Not a year in your life, a life in a year.
Dedicated to the Exchange Students around the world.
You wake up one morning after barely sleeping and you grab your bags. The sun's not even up yet and the only people who seem to be awake are the frantic travelers at the airport with you ready to start their next adventures. The long process of checking in suitcases and going through security comes first though, as always. It doesn't really hit you that you're actually leaving as you're hugging your family goodbye, and you probably won't even feel scared as you look for your gate number. In fact there's a good chance that nothing will feel real to you until you're sitting in that airplane seat waiting for take-off. That's when the nerves will come and you'll think to yourself, "Well this is it, here I go, today is the day". Then suddenly the plane is in the air and you're looking out the window, watching the world you've always known grow smaller and smaller as the clouds move in to hide your view of your past life. Now you're alone, traveling abroad, and with every different airport stop its getting harder to breathe. Your emotions are finally catching up to you. You might even cry on that very last flight when it occurs to you that you only have a few more hours until you land in your new country and start your crazy new life.
When you finally do land, you'll probably be too tired to care how far away you are from home. The only thing you'll want to do is meet your new family and go to sleep. Little do you know that the next time you wake up Everything will be different.
You'll be sitting at the table with your new family eating your first meal in your new country, and there's a pretty good chance you'll have no idea what you're even putting into your mouth. You're now in a new world that has a completely different culture. It's very likely that nothing is the same. Different smells, different foods, different types of buildings, different looking streets, different looking people, different traditions, different customs, different language, and a different way of life. For the first time since you were an infant, you won't understand anything. People will talk to you and your best guess of how to react will just be to simply smile. You'll want to say so many things, but you probably won't have the slightest idea of how to say them.
Not being able to express yourself at the beginning will probably scare the hell out of you, at least for me it did. I was constantly asking myself what in the world I was doing. How did I get here and was this the right decision? I cried myself to sleep the first 2 weeks and coincidentally found myself feeling closer to God than I had in a very long time. This was mostly because every spare second, I found myself praying for better days. I had never in my life been pushed So far out of my comfort zone. It was scary and I felt alone.
Then you wake up one day, you look around, and you realize. This was by far the best decision you had ever made. It'll hit you that if you weren't meant to be there, you wouldn't be. God didn't bring you that far to abandon you. That new country is your new Home. You will live there for the next year, and you don't have to be afraid. You not only have one family now, you have two. You not only have one home now, you have two. Not only that but now you have friends from all over the world. So don't waste precious time trying to live in two places at once. You won't be gone for long, so disconnect yourself as much as you can from your life back home and try to live in the now. "Wherever you are, be all there". This year, this time that you are spending creating a new life, learning a new language, and submerging yourself in a entirely new culture? It will far outweigh any education you would ever have received sitting in a classroom in high school or college. You're not just going to learn about new cities, about the history or your new country, or about the religious rituals that the people there practice. You're going to learn who you are as a person too. You're going to be tested in far harder ways than the SAT's. You will meet the person you are when you're under pressure, when you're sad, when you're happy, when you're angry, when you're confused. You'll realize who you Really are. This will change so much over the course of the year too, because you will grow. Stronger, street-smart, open-minded, fearless. These are the things you will surely become after you spend a year abroad.
You will come to many realizations while you are away as well. Like how the silly things that used to stress you out at home, don't matter anymore. The drama, it's worthless. You realize what's important. Your family and your true friends, their health, and their true happiness, along with your own. Those are things that truly matter to you now. You'll want to hug them all the time and for the year that you're away you'll probably find a world of comfort from hearing from them, if even for a few minutes, and knowing that they are missing you too. The little things in life start to matter to you a whole lot more.
To go on exchange, is something that nobody will ever be able to take away from you. No-body aside from other exchange students will ever truly "get it". They will try to understand, but the truth is that they won't. You live in two worlds now and they will never collide. As much as you wish that they would. It's a very small price to pay for such a big investment.
It won't always be easy, but it will be worth it. I promise you that.
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