Zach Howerton, a freshman from Romania
Sarah Wetherbie, Staff Writer
Photos courtesy Zach Howerton
Zach Howerton, a current freshman at North Greenville studying elementary education, lived in Romania for most of his life. Fifteen years to be exact. He and his parents moved there when he was two.
Life in Romania was interesting and very different from life in the United States. For example, the worldview in Romania is different from the one here in the U.S., he said, pointing out that they “live for today” whereas here in the States, we “live for tomorrow.” He also said that many in Romania are poor, but they don’t complain about their situation. They just live.
Howerton was homeschooled until this past year, when his family came back to the United States. In Romania, he played basketball with his friends and toured around Europe playing basketball tournaments.
In his Romanian church, Howerton taught English to the kids that came. He was also a translator for people who came from other churches.
He currently works at the Chick-Fil-A in Taylors and is doing the ROTC program at Furman. After he finishes the ROTC program in six years, Howerton plans to go back to Romania and continue to teach English to kids.
Howerton and one of the classes he taught while in Romania.
Howerton is the oldest of six. He has four brothers and one sister. Two of them are twins that they adopted while in Romania. The twins were Romanian gypsies who were raised by Swedes and went to a Hungarian school. Of course, now they have American parents. It got confusing for a little while, but everything is going well now, he said.
Howerton and his family: Left-five years ago; Right-Christmas 2015
