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‘‘I was very happy about it,” she declared happily on Friday, in her carefully practiced English.

Eight students and five teachers traveled from Guatemala through an exchange program with the Friends Meeting School, a private Quaker school in Ijamsville. The school is one of six Friends schools in Maryland and serves about 116 students from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade.

The group from Liceo Bilingue Chiquimulteco, a private school of about 150 students in Guatemala, arrived here on Nov. 28 and planned to return home Wednesday.

The language exchange program allows students to learn foreign languages and cultures, said Jane Mabry, a kindergarten teacher at the Ijamsville school who helped organize the visit this winter.

The program also fits in the philosophy of the Friends Meeting School, which encourages diversity and collaboration among communities.

The exchange program started in 2006, with help from Uriel Orellana, a Spanish teacher at the Friends Meeting School, who is originally from Guatemala.

Through the program this summer a group of Ijamsville students and teachers visited the sister school in Guatemala. The American students got a chance to practice Spanish, see the workings of a school in a different country and tour major historic and geographic sites. They visited the ruins of ancient Mayan cities and explored banana plantations and farms in the Guatemalan mountains.

This winter, the Friends Meeting School returned the favor.

Families of students at the Friends Meeting School opened their homes for the Guatemalan guests. Guest students attended classes at the school and visited Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and Frederick County.

Guatemalan students were selected for the program based on their performance at school. All are honor roll students who were eager to develop their English skills and explore a different country.

While the experience was a boost for the guests’ English skills, it was also beneficial for their hosts.

Madelene Schoep, a sixth-grader at Friends Meeting School, said having Guatemalan guests in her house tested her Spanish skills.

‘‘I have to translate to my mom, because she doesn’t speak Spanish,” Madelene said.

The guests, on the other hand, learned more than just English, said Nora Patricia Martinez Acevedo, the Guatemalan English teacher.

Her students visited the National Aquarium in Baltimore and for the first time saw live sharks and sting rays. At the National Air and Space Museum, they learned about space and air travel. They even got to walk through a giant replica of the human heart at the Franklin Institute of Science in Philadelphia.

‘‘They are learning more and they are practicing what they already know,” Acevedo said.

Acevedo said her students’ English has improved and they are now more confident about their communication skills. She also noticed that the trip helped many of her students understand the true value of learning.

With more students participating in the trips every year, the two schools hope to establish the exchange program as a standard practice.

Gisela Pinto de Estrada, head of the Guatemalan Liceo Bilingue Chiquimulteco, said she was impressed with the hands-on teaching methods in the Friends Meeting School’s classrooms.

She said she hopes to apply the experience and make learning more interactive at her school in Guatemala.

‘‘I am so thankful for the sister program,” she said through an English interpreter. ‘‘This is something that goes through borders. We have found a lot of friends here.”