Elena Deza Garcia-Señorans is a foreign exchange student from Galicia, Spain. She’s a junior this year and is so far enjoying the hot California weather, as well as La Quinta High.

Since Spanish is her native language, Garcia-Señorans’ parents encouraged her to come to the U.S., to improve her English. Garcia-Señorans said the biggest difference between her school in Spain and LQHS is the size.

“Spain is much smaller; at my old school we only had nine students,” she stated. “This is so much bigger and it offers a lot of extracurricular activities, it’s very different.”

Although she is still adjusting to the class size, she said that she’s made a lot of friends and enjoys talking to them in her spare time.  Garcia-Señorans enjoyed going to a baseball game with her host family earlier this year.

Garcia-Señorans is using the many sports LQHS offers to her advantage with hopes to play softball with the Lady Blackhawks this school year.

Julia Augenstein is also a foreign exchange student from Sinsheim, Germany. She is a sophomore and is enjoying her experience away from home.

“I [was in between] Florida or California because it’s hot and it’s beautiful,” she said. She was glad when she later found out she was coming to California. Although she likes the warm weather, she says it’s sometimes too hot for her liking.

“I love it [here], I’ve met a lot of new people, the high school is big, and there are a lot of sports. I love my host family and the area,” she explained.

For Augenstein, the biggest difference is the school system. Back home, she had 12 or 13 subjects and she says they were much more difficult than her classes here.

“We don’t have sports at school, it’s a club in our city,” she said. “We don’t have that good of a relationship with our teachers. Here, they let us use our phones in class!”