Welcome to Pleasanton! Welcome to Pleasanton! (July 08, 2005)

Students take part in cultural exchange with Tulancingo, Mexico
by Rebecca Guyon

Pleasanton's relationship with sister city Tulancingo, Mexico continues to stay strong this summer thanks to students taking part in the Pleasanton-Tulancingo Sister City Association exchange program. Five students from Tulancingo arrived in Pleasanton June 20 and since then have been living with local families and touring the Bay Area. They will stay until July 18 when they will return home, but this time with six Pleasanton students in tow. The Pleasanton students will stay with the Tulancingo students and their families in Mexico until August 22.

"I've enjoyed making new friends and meeting new people," said Amador Valley High School student Chase Garibalidi. "It's been good teaching them about America and them telling me about Mexico."

The Tulancingo students are Oscar Obregon, Tania Salinas, Lupita Alfaro, Paula Lazcano and Steffi Garibaldi. Along with Chase, Danielle Gwin and Erin Brandes of Amador and Tyler Cornfield, Sarah Cooley and Chip Testa of Foothill High School are representing Pleasanton in the exchange.

"I'm making a lot more friends, speaking the language and learning the culture," Pleasanton student Erin Brandes said.

The teenage exchange is a key component in the Sister City program and has been instituted since the relationship was established 22 years ago, said youth exchange coordinator Pat Murray. To be eligible, students must be at least 15 years old, a sophomore or junior in high school and have taken a minimum of two years of Spanish. Once a student meets those requirements, he or she goes through an extensive interview process that is judged on a point-scale. Ten students applied this year and six were chosen. Normally, only five are picked, but this year the fifth and sixth place students were separated by a fraction of a point, so the exchange program decided to make an exception, Murray said.

Of course one of the main draws of any exchange program is the chance for students to improve their skills in a second-language through immersion, and this program is no different. The Tulancingo students are constantly working on their English, and Brandes says her exchange sister Tania Salinas has improved dramatically since she arrived.

"I hope I'm as good as she is when I go (to Mexico)," Brandes said.

In addition to learning, the students have been having a lot of fun, too, and have gone on many activities since the group arrived including touring Alcatraz, playing at Paramount's Great America and viewing July 4 fireworks. The Tulancingo students even took part in a July 4 celebration at Lions Wayside Park where they sang two songs, "Super Trooper," in English and "Calendar Girl," in Spanish.

Families are an integral part of the program too, and in fact, it is the host families that schedule the majority of activities for the visiting student, Murray said. This allows the visiting students to see the best of the Bay Area and experience living in Pleasanton.

"Pleasanton is a very beautiful city," said Tulancingo student Paula Lazcano. "The people are very charming. It's better than I thought it would be."

Many of the students who take part in the exchange continue their interest in Spanish and give back to the Pleasanton community, Murray said. For example, two students who took part in last year's exchange are currently translating books from English to Spanish for Valley View Elementary School's immersion program.

"The students come back with such a different concept of what they want to do," Murray said. "They want to do something where they can use their multi-lingual skills, and others want to go back to Mexico. Some even want to someday be a representative of the U.S. to Mexico."

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