Pottsboro High School - Cardinal Yearbook (Pottsboro, TX)

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Growing, Laughing America. lt's something that we will take for granted. But for two foreign exchange students, it was something to learn, From the time Marek Harloff of Hamburg, West Germany arrived on August 29, 1987 and Carlos Ernanny of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil arrived on January 17, 1988 until they left, they never stopped learning new things and leaving small tidbits of themselves and their cultures everywhere they went. There were two main differences noticed by both boys. The biggest was in the educational systems. In Germany the classes are taught on a higher level and students cannot choose electives until after the tenth grade. There are no electives in the Brazillian school system. The mandatory subjects in Brazil are also much stiffer than the ones in America. They include Portuguese, English, French, chemistry, math, biology, physics, geography, philosophy, and history. They also thought Americans were more patriotic than their compatriots. Both of the seventeen year olds went from living in very large cities to a city with a population of only 895. Carlos liked the idea simply for the fact it was in Texas, but he had wanted to go to California before he got to know the people. He simply said, I loved it here. Marek didn't find out how big Pottsboro was until he saw it but didn't mind since he'd been living in a bigger city all of his life and thought it could be interesting to live in a smaller town for some time. --e 2X?Z'f?: ' ' ' , ml 8 Qi .4 ,Q ...Q . .1..-ls..-a..w..,,..,,.,. Carlos takes a break from jumping on the trampoline to pause for a picture. Carlos turns to listen to a group of people predicting which plays will advance out of regional competition. 123 Marek celebrated his 17th birthday April 22 during the regional trip to Stephenville. Harloff's reaction to the surprise party? All of this is really too muchll'

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Learning, Sharing - And it was interesting. The first goal of both was to be able to overcome if 2 the language barrier. Both toted their dictionaries along with them everywhere they went, but it was a little easier for Marek. He had a command of enough conversational English to communicate fairly well. Carlos's first thought when he realized no one here spoke Portuguese was I'm in a big trouble! He only knew yes and uno. By the time they left, both of them were writing essays in Mrs. Garvin's English I class and in Mrs. Cassell's English III, and Marek was winning Best Actor awards for his role in the state-winning UIL one act play 'tlnterviewfl Cln Germany, the teenagers don't receive much recognition for their accomplishments. This made Marek's awards even more important to him, especially, when his parents visited during Spring Break and got to see him win Best Actor in district OAP competition.J Both of the boys admitted that after speaking English for so long, they forgot some of their own language when speaking on the phone to their relatives and friends back home. Marek said, When I first came I had to translate from German to English. Now I have to translate from English to German. Carlos didn't think this would be a problem once they got home though. Carlos left Pottsboro June 12th to visit his uncle in Miami, Florida. He then went to New York to meet some friends from Brazil. He returned home July 24th. Marek applied for and received a visa extension so he could stay a little longer. Over the summer he learned to water ski and knee board, and he Earned his Texas driver's license. He flew home to Germany July 15t . Not only was America a growing and learning experience for Marek and Carlos, they helped us see how different each of us are and taught us to appreciate what we have in America. We grew very close to them through both of their stays here and will miss them. But our love for them and memories of them will stay with us forever. Marek finally finds time to take a rest when the state meet is over and the hustle and bustle of doing a production has ended. Robin Barrett, Kelly Cassell and others react to the announcement that Marek had earned Best Actor credits at regionals. 122

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