De Pere students travel abroad to Sweden for cultural experience

DE PERE – Six students and two teachers from De Pere are traveling on Feb. 27 to Åmål, Sweden for over a week to immerse themselves in the culture.

From De Pere High School, Tudor Cristescu, Sam Hornseth and Katie Soquet will travel along with Charity Kibbe, Holt Wojciechowski and Penny Youngworth from West De Pere High School.

Åmål is the sister city to De Pere and the two cities have exchanged adult delegations before, but this will be the first time De Pere students travel to Åmål.

The group consists of three freshmen and three seniors from West De Pere and De Pere high schools along with teachers Kelly Suda from West De Pere and Randy Soquet from De Pere.
In Åmål, the students will stay with a host family and shadow high school students as they attend the local high school, Karlbergsgymnasiet.

Karlbergsgymnasiet has only 800 students compared to the combined over 2,000 students at both West De Pere and De Pere high school.

Åmål sits on the banks of Lake Vänern, the largest lake both in Sweden and the European Union as a whole and includes over 20,000 islands.

Karitas Lif Hjelm, a high schooler from Åmål who is here in De Pere for a year, talked with the De Pere students about the culture and city.

Hjelm mentioned that Åmål is surrounded by nature, “It’s so peaceful, it’s so quiet, it’s not in a big city...The nature is very close by. Instead of driving to the woods or to a hike, you just walk a very short distance.”

Nature isn’t the only thing the group will be looking at, they will also dive into cultural experiences such as watching floorball and hockey games, meeting with local political leaders, visiting Viking ruins and taking in the 500 year old architecture around them.

“Its such an old city compared to De Pere, the buildings carry a lot more history than around here,” one of the students said.

Outside of shadowing high school students, they will visit the middle school and the elementary school where the De Pere fifth graders’ pen pals attend.

Walkability of Åmål is something that both the students are looking forward to as Hjelm said that everything is very close by, the grocery store is only a 15 minute walk away from her house.

Students are also excited to meet new people and see the differences between our culture and Sweden’s including their food, households and more.

“Its important to realize that there is more outside of the United States of America, there’s opportunities out there and it’s important to keep an open mind.” one student mentioned.

Sunday, Mar. 8 will be the group’s return date to De Pere.