Russian exchange student feels right at home in Cannelton

            By Edward Seelbach, THG Features

Kedrova’s Volgograd home

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.”

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