When Joan Barclay, of Auckland, New Zealand, arrived in Fort Dodge as an exchange student for the 1965-66 school year, she probably didn’t expect to find herself back 50 years later.

But like other former exchange students, her year with a host family in the U.S. resulted in the beginning of a family relationship that has lasted for life.

During this visit, Barclay and her husband, Jim Barclay, are staying with Dr. Mike Stitt and his wife, Carol Stitt.

“I lived with Mike’s parents for a year,” Joan Barclay said Wednesday. “I went to Fort Dodge High with Mike’s sister, Beth.”

She was Joan Park then.

The Stitts have been looking forward to the visit.

“They’re family,” Mike Stitt said.

Before her first trip to Fort Dodge, Barclay was used to living in a town surrounded by agriculture.

And the school she attended at home in New Zealand was a similar in size.

But there were also differences.

One of those was the dress code.

“I wore my school uniform until your very final year,” she said.

It led to a teaching moment when another student pulled her aside with a question: “Do you know in America we wear ordinary clothes?”

She found that she needed more clothes.

“I wrote home to my parents,” she said. “I haven’t got enough clothes.”

She’s still in favor of school uniforms.

“Everybody looked identical,” she said. “There was no class distinction. I had some of my friends say we think it’s a good idea.”

There was also a lot of pride in the uniform.

“I wanted to wear my uniform so they know what a kiwi girl looked like,” she joked.

Barclay and her husband were school sweethearts before her exchange year. They married in 1968 and began a family after she returned to New Zealand.

The couple lived in the U.S. twice.

From 1979 to 1982, Jim Barclay was an exchange pilot helping to train F4 pilots at Homestead Airforce Base in Florida.

From 1998 to 2001, he served as a Naval defense attache in Washington, D.C.

“We got home just days before 9/11,” he said.

One would not think that a language barrier could exist between English speaking nations, but New Zealand English and American English have differences.

For instance, slang. Barclay had trouble with it during her student year.

“Things like pop,” she said. “We just don’t use that word at all. We usually just refer to the name of the drink.”

Jim Barclay had his own experience in Florida during the 1979 gas crisis.

“I bought a motor mower,” he said. “I went down to the petrol station to get some petrol and I needed a tin to put it in.”

The clerk asked him if he needed gas.

“No,” he replied. “I don’t want any gas.”

The clerk had no idea what tin meant either. Barclay was finally able to make himself clear when he pointed to where the gas cans should have been on display.

The clerk finally understood.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t got any of those and we’re out of gas.”

Of course, New Zealand has its own slang.

On their way to Fort Dodge, the group stopped in Dyersville to visit the Field of Dreams after a crash course in baseball films.

“We just watched the movie the night before,” Joan Barclay said.

They also spent some time in Chicago.

“We went to a Cubs game,” Jim Barclay said.

Mike Stitt had a good-natured response to that.

“Which they lost.”

Yet, this visit isn’t about sightseeing.

“We’ve seen more of the States than most Americans,” Jim Barclay said. “This time, we’re here to see the people.”

Joan Barclay agreed.

“This whole trip has been planned around visiting friends we’ve known.”

During her exchange time, she served as an ambassador for New Zealand. It was role she enjoyed and learned from. She got a chance to polish her public speaking and even deal with a slide projector that ate a transparency.

“The projector jammed,” she said. “I had to ad lib. That was a bit difficult.”

She also discovered that people’s knowledge of geography seems to have improved.

“Now,” she said, “most people have an idea where New Zealand is. In the past, almost nobody did.”

In Fort Dodge, the husbands will put in some time on the golf course. Jim Barclay is playing with a set of borrowed clubs.

“Every time we talk about it, we get better,” he joked. “You talk about your Field of Dreams.”