If you had to give up your modeling career for a year to be able to study in America, would you?

Sophomore Catharina Knudsen was scouted on the street about two and a half years ago in Denmark, her home country, by Le Management agency. After refusing to work for them for a year and a half, her mom finally convinced her to at least talk to the agency. A year ago, Knudsen signed on with Le Management agency and began her modeling career.

“They were just like the sweetest people and so nice,” Knudsen said. “They are just really, really nice people — they are like a family to me now. It’s really nice and it’s not like how you hear about it and it’s not like ‘oh you have to lose weight and eat this and do this,’ not at all. It’s up to you. It’s your life.”

Despite numerous calls from her agency asking her to do different jobs, Knudsen has had to refuse several times due to guidelines set by American Field Service.

“I’m not allowed to [model here] because AFS won’t allow me,” Knudsen said. “My agency has called me a couple times and they’re like ‘can you take this job in Argentina’ and I’m like ‘no I can’t, I’m sorry but they won’t allow me.’ It would be so cool to do it here too but I can’t.”

Knudsen chose to come to America because of what previous foreign exchange have said about studying in the U.S. as well as what various movies and television shows have portrayed America as.

“I decided to choose America because you have always seen movies and heard about America and I’ve never been to America before,” Knudsen said. “I wanted to get the experience and see how it is in real life and not the ‘Mean Girls’ version you see in TV and all the cliques and how it is so I wanted to see what it is like in real life.”

America has surpassed Knudsen’s expectations.

“I think people are much nicer than I thought,” Knudsen said. “I was kind of afraid that people would be really unfriendly and wouldn’t want to talk with you or like anything but everybody is so friendly and just like really nice people.”

Who would have thought a Scandinavian model would find a home right here in Manhattan, Kansas?