Halloween fun gets an international spin

SANDPOINT — For some of Sandpoint High School's foreign exchange students, Sunday marked their first pumpkin carving experience.

"The whole pumpkin and carving thing is a whole new concept for them," said Pierce Smith, SHS Interact Club advisor. "Some of the kids were very artistic and did some great jobs — just creative."

The SHS Interact Club hosted six of this year's exchange students at SHS counselor Jeralyn Mire's home in Sagle for the pumpkin carving event. With pumpkin seeds "flying everywhere," Mire said it was a lot of fun to see the students enjoying the experience, which also included a fire, hot dogs, s'mores and roasted pumpkin seeds.  

"I think it was fun to see the interaction between our high school students and the foreign exchange students," Mire said. "They just really were engaged and it was a fun experience for the foreign exchange students. Some of our students were telling stories of what they've dressed up as (for Halloween) — it was really fun and there was a lot of sharing, which I think was neat."

Mire said her daughter is currently overseas visiting a student they hosted eight years ago, pointing to the lifetime connections that can be formed through the experience.

SHS has nine foreign exchange students this year, including Juan Olaso and Juan Brizuela Dorado from Spain; Greta Caratozzolo, Beatrice Sini and Lorenzo Alessandrino from Italy; Gabriela Alarcon from Chile; "Daniel" Chen Hung-Wei from Taiwan; Moritz Berke from Germany; and Natasja Timpen from the Netherlands.

"I am pleased we are able to offer this opportunity to several students from around the world and give them the experience of our customs, education and culture," said SHS counselor Linda Sprinkle in an email to the Daily Bee. "Their participation in our school and community is beneficial to us all."

Three of the foreign exchange students from Chile, Taiwan and Italy are sponsored by the Rotary Club of Sandpoint, of which Smith is a member. In exchange, three outbound students sponsored by Rotary went to Chile, Sweden and Germany.

Smith said the Interact Club is like high school Rotary. The SHS chapter is in its sixth year, he said, with a chapter in Ponderay and one just starting up at the Forrest M. Bird Charter School.

Each year, Interact students take on at least two projects: one local and one international. Smith said the students often work on more than one local project and it is their decision what to work on. The students meet each Tuesday and this year's club has a theme of literacy, with ideas such as "little libraries" that are similar to mailboxes with books in them that people can borrow and return, or replace with a different book.

The big project this year is to raise money for the Book Trust, which Sandpoint Rotary is also involved in. Book Trust, locally sponsored by The Village Green Project, gives first- through third-grade students in the Lake Pend Oreille School District a budget of $8 per month, Smith said, to purchase books of their choosing. The kids may be able to budget one or several books depending on what they choose.

"They learn multiple things when they get to pick what they want to read and they have to budget," Smith said. "So it's really worked well."

STCU holds a "$100 challenge" each year, giving chosen applicants $100 of seed money to help with fundraising efforts, and a chance to win $2,500. Interact students won the challenge two years ago and donated it to the food bank. Smith said it is one of the fundraising projects the club is working on this year to raise money for the Book Trust.

The Interact Club interacts with the community, as well as other SHS clubs and students, like the pumpkin carving event which he said the club has done for several years.

"It was really a chance to get to know the exchange students and let them know who we are, that they can join the club if they want, and to help integrate them into the school," Smith said.