Far-Away Holiday

When the homesickness hits him hardest--he thought it would be worst when he went to bed on Christmas eve--Alvaro da Silva planned to meditate.

Instead of sugarplums dancing in his head, he will instead ponder who he is and his thoughts will drift to his native Brazil.

“[Christmas eve] will be a night I will really think about all my values and all my family and all my life here in the United States,” said da Silva, a Marina senior who plays volleyball and soccer.

“I do this exercise in my mind and kind of balance what’s going on in my life, what’s important to me and to the people I come in contact with.”

Da Silva is part of the American Field Service program, one of several organizations that coordinates foreign students spending a school year--or maybe just a summer--in the United States, or vice versa. He is one of several athletes who are part of the exchange programs who won’t be home for the holidays.

“I’ve had a lot of exchange students, and usually they’re pretty homesick on Christmas,” Jane Bauer said. “Christmas eve is a hard time.”

The Bauer family of North Tustin has hosted six foreign exchange students over the years, including their current guest, Foothill runner Katrin Rothe of Germany. All three of Jane and Bill Bauer’s daughters have taken part in the program too.

The first student the Bauers hosted was from Israel. “I bought a menorah,” Jane Bauer said, “and we celebrated Hanukkah too.”

In Orange County, there are (among others) cross-country runners from Australia and New Zealand, swimmers from Brazil, Columbia and North Korea, a track and field athlete from Japan, basketball players from Ecuador, Hungary and Russia and a tennis player from Croatia.

It’s a small world, after all.

Alvaro da Silva / MARINA

Da Silva lives 1,000 miles south of Rio de Janeiro in the mountain town of Nova Petropolis, one of the only regions of Brazil that gets snow. He has never had a white Christmas, though, because it snows during the Brazilian summer.

There is little about this Christmas that is familiar to da Silva, who expected to spend today in San Diego with his host family, Helen and Ed Esh of Huntington Beach, and their son, Peter, 11.

He will be missing the gathering of 20 of his relatives--aunts, uncles, cousins--at his home to open gifts at midnight after attending Catholic Mass on Christmas eve. Like an athlete whose competitive juices begin flowing in anticipation of a big game, da Silva finds the same thing happening in anticipation of the big celebration--which he will not attend.

His celebration is likely to be much more quiet.

“This meditation thing grew with me since the day I got here [in the United States],” da Silva said. “It’s part of what I consider my evolution as a person. I have much more time to spend alone. It’s not that I feel lonely, but in the moments that I do, I try to think about all the situations that I am in now, and sometimes if I have a minor problem with schoolwork or twist my ankle at practice, I try to find a way to comfort myself to make me feel better.

“It’s an exercise in lifting my spirit, to take off all the pressure that I have in my day-by-day life with sports and all the stuff that I do, and think about the real meaning of what I am doing and why I am doing it.”

Morena Jovisic / SANTA ANA VALLEY

Jovisic, a tennis player at Santa Ana Valley, has one major request for her mother: Spend Christmas with Grandma.

For as long as she can remember, Jovisic has kept her grandmother company on Christmas day and through the winter break in war-torn Croatia.

“I miss my mom, but I talk to her on the phone,” said Jovisic, an All-Century League tennis player who hopes to get a college scholarship and remain in Southern California. “Every Christmas I celebrate with my grandma; she is alone and old, and I always celebrate Christmas with her. I miss her.”

Though she won’t be in Croatian, a little bit of Croatia will be with her. A friend from her high school, Andreja Paradis, is spending the holiday with Jovisic and her host family, Flocelo and Maria Rubio, and their four children, including Carlos (a sophomore water polo player at Santa Ana Valley). “They are very nice,” Jovisic said. “They treat me like a daughter.”

Katrin Rothe / FOOTHILL

While her family is opening their gifts Christmas evening in Rostock, Germany, Rothe hopes to be opening the gifts sent from her family--while talking with them on the phone--on the beach.

Rothe, 17, a cross-country and track runner at Foothill, admitted she has gotten homesick, even cried, but it has been eased by e-mail messages to her aunt, Antje Muell, in what was formerly East Germany. Muell keeps Rothe’s mother informed of all that’s important here in the states.

And what’s important is experiencing Christmas in T-shirt and shorts.

“It’s so strange,” Rothe said. “I could never do that in Germany because it would be too cold. The weather totally makes it seem less Christmas-like. I’m not in the Christmas mood.”

Christmas in Germany, according to Rothe, is a three-day celebration that begins on the 24th with church services and a carp dinner.

“You have carp just two times during the year, the 24th and New Year’s Eve,” Rothe said. “I haven’t seen one carp here.”

After spending the 24th with one’s immediate family, the next two days of the German celebration are spent visiting relatives, with a great deal of attention paid to the grandparents. Oh, and eating duck both days.

“It’s really interesting for me to know how my [host] family is celebrating Christmas and I’m really looking forward to the turkey and pecan pie,” Rothe said. “If someone let me go home right now, I wouldn’t.”

The Bauers, including their youngest daughter Sarah, 17, a senior swimmer at Foothill who was an exchange student to Japan one summer, are happy to make Rothe’s Christmas one she will long remember. “I think we can probably make a trip to the beach,” Jane Bauer said.

There will be the traditional American food, a Christmas eve church service, and lots of presents.

“I will have so many Christmases at home,” Rothe said, “I just want to enjoy this one because it’s different from mine and it’s interesting.”

Alexi Troyanov / LAGUNA BEACH

Troyanov is having trouble seeing what all the fuss is about. In his native Russia, where a foot of snow is on the ground in Stavropol, about 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow, few celebrate Christmas.

So Troyanov, 16, a junior varsity basketball player at Laguna Beach, feels a little out of his element.

“I don’t feel as though it is a holiday,” he said. “There is no snow.

“It feels funny. I think it is a good holiday [because] people in America are happy and looking forward to this holiday. People told me it is the best holiday of the year.”

But Troyanov is a fan of New Year’s Day more than Christmas. At midnight on Dec. 31 Russian families gather and exchange gifts.

Something that’s clearer than anything Troyanov might try to make out in a conversation is that he is quite lonely. Whereas social activities in the United States revolve around high school, in Russia they revolve around frequent visits to the discotheques (where alcohol is served) and town squares.

Troyanov knew little English when he arrived, and he is homesick for his family, friends and even school.

He says those he has met here “have been a substitute, but it’s not the same.”

“I live for life in Russia,” he said. “I get homesick.”

But the Quilters of Laguna Beach, Ann and Charlie and their children, Emily, a Laguna Beach senior who was the school’s first female football player, and C.J., a freshman, will try to make him feel at home.

“I would like to find some Russian food to have when we do our big Christmas dinner on the 24th and have him help [prepare it]--just to have something from his home,” Ann Quilter said.

She planned to take Troyanov, who is called Lyosha (pronounced Lee-o-shuh) to a late church service on Christmas eve with Emily.

“It [would] probably be his first-ever church service,” Ann Quilter said. “Maybe to him it’s a secular holiday, but to many people, it’s a religious holiday as well.

“We want to introduce him to that part of it, which is very much a part of our American heritage.”