ASSE Orientation Weekend

I dont know about anyone else, but if I were an ASSE (American Scandinavian Student Exchange) international student new to America, I’d want to go to the beach for my orientation weekend. Because, the beach! The ocean! The boardwalk! Candy Kitchen’s salt water taffy! Thrasher’s boardwalk fries! A cornucopia of East Coast beach staples that I grew up with. If I sound biased, I am!

New students to the ASSE Crew

At the beginning of each school year, the new group of ASSE International students must go through required orientation. Some regions, like the fabulous Maryland, Delaware, DC, and West Virginia Region (I’m kinda biased here too), do this over a weekend. And not any weekend in just any place, but a weekend at the beach. An amazing host family allows us the use of their 5 bedroom beachhouse and we are extrememly grateful to them for their generosity!!!! Our fantastic and dedicated cadre of area reps pull logistical wizardry with food, beds and bedding, a weekend timeline, a community service project, and a trip to Grotto Pizza that involves the use of no less than 15 tables and two servers.

Beach House Weekend Orientation

On Friday night, 22 students, eight area reps, and one state coordinator descend on the beach house. I walk into the house and stand still for a minute to absorb the atmosphere. I already feel like I’m standing in the ocean as the controlled chaos of teenage energy ebbs, flows, and swirls around me. It doesn’t matter what country they are from, teenage exuberance is universal! The entryway is already overflowing with shoes tumbled over one another in their owners haste to shed them. I leave mine with the rest of the pile and hail the other reps who are already busy unloading the mountain of supplies they’ve prepared or procured.

Reps to the Rescue

As students haul in supplies from the cars, Eileen is making sure everything we need is present and accounted for. Suzanne, master packer and organizer, is arranging food in the refrigerator. Melanie and I jump in and help them both. Esther-Marie is organizing the students into their rooms, distributing bedding, and hugging everyone. All the reps here give hugs when needed or wanted, and it’s clear they care. Alisha, Heather, and Shelley all pitch in to provide much needed transportation, vital orientation information, and help wherever it is needed. Jocelyn, our diminuative state coordinator, is sometimes mistaken for one of the students. What she lacks in size, however, she makes up for in tenacity. A quiet force to be reckoned with, she works hard for these students many months before she meets them. If I sent my kid to the other side of the world, this is the crew I’d want them with.

ASSE Orientation Weekend Unites

Learning the required material for their stay in the US is the primary objective for the weekend, but I quickly realize the other important, unspoken objective: we are building a group, a family. We’re making meaningful connections by spending time together. Each student will build a bond with their host family because they are with them on a daily basis, but it suddenly clicks for me that the connections a student has should also include the people who aren’t in their daily circle. Everyone at ASSE is working as a whole for the good of each student and host family. We need to be more than just behind-the-scenes players. We need to network with each student, family, area rep, and state coordinator too. This weekend starts that process in earnest. I mean, try staying in a house with 31 people for a weekend and NOT make connections!

Ocean Orientation

Once the students navigate through the orientation process on Saturday morning, the reward of the beach is now upon them. Students from land locked countries are seeing the ocean up close for the first time. It’s such a joy for me to watch them as they first see it. I’ve grown up in the water, so seeing this world through their eyes helps me appreciate it so much more. Swimming in my beloved ocean with these students is a wonderful experience. It’s incredibly endearing when some of the students more fearful of the water seek reassurance from me by trustingly reaching for my hand. Teaching them how to really enjoy the water makes my day. So I decide not to ruin that by telling them about the little stingray I notice chasing its lunch through the water around us.

Keeping It Clean

Sunday morning is community service day in a local, overcast beach town. Teams of no less than two receive gloves, trash bags, and instructions on the quadrant of the town in which they’re to collect trash. The buzz of their conversations fade as they wander off in their prescribed directions. They return an hour later with their bags full of trash. The reps take pictures of the students with their “prizes” and they’re quickly deposited in the trash bins just as the drizzle of rain turns into a steady fall.

We head back to the house to clean up and ready for our departures. Our constant motion this weekend has kept us so busy we’ve reached the end before we wanted to. Some of the students ask me hopefully if we will have more time together like this soon. And that’s when I know this weekend has worked its magic.