Sedona Red Rock High School exchange student Samuel Knigge said he was nervous before arriving in Arizona.

“It’s always scary to go to a new environment where you don’t know anyone, but I think it’s totally worth it to take the risk,” he said.

When he did make it, there were several things he found that he didn’t really expect.

“Firstly, when I came out of the airport it was like a heat wave hitting me, it was super hot,” Knigge said. He arrived on Aug. 4, 2025, when the recorded temperature at Sky Harbor International Airport was 112° F. “I think the red rocks were kind of shocking, I didn’t think it was going to be that beautiful.

“On the way here, I saw a lot of cactuses, I didn’t think there was going to be that many.”

Knigge went on a lot of hikes while living in Sedona. He said he hiked with his family a lot in Norway, too, but the hikes here were pretty cool.

“All of the exchange students who have stayed with us; we get them a gift for coming and being here and it’s usually hiking shoes,” said Jennette Bill, one of his host mothers. “We took him over to the outlet store and bought him hiking shoes so he could get out and hike with us with proper footwear.”

Staying Active

Having now spent nine months in Arizona, Knigge has found things he will definitely miss, the two biggest being the people and the food.

His favorite meal was hamburgers from Five Guys in Flagstaff.

But the junior said the food was good whether Knigge was going out with some friends after one of his many sporting events, or if it was homemade by one of his hosts.

“One of our favorite stories is that we’d all go around and get food, and he would be very polite and get a moderate amount,” Bill said. “We’d say, ‘OK Samuel, we all have our food,’ and he would be our sweeper. He’d go through and finish everything else that was left.”

She laughed and said the 6’5” athlete needed the food for all his activities. Knigge competed in basketball, football, soccer and track and said basketball was his favorite.

Football was fun, but “a little brutal,” he said.

The friends he’s made on the different sports teams, Knigge said, are definitely his favorite part of his time in Arizona. They would take the bus to a restaurant after school or go out while traveling for a game, which are some of his favorite memories.

American Differences

Something Knigge also noticed while taking the bus or going out in public was that “here, people are more open than in Norway,” he said.

On the bus or out and about Knigge said people would talk to him and his friends just being friendly, which he enjoyed.

“He’s what I think of as an ideal exchange student, because anytime we’d say ‘Hey Sam, we’re doing this,’ or ‘you want to go do this?’ it was always ‘Yes,’ ‘Yes.’” Bill said “One of the times he went to Prescott to Costco with David [Jennette’s husband] and he’d never been to a big box store like that and David said his eyes just went wide and he said ‘Wow, look at all this stuff.’”

Rotary

Bill organizes the exchange program through the Rotary Club of Sedona Village and has hosted four students, starting 15 years ago with a student from Russia.

Knigge’s parents in Norway are both Rotarians, which is how they got connected with Bill and the Rotary exchange program.

Knigge’s twin sister is also currently a Rotary exchange student in Brazil.

“We had a dog and he was just really good with the dog,” Bill said. “He’d sit and watch TV with us, we loved to play games with him, because we like to play dice games, he’d join us around the table and play dice games.”

While this is the longest he’s spent in the country, Knigge said the last time he was in the U.S. was two years ago, visiting his brother who had gone through another exchange program in the small town of Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada.

“We went to Portland and Seattle and the area over there, and then we went to visit him in Canada,” Knigge said.

During his time, Knigge was an active volunteer through the Interact Club at the high school, during which he would go to the Sedona Winds and give presentations about his experience in America, help out with event organization and help out in the community.