taken the time to explain.”
Tomorrow, after the school year has ended, the young Thai woman departs on a Rotary-sponsored trip to California. In July she’ll be part of the Central States Rotary Youth Exchange gathering in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she’ll celebrate her 17th birthday. She heads home July 20.
What will she do first? “Sleep,” she replies with no hesitation at all. Then she’s scheduled for a national meeting of Rotary exchange alumni, where the 40 students who’ve studied all over the world this year will prepare the new class for their upcoming adventure. Her advice to them: “Always try to say ‘yes’ to new experiences.’”
Her year in Moorhead has helped Tangkwa crystallize her dreams for the future. She has fallen in love with the arts, and believes theatre may be in her future. After graduating in two more years from her high school in Phitsanulok, she may consider returning to the United States. If she returns, though, though, it’s unlikely to be Moorhead. Her experience has been life changing, and she says she has enjoyed every moment. But next time, she’ll head to somewhere much warmer.
