Michael Bozzi

Michael Bozzi is from Madison, CT, was the captain of the varsity basketball team and played for the varsity baseball team as well. He will be attending Haverford College next year in Pennsylvania where he hopes to study medicine.



Whenever Choate is trying to impress some alum with too much money and not enough alma maters to give it to, we break out the infamous PMAC flags, a jumbled assortment of nationalities that we say represents our student body. But what the administration doesn’t understand is that bringing one kid over from Bangladesh or Zaire isn’t going to provide us with the true multicultural experience that they so proudly flaunt. Nor is it fair to appoint this frightened new student as the unofficial ambassador for an entire nation. We too often judge a country and its merit by how much we like that one Korean kid we know, or how smart we think that Dominican student is. My friends and I know all too well that one goofy Swede doesn’t necessarily represent the mindset of all of Sweden, though to figure this out we had to make ourselves the outsiders and visit the land of blonde hair and blue eyes on our own time.

As some of you older students may remember, a few years back we had an exchange student here by the name of Martin Oun, an enormous Swede with a fumbling accent and a resounding laugh that immediately made him a staple in my group of friends. Every weekend, he would lug his dirty laundry from East Cottage back to Pete’s house and make himself at home on the third floor. We spent days cooped up together, playing Super Smash Bros and talking about all the hot girls we were totally gonna get with next weekend. In the end, our deeply forged friendship landed Pete, Jesse, and I on a plane to Stockholm a week after graduation.

Martin had described his house to us in simple terms that we could easily comprehend. “It’s like size of Bozzi’s house and quality of Jesse’s house.” Needless to say, we were expecting a nice two story home with ample living space and all the necessary commodities. Instead, to our surprise, we found ourselves in the bottom floor of a cramped split-level, crammed into a single bedroom directly across from the boiler room. Just imagine spending ten days in a Choate single with three other people, all of them large boys. It was not pleasant.

After depositing our belongings on the little floor space that was not devoted to makeshift beds, we made our way upstairs to the kitchen, starving after the twelve hour flight. What we found was a note from Martin’s mother and a plate of black bread that hurt our teeth as well as our taste buds. Desperate for something edible, we grabbed four rickety bikes from the garage and sped down to the local supermarket, where we proceeded to blow through the money given to us by our parents for souvenirs. We devoured a loaf of bread before we had left the parking lot. The other groceries were balanced precariously on the handlebars of the bikes until we arrived back home, where they too were soon disposed of.

That night, we were finally introduced to Martin’s family and sat down for a nice meal together with his parents and two sisters. On the menu: authentic Swedish meatballs. Of course we were ecstatic; we were about to experience the most famous dish that Sweden had to offer, one whose reputation certainly couldn’t let us down. To our chagrin, instead of receiving hefty portions of beef, scoops of a bright orange sauce with meager specs of meat were dropped onto our plates. Momentarily taken aback, Jesse reached for the pasta, only to find it covered in ketchup. We choked down as much of the dinner as we could, but it goes without saying that the toilets were stained orange for the next few days.

The next day, thoroughly disheartened, we decided to take the train into Stockholm to test out the local scene. However, we could not escape before Martin’s mother slapped a 10:30 curfew on us, further frustrating her weary guests. After an uneventful night in the city, we dutifully returned home at the preordained time, only to discover that the sun was still up as we walked into the sleeping house. With nothing else to do, we put on The Lord of the Rings and fell asleep on the couch.

The following day, we were determined to get out and experience all that Stockholm had to offer. Martin called a few old friends to meet up with and before long we were back on the train, this time disregarding any mention of a bedtime. Obviously, Sweden has a bit of a reputation when it comes to attractive women and alcoholic beverages, and this party did not disappoint in either category. As bottles were passed around, we watched two girls making out on a couch covered with an American flag. This was the Sweden we had been looking for.

After receiving an irate phone call from Mrs. Oun, at just after 2:00 a.m. we decided to stop by McDonald’s before heading home for the night. We each gorged on 56 kroners worth of burgers and fries and then began the trek back as the sun started to peak up over the horizon. Walking through the slums of Norsborg, we were soon set upon by a pair of hoodlums who had the audacity to pull knives out and try to take our money. Now after such an enjoyable night, we were hardly about to let a few punks spoil our fun. As Pete, Jesse and I stood our ground, looking as tough as possible, Martin exchanged heated words in Swedish with our would-be assailants. Clearly outmatched and intimidated by our rippling muscles, they soon slunk off in search of easier prey. Adrenaline flowing, we returned to the house at the very peak of masculinity. We had drunk alcohol; we had seen two girls make out; we had even fended off armed robbers. And then it all came crashing down.

We could smell it from a block away. The stench intensified as we approached the house, and standing in the front lawn we could barely breathe. Jabbering in Swedish, Martin’s mother emerged from our toxic residence to announce that a sewage pipe had burst in the boiler room situated a few feet from my bed, and that last night’s meatballs would be making an encore appearance on the floor of our bedroom. We didn’t sleep much that night.

As we sat outside, marinating in the unbearable odor and watching the sun rise, utter despair set in. We were quickly going broke, we had a tyrant for a host mother, and everything we owned reeked of human feces. The rest of our ten days there passed in a blur of train rides, beach trips, and World Cup Soccer. When our day of departure mercifully came, we were ushered out of the house and told to buy our own train tickets to the airport. Just before we left, as I was trying to preserve a positive image of my time in Sweden, Mrs. Oun came out and instructed Martin to help “Peter and Jesse, and… and Other” get to their plane. Other? I had spent the last ten days living with this woman and she had never even bothered to learn my name. Without saying another word, I walked out of the house and never looked back.

Two years later, I still shudder at the very mention of Sweden. When my mom suggested a vacation to Scandinavia this summer, I immediately declined any such invitation. I haven’t even been able to shake the nickname “Other” yet. When it’s all said and done, though, the blue and gold of the Swedish flag stand proudly planted in front of the Arts Center because a great Swede came to this fine institution, and I don’t plan on losing sight of that. Every day I regret the bitterness with which I left that house. I let something as trivial as a sewage leak interfere with one of my most endearing friendships. So my immersion into Martin’s culture didn’t go exactly as planned. That shouldn’t impact how I feel about one of my closest friends. A few events that were entirely out of his control shouldn’t cause me to abandon Martin. Just as one person cannot represent an entire country, an entire country cannot represent one person. And as the senior class heads off to college next year, I think it is important to remember that the friends we made here were never defined by their surroundings. Whether they were from Greenwich County or inner-city New York, even if they got into your dream school and left you on the outside looking in, you have to cherish the person and nothing else. Don’t let one bad experience tear apart something that took years to make. Don’t leave Choate on bad terms. Don’t walk away and never look back. Someday we’re going to have our own reunion weekend and I expect every one of you to be there and to be friends with everyone else. In the words of the great Jackie Moon, “Everybody love everybody!”