LOFALL — Poulsbo is a world away from Russia. But for Shabnami Kakhkhori, a Russian exchange student at West Sound Academy, Little Norway feels like a second home.

“I want to stay here longer. I’m going to really miss this place,” she said.

Kakhkhori, 16, was born in Tajikistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia bordered by China to the east and Afghanistan to the south. She and her family have lived in Kaliningrad — a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea detached from the rest of Russia and surrounded by Poland and Lithuania — since she was 4 years old. Last August, she came to Poulsbo as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Future Leaders Exchange program and began taking classes at West Sound. Since then, she has grown attached to her friends, host family and the school’s approach to education.

“Our school, we’re all like family,” Kakhkhori said. “The teachers teach really interactively. The students are learning and having fun.”

Kakhkhori will return to Russia in May to finish her high school education. She hopes to come back to the U.S. to study international law at the University of Washington, which she visited earlier this year.

“I really liked it,” she said. “We went to language day, and had some classes there. In first period, I had Japanese, and there were Korean students. They were asking where I was from, and I was asking how they got there. They told me it’s a wonderful place to study. It was very fun.”

Kakhkhori’s desire to attend a university in the United States is just a dream for now. Even though her father is a burn surgeon and her mother is a dentist, there’s a broad gap between Russian and American salaries, and tuition for international students is expensive. So she’s looking for grants to pay for her education.

Kakhkhori’s interest in visiting the United States was sparked nearly three years ago when her brother, Firdavsi, went to Delaware as a Future Leaders participant. Kakhkhori applied to the program shortly thereafter, but was not accepted. So she applied again. In October and December 2008, she took three written exams, which evaluated everything from her English ability to social skills to leadership potential. Kakhkhori was accepted to the program last spring. She couldn’t believe it at first.

“They called me and said that I became finalist. And it was first of April, and I said, ‘OK, very funny,’” she said. “I was crying, because it was a big accomplishment to get in.”

Kakhkhori and her host family, Carol and Lowell Ostheller, whom she calls ‘grandma’ and ‘grandpa,’ have learned a lot from each other since her arrival. But it’s the teenager who is doing much of the teaching.

“I think as an older person, I was actually afraid of Russia; afraid to have anything to do with it,” said Carol Ostheller, who grew up during the Cold War. “But after meeting Shabnami, everybody here wants to go on a trip and visit. I think that promotes peace, doesn’t it?”

Kakhkhori has learned some things as well, about America and about herself.

“I kind of feel that I’ve become more confident,” she said. “Before, I felt that I couldn’t … make my own decisions. Now, I feel like I can.”