Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Three years ago, if Sweet Home High School administrators had been asked to identify students they didn’t expect to see on the dais in 2007, Ka Wai Yeung would surely have been on that list.
A young foreign exchange student from an extremely urban environment, who spoke three languages, he was wise to the world, which he had traveled extensively by the time he arrived in Sweet Home.
But there were lessons he was to learn when he got here and on Friday, Yeung will be among the approximately 160 seniors in cap and gown in Husky Stadium.
Yeung, who is known universally as Kevin, arrived in Sweet Home from Hong Kong three years ago as a 15-year-old sophomore exchange student looking to experience a different culture.
Sweet Home was very different.
Hong Kong, Yeung said, is a city that never sleeps.
“It’s a little (1,092 square kilometers) island that has a big city (6.9 million residents). The lights never go out. Most stores are open 24 hours.”
Yeung, now 18, had lived with his mother, Sarah Tang, a secretary, on the 32nd floor of a 35-floor apartment building. He had traveled since he was 7 – to San Francisco, where his father, Alex Yeung, is a shoe designer for the Rocket Dogs brand, to Australia, to Great Britain.
“I didn’t really have a problem traveling by myself,” Kevin Yeung said.
He’d learned English from a Filipino maid his mother hired soon after he was born, so he could communicate.
“I wasn’t so good, but at least I can talk to people,” he said.
Sweet Home, though, was a whole new experience.
“The first thing that Sweet Home gave me was a feeling of a small town,” he said. “I had to get used to it. It’s a quiet place where everybody knows each other.
“I hate that it’s small but I like the relaxed lifestyle, with Foster Lake and the countryside.”
Yeung went out for soccer and got involved in student life. Then, he said, he decided to stay “and quit traveling around.”
Sweet Home Prinicipal Pat Stineff said Yeung is the first exchange student she’s had, in 30 years of teaching and 14 years of administration, who has returned.
“He wanted desperately to stay,” she said. “He was trying to find every reason he could to stay.”
Because exchange students tend to be older, often having finished high school already, they generally take classes that aren’t necessary to graduate. When Yeung decided to stay, he had to make up the work he’d missed as a sophomore, Stineff said.
“I’ve been amazed by him,” she said. “From the beginning, when he said ‘I want to be here,’ he really grew up.”
Yeung played soccer again as a junior and senior, scoring the Huskies’ final goal of the season against Central last fall, and went out for the wrestling team. He also ran hurdles for the track team.
He’d played soccer in Hong Kong for a club team since he was 12, heading for the field nearly every afternoon after attending school from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
“I think a big part of playing soccer for me helped me grow up a lot,” he said. “I think my second family over there was the coaches and my teammates. They actually taught me more than my parents did.”
He said he thinks sports is important in Sweet Home “since there’s nothing much to do.”
“It helps keep you busy,” Yeung said. “It makes you keep your grades up because you have to have the GPA to play. It helps me prepare for the future, get myself in shape.”
Yeung said wrestling, in particular, has taught him life lessons during his stay in Sweet Home. Last season, he said, he got to wrestle in some varsity tournaments, which he enjoyed.
“The coaches push you hard,” he said. “(Steve) Thorpe was one of the coaches who pushed me to the top. The training also taught me. The work is hard but it prepares you for life outside the wrestling room. I believe Thorpe said if you make it through one wrestling season, it builds character for the world out there.
“In the world out there, nobody cares about you. You can go out there and people won’t offer you a job. It’s ‘What can you do for me?’ That’s what they’re thinking about. The world out there is way tougher than you thought it would be.”
He said high school education in Hong Kong is more demanding than what he’s experienced here, besides the fact that the school day is two hours longer.
“We have five periods here – less class, but that gives us time to recover from what we’ve learned today,” he said. In Hong Kong, students take “major tests” every week, which he liked to Advanced Placement testing at Sweet Home.
With eight universities in a city of nearly 7 million people, getting in is “very competitive,” as is getting a job.
“Pretty much the minimum requirement for any job (in Hong Kong) is a college degree,” he said.
He said he wants to become a firefighter/paramedic and had planned to take classes in those areas while attending Oregon State University. Now he’s thinking of starting at Chemeketa Community College and he’s applied for an opening at the Coos Bay Fire Department for an intern firefighter.
Eventually, he said, he’d like to visit France, “but not right now. Possibly after college graduation. My mom’s been there and when I look at those pictures, I want to go there.”
Yeung has returned to Hong Kong during most of his school breaks, he said, and last summer his friend KC Hanscam went with him. His mother has never been to Sweet Home but his father visited during his sophomore year. He said his mother, who has also traveled extensively, has never visited Sweet Home.
“The reason she wants me to go on lots of trips is she wants to me to see life,” he said. “She wants me to learn about other lifestyles, other cultures. It makes me learn to grow up. It makes me tougher.”
During his time in Sweet Home, Yeung lived during the first year with the Gilbert Munoz family, then with Steve and Adele Hanscam during his junior year. This year he’s staying with the Wayne Mealue family. He’s been involved in the Boy Scouts, of which Steve Hanscam is a scoutmaster, and been involved in a number of Eagle Scout projects with friends who were working for those badges. He has also worked on rental properties and burned forest debris.
“He never did community service (before he arrived in Sweet Home),” said Adele Hanscam. “He’d never considered helping somebody. He came here having never done anything for himself. They had a maid.”
An only child, Yeung also had never had to live with anyone else his age before he moved in with KC, she said. Now he has “extended family” with the Hanscams’ relatives and other families with whom he’s lived.
“He’s really grown up in the last three years,” Hanscam said. “It is impressive to think that we could help. He’s never caused an ounce of trouble.”
Stineff said she has enjoyed having Yeung work in the school office during the spring trimester.
“He’s a really nice boy,” she said. “He always was, but he’s really matured. He really grew up.”