Winslow Twp. grad snags year-long scholarship in China

The program at Moorestown Friends provides scholarships to academically talented students from Camden.

Winslow Township graduate Austin Yanez is shown in China last year. He received another State Department scholarship to return to China for the entire 2016-17 academic year to study the language and immerse himself in the culture.(Photo: Photo provided)

WINSLOW - Austin Yanez has been to mountaintops in China, visited Buddhist temples and immersed himself with the language and culture of the people there.

The 2016 Winslow Township High School graduate is about to do it all again. This time for nearly a year.

For the second straight year, Yanez was awarded a National Security Language Initiative for Youth scholarship to study Mandarin in China.

He'll spend the entire 2016-17 academic year in Changzhou in the Jiangsu Province in eastern China. Yanez is one of over 600 students from across the nation selected to study Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Russian or Turkish overseas on a scholarship.

After spending six weeks in China last summer on a NSLI-Y scholarship, which is sponsored by the U.S. State Department, he'll once again spend his time receiving formal instruction and informal language practice in an immersion environment.

"I want to go back, for one, because I'm in love with Chinese culture and also I want to be a foreign service officer for the department of state," said Yanez, 17. "This gives me a position as a junior ambassador where I learn Mandarin and I meet people and I show them what Americans are like. That's kind of what I want to do in real life as a career. That really interested me.

"I could have applied for any other program, but I wanted to focus on Chinese, because I had a strong foundation in it and I thought I'd finish it off. I had to do the process all over again, I had no preferential treatment."

The NSLI-Y program seeks to increase the number of Americans who can engage with native speakers of critical languages. The hope is to spark a life-long interest in foreign languages and cultures, and develop a corps of young Americans with the skills necessary to advance international dialogue and cross-cultural opportunities.

Yanez was required to do an in-person interview with a representative of NSLI-Y, as well as write essays and fill out forms. Then he had an in-home visit from NSLI-Y representatives with his family, so he could be placed with a similar host family in China.

He'll stay in Changzhou, nearly a three-hour car ride from Shanghai and about two hours from where he stayed last summer. He'll study the language for hours each day.

Last year he lived with three Chinese roommates at Xiuzhou Modern Experimental School in Jiaxing during the week then with a host family on the weekends.

"It was amazing," Yanez said. "I had a lot of fun. It was very different. I got to do a lot of cool things and try new things. I had a lot of new food, which is much different than the Chinese food we eat here. It's a lot more healthy, with much more vegetables in it. It's really delicious.

"I got to do a lot of traveling as well. I got to go to Shanghai, and Hangzhou where the most tea in the entire world is created."

One huge highlight from last year was climbing Huangshan, also called Yellow Mountain, one of the highest mountains in China.

"It was a lot of fun," he said. "An amazing experience. That's why I want to go back. It was so much fun and there are so many things to see. I got to see beautiful Buddhist temples, shrines, all these gorgeous things."

He expects to come back this time fluent in Mandarin and having learned even more about the country from his interactions with the people there, with a deeper understanding of their culture.

"With that, I'll be able to teach a lot of Americans about what the Chinese are really like," he said.

Awards and scholarships aren't new to Yanez. He received the Trailblazer Award from Winslow Township School District Superintendent H. Major Poteat in June of 2015.

Winslow Township High School graduate Austin Yanez (second from left) is shown in China last year. He received another State Department scholarship to return to China for the entire 2016-17 academic year to study the language and immerse himself in the culture. (Photo: Photo provided)

He also won a Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Student Leadership Award for Community Service and spent six weeks with U.S. senators and legislators learning how government works in New Jersey's 4th Legislative District Student Enrichment Program.

Deborah Yanez said her son has always been "very driven" and she's thankful the state department has programs like this one so students can get involved.

Yanez deferred his acceptance to Swarthmore College for one year so he could take advantage of the scholarship.

Celeste E. Whittaker; (856) 486-2437; cwhittaker@gannettnj.com

MORE INFORMATION

Applications for 2017-18 NSLI-Y programs should be available at www.nsliforyouth.org in the early fall.

For information about U.S. Department of State-sponsored exchange programs, visit http://exchanges.state.gov.

Winslow Township graduate Austin Yanez (right) is shown in China last year at Yellow Mountain. He'll be back in China again soon. Yanez received another State Department scholarship to return to China for the entire 2016-17 academic year to study the language and immerse himself in the culture. (Photo: Photo provided)

Read or Share this story: http://on.cpsj.com/2a8E2d7

Source: Winslow Twp. grad snags year-long scholarship in China