Banana Drama: A Story Over Jenks’ Italian Exchange Student

By: Sador Dagim

Gen Z wants one thing, to feel like a success, to be TikTok famous. That one video where you get so many likes, and so many comments over how they adore what you do or how they love you, makes your life absolutely complete. This same situation occurred with our new exchange student coming all the way from Milan, Italy. Everyone, Meet Gabriele Chiodini.

Chiodini, 12, had been living in a little town near, or northwest of Milan where the population was very limited; essentially, everyone knew everyone. Chiodini had been going to a high school that provided specific courses for students that wanted to major in specific things. For example, Chiodini had registered himself as someone more interested in scientific classes so he would have more hours of math and science, instead of other subjects like history and English.

 Instead of four years of high school, Chiodini has five years of high school so even if he graduates here in the U.S, he still has one more year to complete.

Chiodini had a love for traveling around the world and that somewhat encouraged him to register for the exchange student program. His all-time goal was to spend his 12th-grade year here in the United States.

“This is the longest period where I’ve been away from my home and my parents, but it isn’t making me sad or anything.” said Chiodini, “The only thing I miss the most is the food.”

Cooking with Gabriele!

Little did Chiodini know that he would be open to experiences that he never thought he would encounter.  

“For my first years of high school, I’ve always said ‘in my fourth year I will be spending it in the U.S.’” said Chidioni, “...I know that a lot of immigrants have always bragged about how it’s great to be here or the well-known phrase of the "American dream", but I saw it as a normal and fun experience.”

Chiodini had been having second thoughts about traveling to the U.S. because the experience he had only dreamed about was getting closer and closer to reality. He had been arguing with his family over how he wanted to drop the whole experience because it was making him nervous and scared. That was until the 8th of July when he got a mysterious text from one of the members of his new host family, Elke Prior. Chiodini was in Croatia with his grandmother and had been strolling through the streets with his parents and suddenly received a text message from Elke, it was an introduction to what his life would look like in the United States. This calmed him down and he finally saw how this would be an amazing experience.

“I received a message from an unknown number which didn’t have a European number, and the message said, "I’m your new American host sister,” said Chidioni, “That's when I really started shaking because this was starting to be more real. We wrote to each other every day and that gave me more of an inside on who she was.”

Chiodini first stepped into the U.S. on August 9th at 2 A.M. The Priors welcomed him with open arms and welcomed him to the home he would be living in, whilst staying here in America. Elke Prior, 10, is Chidioni’s ‘American sister.’ She is a student at Jenks high school and when she found out that her family would be hosting a foreign exchange student, she was so excited.

“I was the most excited of us all,” said Prior, “when we got him as our exchange student because I knew he would fit well into our family. I spent every day trying to get his room ready and I texted him every day to make him as comfortable as possible before he got here”

Prior, in this whole little process of hers, was trying to get him to feel more comfortable and more at home.

“Gabriele is the most annoying person I know,” said Prior, “and I love it because he still makes me laugh. He’s like another brother to me. We fight and bully each other like any normal siblings”

Chiodini has a little brother back home and since he can’t mess with him, he annoys Prior which makes their relationship closer as time goes on.  

“When Gabriele goes back to Italy, I will of course miss him because we have all gotten used to his presence, it will definitely be more boring when he leaves, but I don’t think that I’ll be sad.” said Prior, “We have all known that when he came, we would only have a year with him before we have to say goodbye so we’ve all been trying to protect ourselves from the sadness of that.”

When Chiodini first attended Jenks high school, he was afraid that he wouldn’t make any friends in time because--as we all know--Jenks is a pretty big school with a total of 3,485 students, until a total miracle happened. Prior had made Chidioni a TikTok account to document his year in America. 

One of the videos of him trying banana pudding has gotten over 6 million views and was the most famous video on TikTok for the first week of school. Chiodini had gotten recognition for the video and adopted some friends on the way. His friends from back home would be calling and asking why he popped up on their FYP’s and, honestly, he got very lucky with that one video! Go follow the TikTok account- “gabrielevisitsamerica” and see how Prior documents his stay in America.

Check out their shared TikTok! @Gabrielevisitsamerica

As a Jenks family, we are very proud to call Chidioni a Trojan and we hope to see more of him as he spends the rest of his year in the U.S.