She wasn’t born at Saint Barnabas Hospital. She’s not Italian or Irish. She doesn’t have the iPhone.

Zita Maas is not your typical VHS student.

An exchange student from Holland, Zita has been in the United States since August, and she leaves mid-February.

Standing at 5’9 with dramatic eyebrows, Zita’s presence has a striking air about it. Always smiling, her outgoing disposition is visible from across the room.

“It sounds cliché, but [the United States] seemed so cool in the movies,” admitted Zita in her flawless but accented English, “but the whole American experience is better than I expected.”

Transitioning to American culture was not much of a challenge for Zita, because she expected the dominant stereotypes.

“When I told my friends I was coming here, they said ‘You’re going to be best friends with Snooki!”
Besides the Jersey Shore persona, Zita feels that children in the United States get everything they want. “Kids here don’t have to work for anything,” Zita observed from her 8 and 13-year old host siblings.

Another aspect of our culture that Zita finds amusing is how many channels are available on T.V.

“In Holland there are less than 20,” says Zita. She can’t fathom the reasoning behind having so many, especially when half the time the channels seem to only be commercials.

“So many commercials are like really stupid, like why is a cartoon superman advertising cars?”

Compared to her eight hour school day and heavy work load in Holland, Zita is enjoying the less stressful academic atmosphere in Verona.

Speaking her native tongue, Dutch, as well as French, English and German, Zita is very cultured. She has traveled throughout Europe and as far as Singapore and Egypt. The traveling doesn’t stop there. For the future, she wishes she could attend college in Boston, but the price of tuition is ridiculously expensive compared to Holland.

With a résumé like this, any American college would be lucky to have Zita.