Exchange is change. Rapid, beautiful,
colourful, amazing, unexpected, overwhelming and most of all, constant
change. Change in lifestyle, country, language, friends, parents, houses, and
school, simply everything.
Exchange is going from thinking you know who you are, to having no idea who you are anymore, to being someone new, but not entirely new. You are still the person you were before but you jumped into that ice cold lake. You know how it feels like to be on your own, away from home, with no one you really know. And you find out that you can actually do it.
Exchange is learning to trust, trust people, who, at first, are only names on a piece of paper, trust that they want the best for you, that they care. Trust, that you have the strength to endure a year on your own, endure a year of being apart from everything that mattered to you before. Trust that you will have friends. Trust that everything’s going to be alright. And it is seeing this trust being justified.
Exchange is thinking, all the time about everything.
Exchange is going from thinking you know who you are, to having no idea who you are anymore, to being someone new, but not entirely new. You are still the person you were before but you jumped into that ice cold lake. You know how it feels like to be on your own, away from home, with no one you really know. And you find out that you can actually do it.
Exchange is learning to trust, trust people, who, at first, are only names on a piece of paper, trust that they want the best for you, that they care. Trust, that you have the strength to endure a year on your own, endure a year of being apart from everything that mattered to you before. Trust that you will have friends. Trust that everything’s going to be alright. And it is seeing this trust being justified.
Exchange is thinking, all the time about everything.
Exchange
is about meeting people.
Exchange
is about listening to new music.
Exchange
is sometimes uncomfortable.
Exchange
is great. It’s feeling the connection between you and your host parents grow.
It’s knowing in which cupboard the peanut butter is. Its meeting people from
all over the world. It’s having a place to stay in almost every country of the
world. It’s getting 5 new families. One of them being a huge group of the most
awesome teenagers in the world.
It’s cooking food from your home country and not messing up. It’s seeing beautiful landscapes that you never knew existed.
Exchange is exchange students. The most amazing people in the whole wide world. Those people from everywhere who know exactly how you feel and those people who become your absolute best friends even though you only see most of them 3 or 4 times during your year. The people, who take almost an hour to say their final goodbyes to each other. Those people with the jackets full of pins. All over the world.
Exchange is falling in love with this amazing, wild, beautiful country and with your own home country.
Exchange is frustrating. Things you can’t do, things you don’t understand. Things you say, that mean the exact opposite of what you meant to say.
Exchange is about understanding.
Exchange is so unbelievable great.
Exchange is not a year in your life. It’s a life in one year.
Exchange is nothing like you expected it to be, and everything you wanted it to be.
Exchange is the best year of your life so far without a doubt.
Exchange is something you will never forget, something that will always be a part of you. It is something no one back at home will ever truly understand.
Exchange is growing up, realizing that everybody is the same, no matter where they’re from.
That there are great people and
it only depends on you, how good or bad your day is going to be or the
whole year.
It is realizing that you can be on your own, that you are an independent person and learning how to explain that to your parents.
Exchange is dancing in the rain for no reason, crying without a reason and laughing at the same time. It’s turmoil of every emotion possible.
IYE is everything. And IYE is something you can’t understand unless you’ve part of it and been through it. Jump on board and enjoy the ride.
Notes from an Inbound IYE Exchange Student.2013
It is realizing that you can be on your own, that you are an independent person and learning how to explain that to your parents.
Exchange is dancing in the rain for no reason, crying without a reason and laughing at the same time. It’s turmoil of every emotion possible.
IYE is everything. And IYE is something you can’t understand unless you’ve part of it and been through it. Jump on board and enjoy the ride.
