Paying it Forward: A Cultural Exchange

Sue Ormandy and her husband Jeff of Henrietta have welcomed seven exchange students from four different countries into their home

By Grace Scism

 

Sue Ormandy knew little about the student exchange program at her Leroy high school when she agreed to accompany her friend to an informational meeting in the late 1970s.

When Ormandy got home, she was excited to tell her parents all about it. But with eight children, they couldn’t afford to send her to a foreign country. She pursued the opportunity anyway and ended up earning a scholarship that would make a year studying in Brazil possible.

Ormandy arrived in Brazil for the second semester of her junior year knowing some Spanish. The official language there is Portuguese, similar to Spanish, so she caught on quickly.

“I went there as probably a very introverted person, but I had to talk to people and learn the language and insert myself to make friends,” remembered Ormandy. “I had to come out of my comfort zone every day.”

After spending the second semester of her junior year in a Dutch cooperative in the middle of Brazil with a family that had seven children, Ormandy went to a Brazilian family for the first semester of her senior year. It was there that she was able to truly immerse herself in Brazilian culture.

To this day, Ormandy is still in touch with that family and they have visited each other over the past 40 years, most recently in February when Sue and her husband, Jeff, traveled to Brazil.

“I still love making Brazilian food, especially brigadeiro, a confection made with sweetened condensed milk, Nestle’s Quick and butter,” said Ormandy, who learned the recipe from her Brazilian “mother,” Ivoneide.

With all that Ormandy gained from her experience learning abroad, she has paid it forward many times over.

The program — AFS Exchange Programs — is an exchange, so the expectation is that families who send a child abroad will also host a student from abroad. A few years later, her mother hosted a student from Argentina and a few years after that, a girl from Brazil, Astrid, who arrived with another girl, Paloma, who would be living with a family in Rochester.

The girls stayed in touch and Ormandy, now married and with a baby, learned that Paloma was very unhappy with her host family in Rochester. Ormandy was living in Rochester and petitioned to have Paloma stay with her and Jeff and continue attending Wilson Magnet High School.

“So that was our first hosting experience,” said Ormandy.

Over the next nine months, the Ormandys would take Paloma to Niagara Falls, Michigan to visit Sue’s sister, baseball and hockey games and teach her how to make chocolate chip cookies. They visited her and her family in Brazil twice and even brought the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies when they visited in 2019.

An ad in the Pennysaver a couple of years after Paloma left prompted Sue to pursue hosting again.

“I just called to inquire, then out of the blue, I received a call from Fabio, who lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Well, after talking to him, we couldn’t say no. So he came and it was a great experience,” she said.

“We had two kids by then and Fabio was pretty amazing because he came from a family where he was an only child — a pretty affluent family that had a maid and all that,” said Jeff. “And here we had two little kids plus a daycare in our home. He’s helping do the dishes and holding little kids and all this stuff I don’t think he had a lot of experience with.”

Years later, Fabio asked Sue and Jeff to stand up for him at his wedding and their son, Ben, was the ring bearer.

The connections from Sue’s original trip to Brazil continued when her Brazilian “cousin,” Dalia asked if she could visit.

“The second night she was here, I came down with bronchitis. Dalia wanted to go out, so Jeff invited his very nerdy, kind of introverted friend, Jim, to come along,” remembered Sue. “Well, they ended up talking all night and have now been married for 35 years, are living right here in Webster and have two children and two grandchildren!”

Over the years, the Ormandys would host more students, some for just a summer and others for an entire school year — some through their Brazilian connections and some through AFS.

The program shut down during COVID-19, but when students were allowed to travel again, the Ormandys decided to open their home once again.

“We were asked if we would host a Muslim student — that we would just have to be aware of that practice. And the main thing is that we don’t serve pork. Easy. OK,” said Sue.

Hossam arrived from Gaza in 2021, long before the war broke out. He was an exchange student through AFS, but also participated through the U.S. Department of State’s Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program.

YES gives high school students from countries with significant Muslim populations the opportunity to live and study for an academic year in the United States. YES students serve as “youth ambassadors” helping educate Americans about their home country and culture. The YES program was established by Congress in October 2002 in response to the events of September 11, 2001.

In addition to attending high school, the students are required to participate in community service and group activities organized by YES, such as trips to Gettysburg and Ganondagan to learn about American history. The students then visit fifth grade classes in the Rochester City School District to talk about their experiences.

Hossam attended Rush-Henrietta High School where he excelled, even earning six college credits before returning to Gaza.

“Hossam got to experience so many things during that school year, so many different places,” said Jeff.

He visited the Ormandy’s now grown children — Elizabeth and Matt in California and Ben in New Jersey, visited their family in Florida and Michigan and toured New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

While Hossam was learning about the United States, the Ormandys and their family were learning about Gaza.

“The stereotypes that we have of their people and the stereotypes that they have of people living in the United States — they dissolve,” said Sue. “You find out you have a lot more in common with people than differences.”

Hossam returned to Gaza after his senior year to complete one more year of high school. His hope was to return to the United States to attend college and was accepted at several. He finally decided on Roberts Wesleyan University where he received the best scholarship.

The Ormandys, now retired from their careers as social workers, welcomed Hossam back into their home where he now lives and attends classes as he pursues a degree in biomedicine. The arrangement saves Hossam the cost of room and board.

“I would like to become a doctor,” said Hossam, whose mother encouraged him to apply for the exchange program that opened the doors of opportunity. His mother and two of his three sisters and brother still live in war-torn Gaza.

“The situation at home hasn’t changed. It’s only gotten worse over time. No one should be allowed to live in circumstances like that,” said Hossam.

His sisters have spent several months completing paperwork to attend college in another country, but the process is long.

“I’ve actually thought about going to be with them, but my mother says no. She is so happy that I was able to get out,” said Hossam. “She is the one who set my mind straight about the future. I’m the person who is going to help them get out eventually. That is my whole point right now.”

In the meantime, Sue has worked as a coordinator, checking in on exchange students periodically to make sure everything was going well. One student, Rafsan from Bangladesh, was not having a good experience with his host family, so the Ormandys became a host family again so he could continue his year at Rush-Henrietta Senior High School.

Since then, the Ormandys have opened their home to several of Hossam’s friends, most of whom are Muslim, so they don’t have to pay to stay on campus during college breaks. They celebrate birthdays and holidays together; cutting down and decorating a Christmas tree, enjoying turkey with all the trimmings and gathering in the backyard with noisemakers and hats on New Year’s Eve.

“They are all such polite, caring, nice kids,” said Sue.

Having these students as part of their family has opened the Ormandys’ eyes to places they previously couldn’t even point to on a map.

“We see on the news what the media tells us is happening in other parts of the world and we feel bad, but having these kids come and live amongst families, not as tourists, really gives us a different perspective,” said Sue. “Hate is being promoted so unnecessarily. And these programs, they’re trying to mitigate that.”

To learn more about the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study program and apply to host a student, visit yesprograms.org. To learn more about AFS Exchange Programs and apply to host a student, visit AFS.org.