Teo Beleuta '20, far left, and Kilian Mittermeier '21, third from left, saw Asheville's Biltmore Estate last month along with two ASSIST students from Carolina Day School.
ASSIST Students Fitting in Well at Christ School
America was by and large a mystery to Kilian Mittermeier '21 and Teo Beleuta '20.
The international students agree that Christ School has been a fantastic introduction to a new set of customs and traditions.
Since enrolling through the ASSIST program, Kilian (who is from Germany) and Teo (Republic of Moldova) have attended their first NFL and college football games through the Weekend Activities program. They've taken in the grandeur of the Biltmore Estate, helped start up a Greenie Poker Club, and dabbled in sports.
Kilian said he appreciates the calm of the Asheville area as much as anything. Even with tourism on the rise, Asheville's population of 91,000 is considerably less than the 1.45 million that Kilian is accustomed to back home in Munich.
"I had been (to the United States) once before in Florida, but it was nothing really significant," Kilian said. "It's super nice here. I'm used to living in a city where there are traffic jams all the time. It's so nice to be surrounded by the woods in Asheville. Christ School has been awesome. Living on campus and being together all the time really creates a great atmosphere."
Earlier this month, Kilian became the first-ever ASSIST student to win a Christ School Student and Residential Life Award. The faculty member who nominated Kilian wrote that the sophomore "is constantly working to get better and help those around him come up to his level of understanding of the material. It is hard to believe he has been here about two months. He's got this down to a T."
ASSIST is a non-profit organization which matches academically-talented, multi-lingual students with independent schools across the United States. The ASSIST experience only lasts a year before the students must return to their home country. But the bonds made here at Christ School tend to last longer than that.
For example, Coles Manning '19 and Will McNichols '19 visited Marko Cvetkovic at his new school, Boston's Pope John XXIII High School, over Fall Break. Marko is from Serbia and was a Greenie for the 2017-18 school year.
"My first impression (of the United States) has been pretty good," said Teo. "There's a lot more open space. I've been kayaking the rivers. The environment is so much more diverse here. It really feels like you are living in a large country where you can go wherever you want. This is the first boarding school experience for both myself and Kilian. We're getting the chance to interact with everyone around us and meet a lot of new people. That makes it more interesting."
