By Justin Baer

The country of Lebanon, is place of beauty and mystery. Junior Dany Abi Hadir, a Lebanaon native, left its beautiful skyline with mountains on all sides, embarked on a tiring 28 hour flight , and is attending BSHS for the year.

Hadir cites gaining experiences as his main reasons for participating in the AFS program.

“(I wanted to come here) to experience culture, to make international friends and to learn,” Hadir said.

Traveling every 47 minutes to seven different classrooms in the course of one school day fulfilled Hadir’s goal of practicing new things.

“We didn’t change classes in Lebanon. I like the change of classes but find it a little harder to remember where everything is,” Hadir said.

Hadir’s English teacher Emily Pritzel understands the difficulty of teaching and reaching AFS students.

“One of the biggest challenges is making the content relevant to him. This week we are talking about the American Dream and what it means to us as Americans, and it’s a little harder for someone who isn’t from here to understand that but it’s been interesting getting to hear his perspective of it,” Pritzel said.

Outside of school, Hadir is also focusing on his goal of facing new things, including attending the Taylor Swift concert this past weekend.

“(I’m really excited for) the Taylor Swift concert, I really like her music for the words and the beats and how she was able to make a huge career comeback,” Hadir said.

One of Hadir’s favorite classes is math. His pre-calc class will help to prepare him for life after high school.

“I want to be an engineer. I’m not sure what kind yet, but I know I want to be an engineer,” Hadir said.

In addition to being a strong math student, an engineer has to understand both verbal and non verbal language , and be educated in the proper ways to communicate within different cultures.

“As an engineer, Hadir will have to have a good grasp on how people he works with speak and the proper ways to communicate within the environment,” Pritzel said.

Hadir comes from a land of beauty and mystery, but the biggest mystery he know faces is how to be an awesome Wildcat this year.