Editorial:

Later today, as millions of Americans tune out the world and focus on the Super Bowl, a group of teenagers and their chaperones from Down Under will be boarding a homeward flight from Los Angeles International Airport. Seven high school students from Hoppers Crossing Secondary College in Wyndham, Australia, are returning from a three-week foreign exchange visit to Costa Mesa’s Estancia High School.

The town, west of Melbourne, has been Costa Mesa’s foreign sister for at least 13 years. In the late 1990s, delegations of educators from both schools started paying one another annual visits.

Since 2005, Hoppers Crossing and Estancia students have made the trans-Pacific crossings, exchanging visits during their respective summer breaks.

And, for at least a quarter-century now, neighboring Newport Beach has fostered similar international ties through its Sister City Assn. with Antibes, France; Ensenada, Mexico; and Okazaki, Japan. In 2009, Newport Beach and Okazaki feted the 25th anniversary of their bond as sister cities.

During their visit, the latest batch of students from Hoppers Crossing stayed with their counterparts from Estancia and their families. They spent time in Estancia’s classrooms, visiting schools in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach.

Apart from doing fun things like attending Estancia’s Winter Formal, going to Disneyland, and attending an Anaheim Ducks game with their newfound American friends, the young Aussies visited City Hall. They attended a City Council meeting, where they and the council exchanged gifts to mark the goodwill and friendship between Wyndham and Costa Mesa. These included an offering from the Australians of Tim Tams, chocolate-coated cookies that are popular among Aussies, who refer to these baked goodies as biscuits.

“The thing that I’ve learned is that both our cultures are so similar,” Sarah Mangan, 16, a Year 12 student from Hoppers Crossing — the Australian equivalent of a high school senior — told the Daily Pilot.

Sarah, who was on her first trip to the U.S., said she came here with some preconceived notions about American life, which had been shaped by “The Simpsons,” sitcoms and other TV shows.

“They’re just as down to Earth as any Aussie family would be,” she said of her American hosts in Costa Mesa.

We commend the people and leaders of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach for opening their homes to Sarah and her schoolmates and forging international ties with Wyndham and Newport-Mesa’s three other sister cities. The Daily Pilot encourages our two cities to continue with this global bridge building, which is important particularly because it exposes youngsters from opposite ends of the globe, who are potential future leaders, to each other’s cultures. These relationships also prevent Newport-Mesa from growing insular in an increasingly inter-dependent world.

However, it troubles us to learn from Sue Smith, coordinator of Estancia High’s foreign exchange program, that Costa Mesa no longer will underwrite the cost of airplane tickets for this July’s planned trip to Australia by Estancia students. The City Council has slashed this expense from Costa Mesa’s strained budget. Estancia students will have to raise the money on their own. We hope that the city will find a way to restore that line item soon.

In the meantime, we’d like to bid our Australian visitors a fond G’day, farewell and a safe flight home.