For some students, studying abroad is an opportunity to travel somewhere new and learn about a different culture.

And while Jaime Cantwell will be traveling somewhere new this summer, the culture she will be immersed in won’t be that new — at least to her.

From July 2 through Aug. 12, the 17-year-old Redmond High School (RHS) junior will be in China as part of the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program. She will spend six weeks in Deyang, a city in the Sichuan province in central, southwest China, staying with a host family for the duration.

According to its website, NSLI-Y is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and provides “merit-based scholarships for eligible high school students and recent high school graduates to learn less commonly taught languages in summer and academic-year overseas immersion programs.” Students choose from seven languages — Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Korean, Persian (Tajiki), Russian and Turkish — and the program can take them to various countries, including China, Estonia, India, Latvia and Oman.

Cantwell will be part of NSLI-Y’s Mandarin immersion program and for her, growing up with a Taiwanese mother, this will be an opportunity to get in touch with that side of her family’s roots. Her mother speaks Mandarin but Cantwell said they do not speak it at home because her father, who is white, does not speak it.

She discovered NSLI-Y a little more than a year ago when she was looking for Chinese-language courses.

“The Internet is an amazing thing,” she said about how she found the program.

By the time she found NSLI-Y, the application deadline for that year had passed so Cantwell had to wait to apply for the next round. The deadline this time around was the end of October 2015 and she was notified in December 2015 that she was a semifinalist to receive a scholarship. Cantwell had an interview in January and it was about three months of waiting before she found out she had been selected in April.

“It was amazing,” she said about learning she was getting a chance to travel to China to learn Mandarin.

Growing up mixed race, Cantwell, who has never been to Taiwan or China, said it is not uncommon for people to look at and treat her differently. She said people have brought up her background with comments such as, “She doesn’t look quite Chinese,” or “She’s white.”

A few years ago, while attending a ballet program in Toronto, Cantwell met a fellow dancer who also came from a Taiwanese background.

“She was really confused about why I didn’t speak Chinese if I was Taiwanese,” Cantwell said.

Cantwell has wanted to learn Mandarin for a while but the language is not offered in her school. She was recently able to enroll in a first-year Mandarin intensive program at the University of Washington but she soon realized after trying to speak with her mother that she is not as fluent as she thought.

“It just feels awkward,” Cantwell said.

So to have this opportunity through NSLI-Y to immerse herself in the language and culture — she will spend four hours in language lessons, participate in cultural activities and do volunteer work while in China — and get in touch with her Asian roots is significant. She said she is looking forward to being able to explore that side of her heritage.

This opportunity is also exciting for Cantwell’s mother Stephanie Cantwell.

“I was very pleased when Jaime took an interest in learning Chinese two years ago and was ecstatic when she received the NSLI-Y scholarship,” she said. “It will offer Jaime the opportunity to be totally immersed in the Chinese language and my side of her heritage.”

In addition, Stephanie said this could help strengthen family ties.

“My father doesn’t speak English and it will be great to see (Jaime) able to communicate with him,” she said.

Jaime said while her mother’s immediate family lives in the United States, they still have extended family living in Taiwan.

On her upcoming trip, Jaime said she is looking forward to speaking and practicing Mandarin on a daily basis and use the language in everyday situations. She is also looking forward to being able to have a conversation with her mother in Mandarin when she returns.

Jaime’s interest in language extends beyond Mandarin. She can speak Korean and took French in school.

“A lot of times, languages are my hobbies,” she said.

In addition, Jaime plays violin for the RHS chamber orchestra and was part of the group who recently traveled to New York to perform at Carnegie Hall. She has been playing since she was in second grade and this is her third year as a member of the Seattle Youth Symphony. Jaime is also the vice president of the Japanese Club at RHS.

Her post-high school dream is to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Jaime said she would like to study international relations.