Russian
exchange student feels right at home in Cannelton
By Edward
Seelbach, THG Features
Vladlena Kedrova admits
she was very nervous about leaving her native Russia and coming to America as a
high school exchange student. Having applied to her country’s foreign exchange
program, she was assigned a local family to live with while attending Cannelton High School
this semester.
Although she could speak
English, she worried that she would have a hard time fitting in with American
students; after all, she was coming from a poor country where the per capita
income is a fraction of that in the U.S. and America is known as the land of
milk and honey.
Luckily for Kedrova, her
anxieties were relieved shortly after arriving in Cannelton, a town of 1,700 in
Perry County.
She soon realized that there were more similarities than differences between her
hometown of Volgograd and this armpit of
a town on the Ohio River.
“Cannelton is very similar
to Volgograd,” says Kedrova, “It is on a river (Volgograd lies on the Volga,
the longest river in Europe) that is
important for the shipping of goods, and there are a lot of run-down houses with
rusty automobiles with flat tires in the yards. If the street signs were in
Russian, I would feel like I was at home.”
Kedrova mentions many
cultural similarities between Cannelton and Volgograd as well. “In both places,
there are many people who are alcoholics and have given up hope of having a
better life. The only difference is that Russians are well read and do not like
auto-racing so much or have big four-wheel drive vehicles with ‘Git-R-Done’
stickers on them.”
To better fit in with her
Cannelton High classmates, Kedrova has taken up many of their habits. She now
smokes cigarettes and marijuana and also started sleeping around. A
straight-A student in Russia, she now has a “D” average. She has also
gained approximately 30 pounds since arriving in August and has gotten several
tattoos. “As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” says the
16-year-old.
Kedrova’s stay in America
will be over in December, when she departs on the long journey home to spend
Christmas with her parents, who are both doctors. When asked what she will miss
most about America, she replied, “Nothing really.”
