American students of reddit what do you think of exchange students from europe?

33 comments

  2. Don’t come here and say how every single thing here is “better in France” like this one guy I knew.

    Shit, even the milk was better in France. I was so glad when he left.

  4. Mostly positive. The best was when I hung out with two Dutch exchange students and one pulled the whole “I’m from Europe ever heard of it” schtick. Like she’d say the most condescending shit and the other Dutch student would tell her to shut the fuck up

  5. Not a student anymore, but I love to travel. My neighbors had an exchange student from Italy, and I thought she was hilarious. She thought Olive Garden should be burned to the ground. After having eaten in Italy, I get it.

  7. I’ve worked with foreign workers in kitchens through my last job’s J1 system. They were from India, France, Jamaica, South Korea and South Africa. It was awesome because I met cool people from every country and am still friends with many of them through social media today.

  8. I’m indifferent as long as they’re not rude. A lot of them that I’ve met have this stuck up mentality that drives me insane. That might just be my personal experiences though. One girl I knew from France who had kinda broken English sent me a text one time that I didn’t understand, and when I said I didn’t understand, she said “you’re just reading it wrong” instead of trying to reword it or acknowledging that English wasn’t her first language. Or they’re like “well in Europe, we do (thing) like this” in a condescending tone. Like okay? Not sure what you want me personally to do about that 😭

  9. I’ve only known one and that was back in high school. I believe she was from France. She seemed nice. My brother took her on a date.

  10. This isn’t an answer to your question, but unlocked a memory. We had a bunch of German education people do a tour of our backwoods hillbilly high school for some reason when we were in 9th grade. They were poking their heads in classrooms and we were curious who they were. Our very old, quiet English teacher just poked her head out the window, closed the blinds, and whisper-yelled to us “the Germans are coming!” Then went back to teaching.

  11. My family had a Spanish exchange student and she was amazing. Some of the miscommunications she had with her friend group made us chuckle though.

    The exchange student invites her friend to the mall. Friend replies “I’m down for that!”

    Exchange student get’s a little miffed “Well if you don’t want to come no need to be so abrupt.”

    Friend replies a little confusedly “No! I said I’m totally up for it!”

    …

    Gotta love the English language. Exact opposite statements mean the same thing!

  14. My sister dated an exchange student from Denmark he was pretty chill and polite

  15. I didn’t have many exchange students from Europe going to school in Wyoming but the few we had were all around cool enough that I’d hang out with them. There was a few times where they’d say some stereotypical redditor shit about school shootings or Healthcare but usually a fellow European student would lecture them before I ever needed to. The only exception was an exchange student from Russia who was knee deep in putin propaganda, she was the worst person to be around.

  16. A mixed bag. There was a Dutch exchange student who I was hanging out with a few years back. He was really cool. But some of them come here and do the exact same things they complain about Americans doing in Europe. Getting super drunk, being too loud, just all around obnoxious. 3 years ago I lived in one of the shadier student apartment complexes near campus. My neighbors down the hall were all exchange students from various European countries. They would have loud parties multiple times a week, often going until 1 or 2am. I had a job where I had to get up at 6am at the time and was constantly kept awake by them. They continued to do this after we went into lockdowns because of covid and completely disregarded all health guidelines. If you’re going to complain about how obnoxious Americans are when they visit your country, maybe try to behave better when you come here lol.

  17. Only interacted with German exchange students, they were kind of weird and condescending. My cousin spent a few months as an exchange student in France and had very high opinions of the Irish, Spanish and French students at her school, but you had to speak French in it and the teachers apparently were not sympathetic to the students who had trouble with it.

  18. I worked extensively with European exchange students, both as a student myself and later professionally.

    Some are just here to party, they don’t view the US as “real life”.

    A lot of them are pretty chill, reasonable people, just trying to learn in a new country.

    A lot more are arrogant, condescending and unpleasant. Classic stone house phenomenon at every opportunity. There is nothing that they don’t have a negative opinion on, no opinion that isn’t critical for you to hear. Everything from the color of license plates to the way Americans tie their shoes is subject to their approval.

    We had a German kid, not from a farm mind you, explain to us how wasteful our harvesting methods were and how such issues literally never happen in Germany. It was explained to him that the corn he saw was silage which simply hadn’t been harvested yet but he didn’t want to hear it.

  19. Only know one from around England. I work at a university and she’s alright.

    The ones from south America are just..ass holes. They try to get away with stealing food. 😒 there’s two of them who try this shit over and over again …

    One I don’t know where he’s from but he rolled his eyes at me when I told him im closed on grill.

  20. I knew an exchange student from Ukraine. She was incredible and we still keep in touch every so often. I also knew a student from Russia…he stabbed a kid and got sent back to Russia to be “imprisoned”

  21. Positive, we always thought they were cool and wanted to hang out with them. I knew exchange students from China, Norway, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands

  22. Hosted an Albanian boy .. turned out he was a spy. He was very interesting in going with my dad to work at the nuclear power plant. Still, I miss Adil every day.

  23. The ones I’ve met have been mostly nice. But this one British chick was so arrogant and wouldn’t miss an opportunity to critique. Listen honey, you just had Brexit don’t open your mouth about Trump.

  24. From my experience most of them are nice. Had one dude, not sure where he was originally from, but he played rugby back in Europe and wanted to try American Football. Dude was amazing, and got used to the different rules and play styles really quickly.

