DANISH EXCHANGE STUDENT ENJOYING HER TIME IN JACKSON

Line Kristiansen is finding that she has more free time now on her hands as an exchange student than she did when she was at home in Vejle, Denmark.

The Rotary Club sponsored her exchange program that allowed her to come here in August. She leaves in the beginning of July.

Kristiansen is staying with three different families while she is here.

She stayed with Brad and Susan Teets first and now she resides with Steve and Carol Horst.

After she has stayed three months with the Horst family she will move in with Chris and Lisa Weiss.

"I like it here, it's a small town, but the people are really nice," Kristiansen said.

Her hometown in Denmark has about 60,000 people and is not much different from Cape Girardeau, she said.

"Americans eat a lot more junk food and they drive everywhere," she said.

While Line is a senior at Jackson High School, her schooling doesn't end this May. She has two years left when she returns to Denmark.

And the classes she is taking will not count for anything when she returns to her Danish school.

"I spend more time doing homework there than I do here," she said.

In Denmark, she would spend her free time doing aerobics, jazz ballet and she used to play soccer.

Now that she has more free time here she's been spending her time at the movies, shopping, hanging out and at Jackson High School sports games.

"Back home we would also go to the soccer game."

On other differences between here and there, Line said that our summer is longer and the humidity is "terrible."

"I was lucky, my first family had a pool."

"It takes a lot more to get out of school for snow there than it does here," she said.

Line said she likes changing from family to family, but it is an adjustment.

"It's a good thing you see different ways of how American families can be."

She said she think the idea to change families every three months is a good idea because she has heard of other exchange students that got stuck with families that didn't get along with them and they were stuck there.

She is taking English, mixed chorus, algebra II, health, government and French II at JHS.

She is on the science plan in Denmark.

She has been to few different places around Missouri since coming to Jackson. she's visited Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma.

On Easter weekend, she will go to Colorado to ski with the Weiss family.

And before she returns to Denmark Rotary has planned a tour for exchange students of the western United States starting in New Mexico and ending on the west coast.

When Line graduates from school in Denmark she plans to be a tour guide in southern Europe for a while and then she will go to college in Denmark.

She plans to study engineering.