By Bridin Reynolds-Hughes (www.capegazette.com)

Oú est votre maison?

Dove è la vostra sede?

Kur irtavas majas?

By Jim Westhoff Cape Gazette staff (www.capegazette.com)

They scoop ice cream, work drive-through windows, bus tables and groom dogs. Thousands of students from all over the world descend on the Cape Region during the summer to work and live like Americans.Known for their work ethic, punctuality and near-limitless quest for hours, foreign students are considered a godsend by many local business owners.They say young people with accented English fill a void left by a dwindling number of interested American youths. Many American young people have school commitments that last until mid-June and that start again in mid-August, while foreign workers arrive here and work for three months straight. Some of the students arrive in May and work until July; others will arrive as late as August and stay until October.While not every experience is rosy and police have occasionally been called for noisy parties and other complaints, most of the foreign students report they are happy to spend their summer in the Cape Region.

By Jim Westhoff
Cape Gazette staff

An 18 year-old Millsboro woman driver is facing charges in the death of a bicyclist.

A Sussex County grand jury on June 27 indicted Megan Seek, 18, for operating a vehicle causing death, in connection with an April 28 accident in which a Polish woman was struck and killed.

The misdemeanor charge carries a penalty ranging from probation to 30 months in jail for a first offense and a maximum fine of $1,150, said Lori Sitler, spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office.

Sitler said a warrant has been issued, and Seek is expected to turn herself in to authorities. The case will be scheduled for a case review in about a month, she said.

The accident occurred at 11 p.m., shortly after Katarzyna Reteruk, 22, a student visiting from Poland, left her job at Ann Marie’s Restaurant. Police said she was riding south on Route 1, near the entrance of McDonald’s, when she was struck from behind by a Buick Skylark driven by Seek. Reteruk was taken to Beebe Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

By Jim Westhoff
Cape Gazette staff

Free bicycle helmets, lights and plenty of instruction were handed out to cyclists who attended this week’s Use Your Head Bike Safety Fair.

Held June 20 at Ocean Atlantic Agency in Rehoboth Beach, the event was organized by Ocean Atlantic, Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) and Sussex Cyclists.

“This is partly in response to all the horrendous events on Route 1,” said Kent Hanneman, of Ocean Atlantic, referring to the recent bicycle fatality there and other earlier accidents. Three years ago, he said, Ocean Atlantic handed out fewer than 100 helmets, but this year, they have more than 3,000 to give away.

“We want to promote safety,” Hanneman said.

Ocean Atlantic still has plenty of helmets left, so anyone who would like a helmet should stop by the Rehoboth Avenue location and pick one up.

Targeted this year are the thousands of foreign students who come to the Cape Region to work during the summer.

By Gwenn Garland
Delmarva Business Weekly Editor

It was a worst-case scenario: 11 young people arrive on the Eastern Shore after a long journey from Eastern Europe to start their new summer jobs, only to find that the housing they thought they had secured was nonexistent.
"I had 11 Russian college students sitting in my dining room with no place to stay," recalled Doug Lozinak, who was then a manager for McDonald's, the students' employer. "It was a bad situation."

By Bridin Reynolds
Cape Gazette staff

Blessed with compelling beauty and blonde tresses, at first glance Alena Novikava resembles starlet Cameron Diaz.

And although she is a self-confessed movie maniac - with intriguing favorites ranging from the classic “Bringing Up Baby” to the cult classic “Dirty Dancing” - Novikava has no designs on Hollywood.

Speaking perfect English in her distinct and charming Russian accent, she articulates her lofty life goals with great verve.  A bartender at the trendy new restaurant, 59 Lake, Novikava impresses her customers with more than cold lager and exquisite martinis.

“I’m studying international relations and finance back home,” she said.

Three years into earning her degree, Novikava is a student at the International Business Belorussian State University, among the republic’s most important educational institutions in the spheres of economics, management and marketing.

By James Fisher
Daily Times Staff Writer

Anne Marie Conestabile has visited the homes of foreign-born students she knows from their Ocean City days, going to Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, countries where many of the students live. When she was there, they treated her graciously, she said: "Their families couldn't cook enough delicious Polish meals."

Now she'd like to make sure they are treated just as well when they are living and working here as an essential slice of the summer work force.

Conestabile, youth coordinator for St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church, and The Rev. John Klevence plan to present a set of goals for living standards for international students to the Town Council tonight. Too often, she said, she meets students who are living in poorly maintained apartments, working at jobs where their hours are long, paychecks are late and benefits nonexistent.

By JOHN LOFTUS Gannett News Service

There are plenty of jobs in Bulgaria. But Ana Ivanova says the money isn't good. So for the second summer in a row, she has come to Ocean City to work for the kind of pay college kids earn in an American resort town.

That would be about four times, maybe more, she said, than she could get back in her hometown, Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.

Trouble is, as of late June, she had not found a job.

She is not alone in that, or in being an Eastern European college student at the shore.

This summer, Ocean City is thick with Russians, Poles, Serbs, Slovakians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Macedonians and Bulgarians, lots of Bulgarians.

"Too many," said Assya Doncheva, another Bulgarian student.

And that has meant that students from former Eastern Bloc countries who got to the shore after the first few weeks of June are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to find work. Like anyone else looking for work in a resort town after the middle of June, they have found all the jobs are taken.

The good old American summer job has gone global. Beach towns, lake resorts and mountain ranches are increasingly filling seasonal jobs with foreign students on temporary work visas. And much as I like seeing sleepy beach towns become more cosmopolitan, I think American students are losing a valuable tradition -- one that affects how they view employment for the rest of their lives.

Yes, crummy, low-paying summer jobs had meaning for me. They taught me compassion for hourly wage workers. I learned how taxes ravage small paychecks and how my co-workers needed to put in long hours to support their families. As a result, I'm always in favor of any increase in the minimum wage. I support worker safety inspections. And I'm a great tipper.

Skipping the summer job is one more opportunity lost for class mixing in America. As one girlfriend, who toiled folding bras and nightgowns at a long-defunct department store, related: "It was the first time I saw how low-paid elderly women lived. Talk about incentive to study in college! It was a character-building summer that I never forgot."