Overseas Students Find Visit More Than a Fair Exchange

It could be a scene from one of those PG-13 movies about high school life that usually hit theaters in the summer: A couple dozen young adults lounge by the pool noshing on barbecued chicken and potato salad. Others in skimpy bathing suits paddle lazily across the water on rubber rafts.

But at this pool party in Ventura County, the youths are speaking Russian, not English. The music blaring over the CD player is not Counting Crows or Nine Inch Nails, but the hottest tunes out of Moscow.

“Here’s some more Russians,” says 17-year-old Patrick Campbell as another 10 students file through his front door. “Welcome to central base.”

While the students ditch their travel bags and suitcases in Campbell’s plush Camarillo living room, a Russian documentary crew records their every move. Over the weekend, about 35 students from the former Soviet Union are staying in homes across Ventura County--their first stop before bouncing around the state to attend conferences with a youth leadership group.

Though journalist Yuri Yerofeev says the 25-minute documentary will focus mainly on the group of students, called the Assn. of Young Leaders, he also says it will give viewers back home a fresh look at American life.

“The last thing we want to talk about is McDonald’s and Coca-Cola,” says Yerofeev, 32, who works for the state television station in the northern city of Murmansk. “We want to touch upon the openness, the freedom of behavior in America. We don’t want to fall back on stereotypes.”

The documentary’s director, Yelena Vasyukova, who like many of those gathered here speaks little English, says the film will probably be broadcast all over the former Soviet Union. But as she polishes off her first home-cooked American steak, she says she isn’t sure that filming in a foreign country will be easy.

“As Napoleon put it, you need to start the battle to see what it’s going to be like,” Vasyukova, 38, says.

In the swimming pool, a battle of a different kind is raging. Standing next to a bubbling hot tub, Oak Park resident Mike Iceland watches as 18-year-old Siberian native Dennis Aksyonov attacks his friends with a Super Soaker squirt gun.

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“This is a great chance for them to see how we live,” says Iceland, 17, who is hosting a few students from the former Soviet Union himself.

With the documentary crew in tow, the foreign students over the weekend will check out the Hard Rock Cafe in Los Angeles, tour through Hollywood and hit another barbecue in Thousand Oaks. Next week they will head for UC Santa Barbara and later Stanford University and the San Francisco Bay Area to attend conferences put on by CASC Leadership Training, a 50-year-old California nonprofit association that trains young adults in leadership, public speaking and conflict resolution and that is hosting the students.

Many of the youths say they will learn skills they don’t learn in their home countries.

“We want to promote leadership skills among Russian youth,” says 21-year-old Oleg Sidorenko, former president of the Assn. of Young Leaders, which is CASC’s counterpart in the former Soviet Union. “Public speaking, communication skills and a business sense are things that many Russians lack.”

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Campbell, who is CASC’s president, flew to Moscow and Volgodonsk last summer to teach Russians how to organize students, set up meetings and train others to be leaders. The Camarillo High School senior, who has ambitions to become President of the United States, says a lot of his misperceptions about Russia were obliterated along the way.

“We hear that Russians don’t talk to foreigners and that there’s a lot of lawlessness,” Campbell says. “I was able to open my mind and blow away stereotypes.”

Yana Kosova, a 15-year-old sitting on the lip of the pool on this tropical evening, isn’t yet sure what to make of her surroundings.

“It’s a little bit weird,” Kosova says. “They don’t have palm trees in Kazakhstan.”

Like Kosova, many of the students walk around the pool deck in a daze, victims of full-blown jet lag after their arrival at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday. They’ve flown 11 hours and crossed 11 time zones to get to Ventura County.

“This day will be for us 35 hours long,” said Phil Lupov, the Assn. of Young Leaders’ 18-year-old president. “It is a great day in every sense.”