The School Newspaper of Harriton High School

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The School Newspaper of Harriton High School

The Harriton Banner

The School Newspaper of Harriton High School

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Skating to America

Imagine leaving your lifelong friends as you pack up all your belongings, staring at the emptiness you once called home. You hop on a plane and anticipate a long flight – and a mysterious adventure living in a foreign country. The obstacles ahead are immense; you are about to enter an entirely new culture with different ideals and values. Not to mention, it is imperative that you master a new language to communicate with the natives.

Adapting to high school is difficult enough for teens, let alone having move to a foreign country to enter a high school where you need to completely adapt to a new social and academic system. Adela and Lara Avedian, have done more than imagine this. For them, it became reality.

Most of us have never heard of Uppsala, Sweden, and it seems like a world away. To senior Adela and sophomore Lara, it is home. Uppsala is the fourth largest city of Sweden, home to about 140,000 residents. It takes around 10 to 30 minutes to travel to the different perimeters and suburbs of Uppsala. Most places are easy to travel to by walking. There are about ten high schools in the city, from grades 10-12.

Clearly, in terms of size, Uppsala is no Philadelphia. Though the city is small, it is most definitely clean and beautiful place to visit and live. The Avedian sisters moved to America this past June after their mother received a job offer in the Philadelphia area. Fortunately, they were somewhat familiar with America because they have family living in Pennsylvania and California and have visited them every year.

It would be difficult to imagine going to school and having to learn and speak in a foreign language. Most of us would never dream of being able to make that transition. Lucky for Adela, she is fluent in Swedish, Armenian, and English, and speaks some Spanish. She has been in the International Baccalaureate program for the past two years and has grown accustomed to taking classes in English.

Adela and Lara have grown accustomed to adapting to different cultures. No strangers to world travel, they have toured Europe, visiting Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Poland, Italy, Mallorca, and Gran Canaria, just to name a few. “Our family is all about traveling and I love to get to know new cultures and experience other people’s lifestyles,” says Adela.

How do the lives of the Avedian sisters in America differ from those in Sweden? In Sweden, school started at different times every day. The earliest school began was 8:30 a.m. and the latest was noon. That sounds a bit more manageable than the 7:30 a.m. we all strive to be awake for! Based on the starting time, the end time of school ranged from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Adela and Lara have quickly adapted to the American lifestyle. They love living in America and benefitting from all it has to offer. However, one aspect of living here that they find difficult is the distance between different places. In the city of Uppsala, transportation was more easily accessible than it is in America. The city life allowed the sisters to travel in a shorter amount of time than they do here.

Adela’s perception of Harriton is much different from what she thought it would be. “I thought Harriton would be like the movie “Mean Girls”, but it’s just like my old school.” Adela and Laura have eased into their new school and have made many new friends. They have also reconnected with people they have met during their travels to America to visit their family annually.

Adela and Lara embody the spirit of Harriton, and have followed suit by getting involved and showing their school pride. They frequently sport their cheerleading uniforms during and after school. Adela joined the cheerleading squad because it is the “closest she will get to ice skating.” Interestingly enough, Adela was a professional figure skater in Sweden!

When she was five years old, Adela began skating. When she was eight years old, she started her figure staking training. For four years, Adela competed in Swedish national contests for the city of Uppsala. Unfortunately, Adela has put her figure skating career on hold because of her transition to America and the lack of time in her busy schedule. “I love it, I can’t wait to get back on track when I do have time,” Adela says. Adela’s training schedule was quite rigorous. She used to train either in the morning before school or after school, and she would compete every other weekend. “All of my coaches were Russian and barely knew any Swedish. They expected an extremely high level of discipline and were very harsh,” remarks Adela. Not only did she have strenuous training with figure skating, but Adela had to take ballet classes and go to the gym to focus on her balance, strength, agility, flexibility, and stamina.

The challenge of moving away from home, ,saying goodbye to your friends, and in Adela’s case, sacrificing pursuit of your dream is not to be taken lightly. To ease into a new culture as the girls have done is commendable. It takes open-mindedness, courage and flexibility.

But then again, according to Adela, we are not that different from one another. “Americans are a lot louder but otherwise the same as Swedes.”

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