HATTIESBURG Miss.
Claire Wright, a 19-year-old exchange student from Surrey, England, would have had a difficult first week of school had it not been for her host family.
After crossing the ocean, she missed her connecting flight into New Orleans, lost her suitcase at the Atlanta airport, and was stranded 4,600 miles from home a day late for orientation at the University of Southern Mississippi.
She spent the night in New Orleans with her study abroad advisor’s mother. Without possessions, she took a train to Hattiesburg where Bob Press was waiting to take her to campus.
Bob Press, an assistant professor of political science, and Betty Press, a photographer and part-time instructor in the art department, have been hosting students in the USM hospitality program for three years, and they were prepared to help Wright get to class and find some toothpaste.
Seven weeks later, Wright said she has settled in and fallen in love with the weather, but will probably never like fried okra.
“I didn’t expect everything to be so big,” said Wright, a history and sociology major who began her studies at Keele University in England. “To cross a road is like a mile from one side to the other, and you have separate lanes for turning, I could never drive it.”
