Rufus Elging is our most recent exchange student. He comes from Stockholm, Sweden and from a family of four: his mother is a book editor; father is the librarian for the Swedish military, and a brother. His host family has a mother, father, 2 sons and 2 daughters and one away at college. He is starting to get used to having so many people in the household. He says the 8-year-old “sister” follows him around like a puppy.
In Sweden, the equivalent to our high school is called gymnasium, which covers grades 10 to 12. Rufus is in the 11th grade over there and is considered a junior here. Sweden does not have sports as part of the school system. Sports are a separate endeavor and according to Rufus, you must start in a sport when you are young. That is why he was so glad that his host family signed him up for some sports activities at his school here, including cross country this fall. He likes basketball, running and soccer (called football outside of the United States). He tasted turkey for the first time when he had a turkey leg at the Minnesota State Fair (kudos to the Miller family for getting him there on the final day). The turkey leg was so big he cradled it like a baby.
Rufus said that he was looking forward to taking the bus to the Twin Cities, only to find out that we don’t have comparable mass transit. In Stockholm the metro stations and tunnels are filled with art. It is one of the tourist attractions. They have guided art tours of the 15 stunning subway stations. Bus service covers outlying areas.
Rufus looks forward to spending more time in nature because it is different here than in Sweden. He is most disappointed in the yellow school buses (remember they have great mass transit in Sweden, so he is used to good transportation). He is not used to so much math and didn’t realize that he would have math every day. He didn’t realize that chemistry would have so much math.
If we go to Sweden, he recommends that we visit the archipelago islands near Stockholm. There are in total 267,570 islands in Sweden, fewer than 1000 of which are inhabited. Their total area is 1.2 million hectares, which corresponds to 3 percent of the total land area of Sweden. Rufus also recommends that we visit the natural history museum.
Rufus’s English is excellent, and we asked why he spoke English so well. He said that they start mandatory English classes in third grade, and he also improved his English by watching movies in English. When he was asked about dating, he told us that he had to obey the four D’s for Rotary Exchange students – No Dating, No Driving, No Drugs and No Drinking.