But three weeks after her arrival in Duluth, Minnesota, Danilova was elected homecoming queen.
"I didn't know anyone," said Danilova, who recently returned to Russia. "It was a big surprise. I got a crown and we had a parade, and from then, everyone knew me at school for the rest of the year."
Danilova was among 1,200 secondary school students from the CIS who lived in suburban America last year.
They were the first group to benefit from the 1992 Freedom Support Act, designed to offer youth from the former Soviet Union a chance to experience American life. The program sends teenagers from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and all of the central Asian republics to spend a year in the United States, where they attend high school and live with a host family. This academic year 1,400 teenagers are enrolled in the program.
Yevgeny Pogrebniak, 16, who recently returned from a year in Akron, Ohio, with a strong American accent, said he found that Russians and Americans have a lot in common. "I learned that life in America is not candy, and that there are problems. Often we were talking about the same thing, like crime and taxes.
"For me, the main difference is that it's pretty clear what the life of a typical American is going to be for the next few years. In America, there is a stability; you can make decisions and plan ahead to get a job, buy a house, a car or get married, whereas here we get a revolution every two years."
Coming home to a country in transition was a strange experience for the students. "I was stressed by the prices, but I expected things to be worse," Pogrebniak said.
Like some others who spent the year away, Pogrebniak reported trouble speaking his native language upon return.
Sylvia Rogers, the coordinator for the American Council of Teachers of Russian, which selects students for the program, said a year in the United States produces more subtle effects: "Their body language changes, they take more space, they're more assertive. They're louder, more independent. Before they go, it's usually the parents who ask all the questions, but when they return, the kids are the ones asking the questions."
While most students readjust quickly and are happy to be back home, it can be difficult to give up some of the habits they picked up in the United States. "A girl from Central Asia came back with cut-off jeans, and had to change for fear her family would see her like that," said Rogers.
Former homecoming queen Danilova is glad to get back to black bread and family meals after a year of TV dinners.
Perhaps more lasting than her memory of being queen for a day, however, is Danilova's impression of her host country's provincialism: "People asked me if Russia was the size of Minnesota. I was very surprised by how little Americans know about Russia; we know so much about America."
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