These days faith and politics are so stretched by hyperbole that the rule to the exception often seems lost. This year, several students from different countries – with different customs and faiths – are attending Wakefield Country Day School in Flint Hill and proving that the rule is often more interesting than what is otherwise so blithely accepted as fact.

Hajar Maourouri – a 17-year-old student visiting from Morocco – is a case in point. She is a charming young woman with a bright smile and an impish sense of humor. She listens to pop star Avril Lavigne, plays volleyball and basketball, and plans to go to college. She is also Muslim. And although she wears a headscarf – which she calls "stylish" – and modestly covers her arms and legs, all of this is incidental to being just a normal teenager like every other student at Wakefield.

Asked why she wanted to come to the United States, Maourouri said that she wanted to learn more about the American people. She went on to explain – with a mischievous smile – that to date her understanding of American youth was from watching the movie, "High School Musical." But she clearly has a serious side as well. As an assignment in her U.S. government class, she was asked to watch Sen. Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. When asked what she thought, she replied that she thought it was good, but that she was waiting to hear Sen. John McCain's speech before she made any comparisons.

Used to living in a big city – Rabat – the biggest change she mentioned was that it was much harder to get around as she is used to buses and public transportation. Otherwise, she thinks the people she has met so far are nice, and as she explained, not very different from the people in Morocco. She said she has been able to make friends easily – like the entire varsity volleyball team of which she is a team member – and hangs around with Mew Yindeedej – a student from Thailand and her roommate with her host family – and her host family's two young daughters.

For some reason, she has a fascination with ketchup, and – as her host mother Tammy Vernick tells it – puts it on everything . . . except donuts which have turned out to be her new favorite American food.

She has been asked (by a boy, of course) if she has to wear her head scarf everyday - even when she is playing on the volleyball team. She said that, despite this minor cultural difference, no one at the school has treated her any differently from the others. Very poignantly she said about her home and culture: "We're not very different. We are are an open people. If I'm wearing a scarf, that doesn't mean I'm different or that I'm thinking something else . . . .I'm normal, like everybody here."

High school in America is not so different from primary school in Morocco – where she would have been a senior this year – but that students select an area of specialty much sooner, sort of like a major in college. She also said she thought Americans take sports much more seriously over here.

What is not the same, however, is the disciplined regimen she adheres to in observance of the holy month of Ramadan. She rises at 4:45 each day in order to eat breakfast before sunrise as it is customary for Muslims to fast from sunup to sundown. To her, this act of faith brings a greater awareness of God and with other human beings as fasting fosters greater compassion and sympathy for those less fortunate. It is also a period, she said, in which unity, peace and harmony become enhanced through greater piety which, to her, is the essence of Ramadan.

Accompanying Maourouri this fall are several other students from around the world including five from Korea, two from Germany, two from Japan, one from Sweden, one from Spain and a late arrival from Azerbaijan.

According to Kathleen Grove – head of school at WCDS – the school and its board have made deliberate efforts to invite these students as they see a real benefit both for their own students as well as for the students visiting from other countries.