A ninth-grader in a small American public school, Joe was elated when his teacher announced−what at that time seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity−an exchange program to Russia. Joe had been tirelessly learning Russian with the aid of Rosetta Stone, so a chance to not only visit, but plunge into all the twists and turns of the language was a thrilling prospect to him. On the other side of the globe, Ivan, the Russian student who was to partake in the exchange program, was equally excited: he was at the top of his class in English and had always dreamed of visiting the States. Through their excitement, neither of the two predicted the ordeal to come.
Overdressing for School (Ivan)
       Ivan woke up to his alarm. It was set to 5 a.m. – a good three hours before the official start of school. It was his first day of school and Ivan wanted it to be perfect. This has been his ritual for the past eight years−to look like a million dollars. This is the ritual of all students in Russia.
Ivan stumbled out of his bed and headed towards the general direction of the light switch. Blinking sleep out of his eyes, Ivan trudged towards his closet, in which he picked out his best pair of khaki pants and his favorite button-down shirt. Ivan then spent the next half hour meticulously ironing his clothing.
After he thoroughly washed his face and brushed his teeth, Ivan took to the challenge of taming his hair. Despite an arduous battle, his hair surrendered and every last strand stood perfectly in place.
Satisfied with his appearance, he went to intercept the school bus at the designated area, a full ten minutes before the scheduled time.
The yellow bus pulled up and Ivan ascended the stairs. All the students on the bus were asleep, snoring loudly in their seats. After what seemed like forever, the bus pulled up at the school. As Ivan walked down the spacious hallway, he noticed several people giving him strange looks. Only after the fourth person actually turned to stare at him, Ivan became self-conscious. The confused foreigner quickly examined his clothes. Were they wrinkled? Did he spill anything on them? Ivan couldn’t understand what was wrong – he wore similar clothes every day to school in Russia.
With a shrug, Ivan came to his first class. There the students continued examining him quizzically. One of his classmates finally broke the silence.
“You are the new exchange student? Why are you dressed up like a model?” he asked bluntly.
First Ivan was shocked by the question but as he looked around the class he finally noticed how the others were dressed. His neighbor at the desk to his right lounged comfortably in long athletic shorts and a wrinkled t-shirt which looked as if it had gone through a meat grinder. A girl to his left sat in oversized hoodie and ripped jeans. She tried to brush through her mangled hair with her fingers. The guy in the back wore clothing that look suspiciously similar to the pajamas Ivan received for Christmas from his host family. Ivan was very shocked by these unusual fashion statements. After a moment, he realized what was wrong.
He exclaimed his epiphany. “Ah, you all have pajama day!”
The students stared at him even harder.
“No,” one replied. “This is how we dress every day!”
Ivan rubbed the back of his neck subconsciously. He would have to change his school wardrobe.            
Einstein-Level Math (Joe)
Meanwhile, in Russia, Joe skipped down the hall to his math class. After his humiliation in the Russian language class, Joe was ready for a chance at redeeming himself. Back home, Math was by far his best subject. He was already one year ahead of his classmates in both Algebra and Geometry.
Joe walked into the room filled with glum and dejected faces. The teacher smiled brightly (at that point, Joe did not notice the smirk which forecast her malicious plans). Joe relaxed. This teacher seemed a lot nicer than some of the others. Maybe they would get along well.
“Ah, Djow!” the teacher shook Joe’s hand enthusiastically. “Welcome! We are taking a test today to make sure that none of your brain cells died over the summer. The test will be over what we learned during the past two years. But no worries – it is a very easy test over the basics. Go ahead, take a seat. The questions are on the chalkboard. You can start when the bell rings.”
  Confident in his abilities, Joe prepared his pen and when the bell rang to mark the beginning of the class he looked up at the problems on the chalkboard.
And his heart plummeted down to his feet.
It wasn’t as if there were many problems on the board. No, there were only three. The concepts which they covered, however, were those Joe expected a Math major to learn in a PhD program.
Joe stared at the strange scalars and vectors, a question that asked whether a harmonic series is convergent or divergent, and a diagram that looked like an alien spaceship in science fiction movies. He searched for a simple problem in which you would solve for x, but even something seemingly this simple sported a function Joe could not even find on his calculator.
Completely hopeless, Joe walked up to the math teacher and dropped the blank notebook on her desk.
She looked at him in surprise and asked, “Why didn’t you do the test?”
Joe blushed and looked at his feet, “I can’t. I’ve never learned any of this.”
The teacher paused, then forced a patient smile, “I see. You took Geometry last year, so you didn’t learn this.”
“No,” Joe shook his head, “We had Algebra. But we never learned this.”
“What did you learn?”
Joe shuffled his feet, “How to find x, basic percentages, a little bit of graphing, and some other things.”
One girl looked up from her test, “ We learned that in sixth grade!” she exclaimed.
The teacher looked lost.
“Well,” she finally managed, “We’ll do our best to catch you up.”
Joe nodded weakly and slunk back to his seat. His shoulders sank as he thought about how much work he would have to do to catch up with the pace of the Russian education.
Epilogue
Joe and Ivan rendezvoused at a café in Ivan’s hometown on the day of Joe’s departure back to America. The two boys greeted each other happily, relief shining on both of their faces at the fact that they had survived a month, albeit a seemingly long one, in another country. Ivan lounged comfortably in a hoodie and sweatpants while Joe, equipped with a multi-volume Math textbook, excitedly explained the new concepts he learned in Trigonometry. Joe and Ivan agreed that despite the initial setbacks, this adventure, to study in another country, was the most rewarding experience of their high-school life.