    One girl that came from Germany however was not so nice. She hooked up with my best friend, and they made a really cute couple. They went to prom together and a lot of stuff. After she graduated (all foreign exchange students get listed as seniors at my school so they don’t have to take standardized tests like the SAT) it was revealed she was cheating on him with not only another guy in school, but also had a boyfriend back in Germany.

    Obviously not all people are like the girl above, but that’s my overall experience with foreign exchange students at my school.

  25. Exchange student from Germany, super smart, humble kid, showed genuine curiosity about America. We showed him what we could (we were kids) and we were genuinely curious about what it was like where he was from. I would say it was mutually beneficial and enjoyable.

    Unfortunately, there was a different exchange student later on in HS that it didn’t go well at all. An Australian indigenous kid (smart, super nice kid, kept to himself mostly) got bullied all the time and especially when he started dating this one white girl, she had been bullied a lot before he even showed up. That specific situation makes sense in hindsight because later on my friends sister was called the N word by a white girl and my friends sister is pacific islander heritage. This snowballed into a fucked up thing, but no consequences for being racist. This was before social media and cellphone’s with cameras otherwise if it had happened today it would have been a viral firestorm.

    Rich white kids living in a bubble with no consequences or accountability provided by their rich white parents and school administrators afraid of those rich white parents.

    Apologies for the rambling.

  26. I was an exchange student some 20 years ago and just wanted to say I was received with a lot of love and positivity.

    Had a great host family and made a lot of friends, a few of which I am still in touch with today.

  27. I’ve known a few.

    One was a German exchange student. Blonde hair, rectangular build, and agreeable personality. He was a chill dude. Had a few memories with him. One was when we got paired together for a group project where we had to engineer a popsicle stick roller coaster. It was me, him, a huge Mexican American guy (like 6’6” and 350lbs), and a stoner guy. We all met up at the big guy’s house and his mom made us all tortas (Mexican sandwiches) and the German guy was super German and intricately engineered the whole thing like it was out of instinct lmao 😂

    I gave him a ride home in my car and had a nice chat. I’d regularly see him bicycling the sidewalks around town.

    Another was a smaller, effeminate French guy who loved skateboarding. I met him at a house party and he was telling me all about his skateboarding Instagram channel. He got enamored when he found out I was on the diving team. Lol. We went out to have a cigarette and he started tweaking out because he didn’t want to get caught and “get deported”.

    Then there was this Slovakian guy at another party. He was shitfaced and was carelessly leaning up against and flicking his cigarette ashes on the party host’s dad’s classic 1950 something Chevy coupe that was meticulously maintained. Kinda shitty but that may have been something about the car culture here in America that he didn’t know about (classic cars owners treat their cars like a mother treats a newborn).

    Plenty of others too but overall nice impressions. They were all teenagers too and had their limited worldviews just like we did but overall it was fun.

  28. Positive, except for one my friend hosted from Spain. He was quite racist and didn’t like people from China (or Asian people at all because he assumed they were all Chinese). He also told a story about the one black kid at his school who everyone just referred to him by the n-word. He also said it on a tour bus in LA. He claimed that, “it’s not racist, it’s a nickname”

  29. There’s a Italian student at my school he seems pretty cool, and last year there was a German student who complained he couldn’t go to Canada. Kinda a dick tbh.

  31. They’re usually pretty smug. If you’re visiting my country, act like a guest because that’s what you are. I don’t want to constantly hear about how everything is better in their home country.

  32. I’m keeping this real because this is kinda touchy to me.

    I lived in Australia for a semester (roughly 6 months). I can’t remember a single European student who made an effort to communicate with anyone. The Australians were great and always interested in stuff that didn’t involve politics or what not and were pleasantly similar to our own culture. The Vietnamese students were even more GREAT, they’d host BBQ’s throughout the semester on campus and always wanted to socialize but never criticized. The Chinese students were kind of like robots (restricted by CCP minders at the Uni) but they at least made an effort to talk with American students.

    I don’t remember a single interaction with Europeans except for those that involved criticism of Australia or the US.

    Now back in the States I have had plenty of positive interactions with European students but only those who came to the US specifically for study abroad (and already had a positive view of the US) or those that actually had lived there for a time before University.

    However, and I must iterate that America is vast and huge etc…, but in my experience, the majority of interactions with European students hasn’t been great, and it’s always because of superficial things and said by those students who are only here temporarily.

    However, the students I have encountered who stay here for a semester or longer, or actually live here, yes they may have criticisms of the US but it’s the same type of criticism we all have, and I have had far more pleasant experiences with them than those that were only here for a month or so.

  33. Almost all positive! However, I always think of this one time where this German exchange student at my high school was listening in on a conversation my friend and I were having about Spanish class and she started ranting about how “Americans always speak other languages with such thick accents and our Spanish is so bad” in the thickest German accent I have ever heard. It was such a strange cognitive dissonance moment hahaha. She was friendly but there was this weird “elitism” she seemed to want to portray and sometimes it just felt very weird and forced. Everyone who learns a second language later on is going to have an accent, and we never emphasized hers or made fun of it. Also in the US, at least where I am from, we learned Spanish mostly from teachers originating from S. American countries, not Spain, so maybe that was also why she thought our accents were weird? Anyway, I just thought it was a funny moment.

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