Notre Dame Academy welcomes a new international student this school year, Thanh Phuc Nguyen, who also goes by Skylar.
Skylar comes from the busy city of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. He made the daring move to the USA alone to pursue better educational opportunities.
“I moved here alone, actually, as my family is in Vietnam,” he shared. “I decided to move here because there will be more opportunities for me to attend college in the U.S.”
Skylar is pursuing a full International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma at NDA, and it is only fitting because he has been in the IB program since elementary school.
Skylar has experienced significant changes since moving to Green Bay.
“The biggest difference would come from the schedule. We only had four 90-minute classes per day in Vietnam, compared to eight 45-minute classes here at Notre Dame,” Skylar stated.
Another surprising adjustment Skylar had to make was the fear of bears and the amount of cheese in Wisconsin.
“The biggest surprise for me living here would be the gargantuan amount of cheese everybody eats and how everyone seems to hate bears. I thought bears were coolio,” Skylar joked.
Last school year, Skylar attended Ashwaubenon High School as an exchange student, but now he is here to finish high school as a full-time international student.
Despite his distance from home, Skylar has connected with his peers through a shared love of popular rap artist Yuno Miles and his IB Biology HL class.
“The thing I miss the most from Vietnam is definitely the food and the bustling atmosphere,” admitted Skylar.
Luckily, there are several local Vietnamese restaurants to aid his homesickness, as well as the energy and business during Packer game days.
When asked about the biggest cultural differences he has experienced, Skylar shared about the different jokes and references his schoolmates make.
“People like to yell ‘6-7’ in the hallway and in class. Actually, they say that everywhere, and I think it’s a reference to some famous Shakespeare poem,” he said.
With his humor, intelligence and optimistic mindset, Skylar is making the most out of his high school experience here at Notre Dame Academy.
