Iryna Maksymivna Snahoshchenko, our Ukrainian exchange student, goes all-out with her involvement here at PHS.
With an uncertain future plan, Snahoshchenko is still skimming through her options for what trajectory her life will take, but she’s still willing to share about her exchange experience.
Snahoshchenko said she “got involved in Interact Club, Pride Club, Key Club, Environmental Club, Dance Team, Drama Club, and Speech and Debate Club!”
Drama club is her favorite one among them.
“All taught me a lot of things, and I’m so grateful for each and every person in each particular club; for bringing something new into my life; but especially the drama club, which brought a lot of things to my life,” she said.
“The musical that we did, The Addams Family, was one of the highlights of my exchange year, because I spent so much time with a group of people working on the show, working toward the same goal, and having the show built up,” she said.
“There was just this feeling of family and community; it felt like home.”
Iryna M. snahoshchenko
Snahoshchenko joined Drama club later on in her exchange year.
“Even though I only joined Drama club just a few months ago, it impacted me on so many different levels. I learned a lot and met a lot of wonderful people that I never thought existed,” she said.
On school
Snahoshchenko said that “Perrysburg is the best place that I could’ve been put in for my exchange year. It is such a great school and such a cool area to be an exchange student.”
As to what she likes most about Perrysburg, she said, “everything, honestly. I really love the fact that Perrysburg is really diverse and that there are a lot of different people from all around the world that speaks different languages, and have different backgrounds and interests.”
“I like this school because it’s really big, and there are a lot of things that you can get involved in, which is what I kinda did, and I think it’s a really crucial part of being an exchange student,” she said about Perrysburg.
She said that school in Ukraine “is a little bit different than the school here. Usually, I would not have this much time for this many activities back home.”
“I was involved in dance, but it was outside of school,” she said.
“I also played the piano for a short period of time,” she added.
She said that she “didn’t really get involved in a lot of things in school back in Ukraine because we just simply didn’t have all of the clubs and the activities that PHS has, and also there wasn’t a lot of time.”
On food
Snahoshchenko is a big fan of food in Perrysburg.
“Oh! The food! I love it,” she said.
“Sometimes I do miss food from Ukraine, but the thing I like about food here is that it is so different, and the variety of different foods, from a lot of different cultures, and you can just try anything that you want: Asian food, European food, African food . . . Basically, all types of cuisines that I had never tried before, and I really love it!” she said.
She added, “I’m so thankful that I was given this opportunity to try new food, because I love it!”
Snahoshchenko loves asian food, especially “some of the stir fried dishes that, actually, my host family makes.”
She said that “in Ukraine, we only had one option of lunch food available to us, and here you can basically choose whatever you want to eat.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s better, and I wouldn’t say it’s worse. I would just say that it’s different,” she added.
On classes
Regarding school classes, she said that “there were so many classes that I saw on the list, when they gave me the pink sheet.”
“I was really surprised because in Ukraine we only have 16 classes, and all of them are mandatory.”
Iryna M. Snahoshchenko
“The pink sheet” refers to the PHS Grade Course Planning Guide, a long pink piece of paper that lists all the available classes for the upcoming year.
“But here I saw a variety of all different types of courses that you can take. I saw film literacy. I saw, like, maybe 5 different types of art classes. A lot of different levels of math. A lot of classes connected to music,” she said.
“The one class that really surprised me was film literacy, which is why I took it my first semester,” she added.
She said that it was “such an interesting experience for me, because it was something new, and it transformed my vision of what could be included in a school curriculum.”
But Snahoshchenko added that “choosing classes was actually really hard, because I had to choose only 7 classes, and I really had to prioritize the classes that I really wanted to take, because it’s limited.”
In the world of sports, she said that “this year, I didn’t get involved in any sports, except the dance team, which I had been doing earlier.”
If she could change anything about her exchange experience, she said that she “would give it more time.”
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