Finding family in France
Rotary Youth Exchange alum Athena Trentin shares her advice for young travelers
Athena Trentin had a boring childhood — at least, according to her. She grew up in Escanaba, Michigan, a port city in the Upper Peninsula with a population of 14,000 at the time. “Most people were expected to grow up and graduate from high school, work for the paper mill, work in the skilled trades,” Trentin says. “My parents never really gave me any other option than to go to college and see the world, become who I want to be.”
When Trentin was in junior high, her mom became active in recapturing her family’s Indigenous identity and helped create a community center for Native Americans living in Escanaba, which was 20 miles from the closest reservation. But there was pushback from members of the City Council, and Trentin says she was retaliated against at school. This first encounter with racism sparked a realization in her. “There’s a world out there, and I wanted to see it,” she says. “I belonged somewhere I could meet people from everywhere.”
Athena Trentin’s experience as a Rotary Youth Exchange student showed her “what life could be.” “It was the most amazing year of my life,” she says.
Image credit: Paul Go
She found out about Rotary Youth Exchange and wanted to participate but was too young to meet the age requirement. Trentin felt stuck and that feeling compounded the following year when her family couldn’t afford the trip amid her parents’ divorce. The Rotary Youth Exchange representative in her town came back to her family and said, “She is the person we want to send.” Trentin didn’t let it go.
She got a job at a fast food restaurant to help pay the travel costs not covered through the program. She received a grant from United Way to host her own international summit. She invited exchange students from various organizations in the Upper Peninsula to Escanaba to discuss their perceptions of the United States and their views of the world.
She remembers thinking, “If we can exchange this information, imagine what we could do to change the world.” United Way sent her to a national leadership conference at Indiana University. “That’s probably the first time I had ever been out of Wisconsin and Michigan — the first time I ever met people of color other than American Indians.” She needed more experiences like that one. And the summer after her junior year, Rotary Youth Exchange sent her to France.
Athena Trentin
- Rotary Youth Exchange, 1990-91
- Master’s in teaching English to speakers of other languages, Michigan State University, 1997-2000
- Doctorate in education, University of Southern California, 2003-08
- Executive director, National Alliance on Mental Illness North Texas, 2019-24
“I don’t think I realized that I was leaving for a year. I remember my parents having to pick me up from overnight camps because I was homesick,” she says. She was excited but also nervous about things like unfamiliar food, her grasp of the language, and if her host family was going to be nice. “What do I do then? How am I going to last a year? What if I don’t like it? What if I want to go home?” she thought.
When her plane landed, her host father met her at the gate. Outside of baggage claim, a huge group of people were waiting to welcome her. “This is your family,” he told her. Trentin felt alone growing up, like she didn’t fit in. “This is my family,” she thought as her host family came in to embrace her.
Trentin’s first host family lived on the French-Swiss border near Geneva in a beautiful house in the country. Life was much different than back home. “My father was a millwright, and he was on and off unemployment. We didn’t have a lot of money. We didn’t have economic stability,” she says. “I got to experience that for the first time. And that stability made all the difference in the world for me. It showed me what life could be.” She still cherishes the dinners and holidays shared with the family.
School was another eye-opening experience, especially learning world history from a European perspective. She began to understand that American education favored one side of history, one that often neglected her Indigenous roots.
Athena Trentin speaks about mental wellness with the India Association of North Texas.
Courtesy of Athena Trentin
Trentin also learned an important lesson about travel that she carries with her today. When her third host family took her to the City of Light, she was excited to finally see the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and other attractions she’d heard so much about in her French class in the U.S. But visiting those spots wasn’t as satisfying as she’d imagined.
When she returned to America, she made it her goal to go to a new country every two years with two stipulations: travel inexpensively and immerse yourself. “You’re not going to learn anything about the culture just going up the elevator in the Eiffel Tower,” she says.
For many years, Trentin worked in international student affairs at various American universities. Here’s her advice for Rotary Youth Exchange students: Allow travel to change you for the better. “This experience will change your view of the world. You will grow in ways you’ve never imagined,” she says. She urges young travelers to follow the “platinum rule”: Do unto others as they would want done unto them. That is, show respect for other cultures and learn their unwritten rules.
Trentin during her exchange in France in 1990-91.
Courtesy of Athena Trentin
“Ask yourself, ‘What am I willing to negotiate as I’m trying to fit in this new culture?’” she says. “It can be something as simple as tasting new foods. It can be as complex as one of those core values you thought you would never compromise.” This openness led Trentin to newfound confidence when she returned home.
Before her trip, Trentin was reserved. But when she came back, she decided to let her guard down. “That’s something Rotary gave me: the confidence to just be me,” she says. “Since then, I’m more comfortable and pay more attention when I’m the minority in the room. I can learn from everybody else and that ended up helping me in my career.”
Trentin also returned to the U.S. with a bigger family. “The first host family I had is still my family. They will always be my family,” she says. “I’ll say, ‘my French family’ and people are like, ‘What? You’re French?’” Most exchange students Trentin knows are still very close with their host families.
“It was the most amazing year of my life,” she says. At the time she shared these thoughts, Trentin was looking for plane tickets to Mauritius, an African island country in the Indian Ocean where her host brother, Raphael, had just moved.
This story originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.