The Light - An Alumni Publication Fall 2014 | Page 11

FACES OF YFU

including the one I had been on so many years ago.
The photo of me as a teenager, now displayed
prominently on my mantelpiece, was given to me by
my host family when I went back to Helsinki late last
summer as part of a multi-country trip for the State
Department. The ambassador held a reception at
his residence for the crop of students about to return
home, and my host family and I – reunited for the
first time in 20 years – were his guests of honor. My
speech that day to the American teenagers was

STUDY
ABROAD IN
HIGH SCHOOL TO
DEVELOP COLLEGE SKILLS
Read what alumna Alyssa
Pierce, 2010 Finland-U.S.
Senate Youth Exchange, has
to say about her exchange
experience in US News
and World Report.

about the influence of exchanges, and how my
experience in Finland had prepared me for so much
of the rest of my life. But what I didn’t need to tell
them was obvious from glancing around the room –
at the students laughing over a shared story from the
summer, at my host family wiping away tears from
our reunion: We had all been building bridges, one
day at a time.
- Bay Fang, Finland 1990

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