At the beginning of class the teacher stepped into her office with a few students. Before going in she let the other students know she had an announcement, but she had to discuss it with a few students first. Later, they all walked out at the same time. The three students looked excited, and the teacher broke the news. There would be a transfer student from Switzerland joining the yearbook staff.

When Noreen Wieland could no longer stay with her host family in Nevada, she simply found a new one in Texas. Although she already graduated high school in her home country, she is enrolled as a junior for the second semester.

“[I came] for the American experience and to improve my English,” Wieland said. “I’ve wanted to come to America and do an exchange here since I was 6 years old.”

Having an eight-hour school day shocked Wieland, because in Switzerland a school day is 10 hours long. Students are also expected to complete 10 to 15 classes per year, contrasting the typical seven or eight classes required in America.

“We skipped the whole elementary school thing,” Wieland said. “We just have kindergarten [for] two years [when we turn four], then five years of middle school, then four years of high school, and then you’re graduated, and you’re only 15 or 16 years old. We can’t choose our classes, [but they] are smaller [in Switzerland]. You kind of learn more, since the classes are smaller, and it’s more individual.”

Wieland explained the grading system is also different here. In her home country they use a numbering system from one to six, where six is the best and one is the worst, unlike the United States which uses a letter system from A to F.

“It’s easier [here], like a multiple choice test,” Wieland said. “I loved it, I’d never had a multiple choice test.”

Although Wieland has known English since she was 12, she admits it was taught a little differently. She also says she prefers American English, because it is less formal.

“They’re supposed to teach us British English, and then when you come here, some words are different, and you say some stuff different,” Wieland said. “Like holiday and vacation, or soccer and football. [But] I was taught both, [since] my teacher didn’t really like British English, so she’d be like ‘Okay, but in American English you can’t say holiday, you have to say vacation. [In Texas] you have a different accent, and words that they never said [in Nevada]. Like my host mom, she always says like ‘big ol’ and ‘y’all’.”

As accustomed as Americans are to having activities and extracurriculars outside of the electives taken during the school day, that is not something found in Switzerland.

“[I like that here] you have like sports after school or clubs and all that kind of stuff,” Wieland said. “[We don’t have] the school spirit thing at all, the sports teams and everything, like football. We watched an NFL game in New York [in 2013], live. I was like ‘Oh! Football is great!”

Once a part of the student body, Wieland decided to join yearbook due to her love for photography. She is also the Lady Raiders softball manager, due to the lack of the sport in her home country.

“In Switzerland we don’t have a photography class, or a Yearbook, at all, so it was like I kind of wanted to see how it worked and all,” Wieland said. “It was hard to expect anything, since I’ve never even had a yearbook. [And] because we don’t have [softball] over there, I was like ‘I have to join this.’ It’s fun, I can kind of do stuff, like bat, or pitch. It’s like a sport that we don’t have, so I kind of wanted to experience that too.”

Wieland’s experience has been anything but ordinary. Even with people asking her if there are buildings in Switzerland, or why she does not look Asian even though she comes from the middle of Europe, she says people were simply excited since the school rarely receives transfer students. Although she had been to America before on vacation, Wieland had never been to Texas and says she didn’t have many expectations.

“I always wanted to go to Texas, so it was like ‘it has to be good,’” Wieland said. “Like the movies and stuff, you know it’s not going to be like that, so you’re like ‘I don’t really know what to expect.’”