3 Culver students study languages in Asia through State Department program

Students spend summer in Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia and Taiwan learning languages vital to national security

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Sept. 13, 2024

Three Culver Academies students spent their summers in Asia taking part in a prestigious U.S. State Department immersion program called the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), where students learn languages vital to national security.

NSLI-Y is a selective program with about a 15 percent acceptance rate.

Nicholas Besachio ’26 (Greenville, Tennessee) went to Kyrgyzstan to learn Russian, Joy Chung ’26 (Seoul, South Korea) traveled to Indonesia to learn Bahasa Indonesian and Noa Shafeek-Horton ’25 (Charlotte, North Carolina) went to Taiwan to perfect her Mandarin.

Besachio and Chung were starting nearly from scratch. Culver Academies, a boarding school in Indiana, has a world culture and languages department where Spanish, French, Mandarin and Latin are taught, but no Russian or Indonesian.

All three returned to Culver Academies with improved language skills, confident they can navigate their way around another country and with a better understanding of the world.

Each took classes four hours a day learning the languages, visiting museums and cultural sites.

 

 

Besachio was among 19 American high school students selected to go to Kyrgyzstan, one of the last former Soviet bloc countries to still speak primarily Russian in its capital city of Bishkek.

Besachio, who is taking AP Spanish this year, knew a little Russian before going, learning it on language apps. He said it was the equivalent of taking Russian I.

Besachio stayed in Bishkek with a 42-year-old single man who lives in an old Soviet apartment and knows no English. Besachio said that forced him to learn Russian faster because it was the only way he could communicate.

“When he was home, he was a really good source to practice my Russian,” Besachio said. “I still talk to him on my phone through WhatsApp.”

Besachio said he had no choice but to learn the language.

“You speak Russian or you don’t get stuff,” he said.

Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous country of 6.5 million people located on the border with China that can go from lush, grassy steppes to deserts and is known for its nomads.

“The environment is unpredictable and the weather is unpredictable,” he said.

He said the program was challenging the first few weeks.

“Because you have to translate a lot and it’s kind of embarrassing,” he said.

Besachio had to learn to navigate a 50-minute ride on public transportation from where he was staying to where he attended class. He had to speak Russian because few people in Kyrgyzstan know English.

He said by the end of his stay people were mistaking him for Russian.

“Because I was able to speak with almost no accent,” he said.

Besachio said he felt sorry for students in the program whose host families spoke English.

“Because my Russian when I left was better than the people who had families who spoke English to them,” he said.

Besachio wanted to learn Russian because he’s interested in a career in government, possibly in the State Department or intelligence, or a career in the military.

 

 

Chung, who has dual American and Korean citizenship, already knew how to speak English, Korean, Mandarin and Japanese. Unlike in other NSLI-Y programs, students going to Indonesia knew little about the language.

She was given a language guide to learn the basics. But that was all the Bahasa Indonesian she knew when she arrived in Yogyakarta, a city of about 400,000 people with a number of universities. It’s in the south-central part of the island of Java, a seven-hour train ride south of Jakarta.

According to the 2010 census, there are more than 800 languages spoken in Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesian was selected as the national language nearly 100 years ago. 

Chung said her host family, a couple with a 14-year-old daughter, spoke some English, which she found comforting. She said it was the only place she could speak English.

She said she would describe her ability to speak Indonesian now as “advanced low,” meaning proficient but not fluent.

Chung wanted to learn Indonesian because she wants to work in a field that impacts more than one place. She’s not sure whether that will be in government, such as in international relations, or in business. She said she’s particularly interested in sustainability and climate change, which is a major concern for Indonesia.

“That motivated me to go to Indonesia and study their language because I think it will impact me more in the future,” Chung said.  

She said one of the most fun things she did occurred when she and other 15 American students in the program helped residents safely release baby sea turtles into the ocean.

“It was really fun,” she said.

She said one of the more challenging issues of living in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, was keeping everything from her neck to her ankles covered with clothing although temperatures soared over 100 degrees with high humidity.

“It was so hot, and you had to wear long everything,” she said. “It was something you got used to.”

 

Shafeek-Horton arrived in Taiwan already knowing how to speak, read and write Mandarin. She took Advanced Placement Chinese Language and Culture at Culver as a freshman. She began learning Mandarin in kindergarten when her parents enrolled her in an elementary school where math, science and social studies classes were all taught in Mandarin through fifth grade.

She said she wanted to take part in NSLI-Y because her Mandarin was textbook based. She wanted to learn conversational Mandarin.

“Going to a country where they actually speak Mandarin and you use Mandarin in your daily life is a different experience,” she said.

She was hoping to stay in Taipei, the country’s capital, but she and 29 other more advanced students were sent to Hsinchu, a city of about 450,000 people 50 miles south of Taipei.

She studied at National Tsing Hua University, staying at a student hotel with others in the program during the week.

“They made it engaging and we’d often have cultural activities where we had a wide array of activities. From going to a night market to practice that day’s vocabulary to going to a local shop to craft animal shapes out of bamboo, each experience kept me learning,” she said.

Then on Saturday morning her host family would pick her and another student up and bring them home until Sunday night. She stayed with a couple who had three daughters, ages 18, 23 and 24. They only knew a little English, so they spoke mainly Chinese.

She took Honors Chinese at Culver last year, but that involved only reading and writing, so she was happy to be able to work on her speaking and listening skills. She said she enjoyed learning a phrase in class and then using it in daily life later on that day.

“There were a lot of times when I’d use a piece of vocabulary or a sentence structure I learned that day in normal conversation. I’d often think, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just did that,” she said.

She said when she first got to Taiwan she’d be hesitant to talk with strangers, but she grew more confident the longer she was there.

Her sister, Amina Shafeek-Horton ’20, also took part in the NSIL-Y program five years ago and is now a Schwarzman Scholar studying at Tsinghua University in China.

Noa Shafeek-Horton isn’t sure what her career goals are because she has so many interests. She’s considering something in computer science or possibly the fashion industry.

“The fortunate thing is, no matter what profession I decide to go into, Chinese is so widely spoken that no matter what I do in life I think I’ll be able to use it,” she said.
She’s applying to go to Duke Kunshan University in China, a joint venture between Duke University and Wuhan University.

All three students said they would recommend the program.

Besachio said he misses Kyrgyzstan already.

“It was a really nice experience. I’d really like to bring my family,” he said.

Shafeek-Horton said she can’t think of a reason why anyone wouldn’t want to take part.

“You make relationships that can last a lifetime and you get a broad experience that you’re going to remember the rest of your life,” she said.

Chung said she was a bit hesitant at first about spending her summer away from home after spending her school year at Culver. But she’s happy she did.

“You don’t realize how special the program is going to be until you experience it,” she said. “The experience of having a family that’s not your own but take you in as their own, I can’t be more grateful.”