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| Slinger High School foreign exchange student from Thailand, Yanisa Lekprasert (Atom). |
By: Elysia Dowd, News Editor
Posted December 1st, 2015
This year Slinger High School is blessed with four foreign exchange students. Each one has a great story to share and so much to add to the school, so these articles are meant to show a snapshot of these awesome people.
Yanisa Lekprasert is from Thailand. She doesn’t go by Yanisa though; in Thailand kids make nicknames and hers is Atom. The A is for the first letter in her mother’s name, the T for her father’s name ( and the OM just fills in the name). Back home she doesn’t have any siblings, but she is close with her parents, and her aunt and grandparents live nearby.
Atom started off her visit to America right with three different camping trips. On her last trip it was pretty chilly and even frosted during the night, which she is not used to at all. She is excited and a little scared to experience snow!
Atom has tons of interests! She loves baking and cooking, especially decorating cupcakes; she even dreams about opening a bakery one day. Dancing is a huge passion for her. Atom started all of her dancing with ballet when she was young, later on taking jazz and then hip hop. She really misses it, and would love to join a dance team here. She also did gymnastics and Tae Kwan Do when she was little, but she doesn’t have the time anymore. She even has an artsy side, and loves taking and editing photos and videos. If all of that wasn’t enough, Atom also took piano lessons, and although she’s done with formal lessons, she keeps playing on her own. Because of these musical and dance interests, she is really looking forward to trying out for the spring play. Atom is also hoping to mix things up and try some more American sports like basketball.
School in America is way different than back in Thailand. Things like wearing uniforms and taking your shoes off when you go inside to show respect are the most obvious differences. The ability to choose your classes at Slinger was super exciting for Atom, since she had never experienced that before. She chose classes like photography and gym so she could enjoy some of her hobbies. Gym class is also much more involved here, and Atom loves that! Even though she has taken English since kindergarten, she says that English is still her hardest class here. In Thailand they don’t have school dances the way we do, so Atom had a blast at Homecoming. She really loves school here. She was worried that it would be like Mean Girls, but thankfully everyone is helpful and nice.
The Americans eat very differently than how the Thai eat. We eat WAY more food in America, but she likes all of the food here. Her favorite is probably chicken tenders. Even so, Atom misses some of the food from home; the Thai food here doesn’t quite do it justice. She particularly craves Tomyumkung, a spicy shrimp and mushroom soup with herbs, sometimes with coconut milk. The Thai people also have some very different language customs. To be polite, girls add the word “ka” and guys the word “kab” at the end of sentences. For instance, is Atom wanted to say hello, she might say “sawasdee ka”. And, unlike many other Asian languages, Thai has an alphabet, but it has 44 characters!
