Tom Goye, senior, is a foreign exchange student from Normandy, France.

When I asked how Goye pronounced his last name, he said, “There’s an accent, so it’s ‘ay’ (as in day).”

The first time I met Goye, I thought it was incredibly brave of him to travel over 3,000 miles to the United States from his home country at the age of 17.

Goye has only been in America since August, but in that time he has made many friends and accomplished quite a few things.

Goye played the piano in the Mr. Kearsley competition and came in first.

He also ran cross country, and is now on the hockey team. He has fit in very well with the students at Kearsley.

“They’re all friendly. It was not hard to make friends here,” Goye said. “Like people didn’t know me, then they were so nice to me because I was French. But it was cool.”

Goye has made many friends. He has a girlfriend, senior Lindsay DeWitt, and one of his close friends is junior Santino Guerra.

Goye has made a big impact on both of them, and Guerra said Goye is comical.

“I think Tom is someone with a good personality and a good sense of humor,” Guerra said. “He’s always funny and makes me laugh whenever I see him.”

Goye likes his friends and said they all have something unique about them.

“Each person is different, and I have a nice time with different people,” he said.

Before our interview, I had never spoken with Goye, but as we got into the interview, I found it easy to talk with him.

He opened up in the interview and told me a great deal of things about himself. For instance, Goye is fond of planes, and he has played piano for four years.

Goye likes to study literature, math, and physics, and he likes soccer.

Goye said, “I love soccer, but I’ve never been on a team.”

In addition, he  loves to travel.

“I’ve been to Morocco, Spain, and Portugal,” Goye said. “I would like to travel back to America because I would like to go to Chicago, or New York, or Washington.”

Goye is passionate about movies. He watched them every day in France. “I would watch like 20 movies a week,” Goye said.

Making the transition from the French culture to the American culture was fairly easy for Goye, he said.

“It wasn’t too hard because you see a lot of things in all the movies,” Goye said. “I feel like everything was bigger, like the cars, streets, and the buildings, and there was a lot of fast foods.”

Goye was not scared to come to the United States and he thanks his parents for sending him to the United States.

One aspect of being out of his country he finds intriguing is seeing how other view France.

“It’s cool to see what people think of your own country,” Goye said. “Like you can see things from another prospective.”