Exchange Student Enjoying Life In Newtown

By Martha Coville

Timo Rey, an exchange student from Switzerland, seems to be settling into life in a small New England town pretty well. He says he has found his niche at Newtown High school, where he joined the football team, and that he gets along well with his host family. He lives with Newtown resident Jennifer Sposta, and her 13-year-old son.

Tall and thin, with longish dirty blond hair and square steel-rimmed glasses, Timo, who grew up close to Zurich, looks like the German-speaking Swiss he is. Still, with his Gap sweatshirt and backpack slung over one shoulder, he blends in easily with the other teenagers at Newtown High School.

The Bee profiled Timo in September last year, and sat down with him recently to see what he makes of the life in the United States. He found students at Newtown High very friendly. He said, “Mainly people just came up to me, and were like, ‘I’ve never seen you here before.’” Timo was placed as a senior at NHS, and said he made several friends in the senior courtyard.

He also said he suited up and joined the school football team, because “I’ve never done ‘American’ football before.” In Europe, football actually refers to soccer. Timo said balancing team sports and school work is “a lot more comfortable” in the US than in Switzerland, because school takes up less of his time here. When he rowed crew in Switzerland, he said, the team practiced from 6 to 10 pm. “So here it’s a lot easier to do sports besides school.”

A Tale Of

Two Small Towns

Timo grew up in a town about the size of Newtown. He lives in Wettingen, whose population of 20,000 compares to Newtown’s 26,000. Although Wettingen is a suburb of Zurich, and only 20 miles form the city, Timo said that the town is surrounded by much more forestry than Newtown. Fairfield and Litchfield Counties may be “the foothills of the Berkshires,” but Timo said the landscape in Wettingen, which situated in the Jura Mountains, is much different. Newtown “definitely has less hills,” he said.

The weather is different, too. Timo said that “the temperature is pretty much the same,” even though Wettingen is about 370 miles north of Newtown, and about 1,000 feet higher above sea level. It does rain a lot in his hometown, though. “In the fall, all it does is rain,” he said. “I actually kinda miss it.”

A European In Newtown

Why did Timo comes to America? “Basically, my dad did an exchange year, and I was brought up with it,” he said. “I also picked Great Britain and New Zealand,” as possible locations for study abroad, he said, because “I wanted to go to an English-speaking country.” Although he was not allowed to pick a particular region within the United States, Timo said that he’s happy to be in Newtown. “I preferred to go to either coast,” he said.

Timo says that he wants to study art when he goes to university, and eventually become a graphic designer. “I draw most of the time,” he said. Still, he acknowledged that English is a useful language to know. “Overall,” He said, “if you want to do international business, English is helpful.”

Like many Swiss, Timo speaks several languages. In addition to his mother-tongue, German, he also speaks French, and his father is a professional translator. “I’ve been studying English for six years, since the eighth grade,” he said. “And last year, at my school, we had immersion, so I had like, three subjects in English.” Timo said he’s comfortable writing in English, too. “I e-mail with my girlfriend at home in English,” he said. Writing “a good essay” for class is, however, still a little tricky.

“The school system is different,” he said. “I have a lot less school here.” At his gymnasium, or high school, Timo said he attends classes for 35 hours every week, “not including study halls.” He is a senior at Newtown High, but his year abroad will not count toward his high school diploma back home. He therefore has another two years before he graduates, and he must also take the Abitur examination before he can go onto university.

Last semester, Timo said he was placed in level 2 classes because of his language disability. “The classes here are kinda too easy for me,” he said, “at my old school, everything was [closer] to the AP level.”

What about cultural differences? Perhaps because of the supposedly prolonged adolescence American teenagers are subject too, Timo said that in the United States, “the difference between adults and children is huge, while in Switzerland, I felt more equal.” Although there are no real regional differences between the dishes served in Switzerland and locally, Timo said, “At the first, the food, there’s a lot more grease and sweetness. It made my stomach hurt at first, but I like it now. And it seems like in my family, at home, we had a lot more fresh food.” American wastefulness also surprised his Swiss environmental consciousness. “There’s a lot more waste with paper plates and plastic cups, “ he said.

But the biggest adjustment of all was the “loss of freedom” he suffered when he came over. The famously punctual Swiss trains (and public buses) gave him the freedom, even as a young teenager, to go where he wanted. Since he does not have a car (or a license) here, Timo said he feels much more constrained.

Timo just returned from Detroit, where he visited some friends over winter break, and he went to New York City last fall. He’s also been to the Rhode Island beaches. He said he would like to go back to New York, maybe in March, to catch some of the spring art fairs, and to take in some of the tourist attractions, like Times Square, Fifth Avenue, and Rockefeller Center, and “more of Central Park. I’d like to go to Boston, too,” Timo said.