A long way from Armenia

Exchange student from city of 1.6 million adapting to rural southeast Missouri

NOREEN HYSLOP - nhyslop@dailystatesman.com Eighteen-year-old Lianna Hovhannisyan stands alongside the marker at Dexter High School, where she is enrolled as a junior. The Armenia-born student is spending the school year with a Dudley family through the Future Leaders Exchange Program.

Lianna Hovhannisyan is a long way from home, but seemingly right "at home" in her Dexter High School surroundings.

Lianna is an exchange student whose home is in Armenia. Through the States' 4-H International Exchange Program and its foreign equivalent, the Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX), she is spending the entire 2015-16 school year in Stoddard County, residing with the Kevin and Janet Johns family who live north of Dudley.

The program's primary goal is democracy building -- exposing likely future leaders of the emerging democracies to the United States' democratic society and free market economy. The program began in 1993 and is coordinated by the University of Missouri Extension and Missouri 4-H Center for Youth Development office.

Lianna's stay was not originally to be with a family from the Dexter area. The host family in another state that was scheduled to house Lianna was forced to change their plans, and so with little notice, the Johns family -- a family with a strong association with 4-H in Stoddard County -- readily agreed with two weeks notice to make their home Lianna's.

Lianna, who is an identical twin, arrived from Armenia on Sept. 4 and was enrolled in Dexter Schools. Two days later, she celebrated her 18th birthday.

In her homeland, Lianna is already considered to have completed high school.

"I would be going to the University in Armenia," she explains in well spoken English.

She is technically a junior at DHS, although it was quickly determined that her math skills would enable her to take on more than the average high school junior. She is currently enrolled in three math classes that include College Algebra, Calculus and Trigonometry.

Lianna will remain in the states and with the Johns family until the conclusion of the 2015-16 school year in May at which time she will return to Yerevan, Armenia.

There are drastic differences between life in Armenia and life in southeast Missouri, Lianne says. Most notable is the amount of food Americans consume.

"I am not used to eating so many meals," she explains. "We do not have lunch hours. I'm afraid I'm getting fat!"

Vastly different are her surroundings at the Johns' rural home near Dudley. The Hovhannisyan family, Lianna, her twin sister, Nelli, and her parents, live in a two-bedroom apartment in a city of 1.6 million people. The city represents about 35 percent of the total population of Armenia. Her father is a banker, and her mother, who was formerly an administrator in the medical field, now stays at home.

It was no easy decision to leave her family for nine months, especially knowing there would be no visits to home and none from her family. Email and Skype hold the family together these days.

Lianna's twin, Nelli, also applied to be a foreign exchange student, but for reasons unclear to them both, Lianna was selected over her sister.

"That is totally different than normal," she explains. "My sister always has done everything better and first. She is the over-achiever, so it was a surprise to the whole family. I think she was just a little bit jealous!"

The two are very close and have never been separated from each other.

"This is our first time apart," she says. "We have gone all through school together in the same classroom. In Armenia, we do not change classes like here either. That's another change. It was hard to get used to moving around to all the different classes."

Lianna says that her father has always been the encourager in her family. "My father was always the one to tell us that we can do anything if we try hard enough. He was all for this, but when it came close to time to go, he asked me, 'Are you sure you want to do this?' I told him I was."

Although the benefits of spending a school year in the U.S. will be entirely personal achievements -- since there will be no U.S. diploma in the end -- Lianna says it's well worth it to have had the experience.

"I don't know if I will return to the United States someday," she says. "I will probably go to the University in Armenia, where I'll actually be one year behind my sister, and I will probably go into something using math skills."

For the Johns family, Lianna's arrival has been yet another welcome experience. The family has been involved with 4-H for many years, with their youngest Emily, who is also a DHS junior, having spent a full month through the same exhange program in Japan two years ago.

"Lianna has been a joy. She's willing to try anything, and we're thoroughly enjoying her stay," says Janet Johns. "We're both learning a lot!"