THOUGHTS FORM AN EXCHANGE STUDENT BACK AT HOME

I'm sitting in my room once again. The same room I have always known. Ten months have passed but it seems like time has stayed still. People ask me how it was and I never know what to say. How could I sum up an entire year in just a short answer? People have gone on with their lives but at the same time, everything seems just the same. Meanwhile, my inside is screaming, trying to find a way to express that I'm not longer the same. I'm not the same shy person that left some months ago. I have come back knowing who I am. I'm not longer afraid of the unknown, if anything, I'm looking for a change to go out into it. But how can I explain all these changes without sounding arrogant and egocentric? It's something many think to understand, but few succeed to live through.

Being an exchange student has been the most amazing challenge in my life. When I think about it, it's totally crazy. Going to a foreign country, where I don't know anyone nor speak the language. I had no idea what would await on the other side of the world, or whether I'd like it or not. It's kind of insane, but there was something stronger, something that made me say goodbye to my life and the people I love for a year and go out to discover not only the world but also myself.

It's not an easy path, if anything, it's one of the hardest challenges I've ever endured, and I want to thank the organization United Studies for that. People think that going aboard is all fun, travel and making new friends, but what they will never know is all the hardships we have to overcome. They don't know how we struggle when we see our families and friends posting pictures of their outings and reunions that we have always attended, and have to convince ourselves that we're happy here and that we wouldn't want to change places. They don't know how nervous we get on the first day of school when everybody is hugging around us and we don't have the slightest idea of where room A067 is. They don't know how difficult is to explain to your counselor that you need to change your entire schedule because it doesn't have the subjects that you need to get the approval of your exchange year. They don't know how it feels when your bus is not where it is supposed to be, and how frustrating is to have your bus changed and nobody tells you which one is the new one. They don't know who it's like to arrive at a house full of strangers and assimilating that they will be our "family" now. They don't know about all those nights, where just the mere smell of a perfume would bring us tears and memories from back home. It's a hard process, one that not anyone can go through and should be admired for, but the lessons we learn from these downs are nothing compared to the ups.

In a while, the awkward situations become funny anecdotes, and loneliness suddenly turns into a list of outings and plans. We start to learn our way around on the bus, and the language doesn't scare us anymore. People ask us if we miss our families back at home, but we simply reply with a confused 'yes and no'. We start to discover that there is nothing 'normal', and the only thing that we might find weird is how we don't want to go back home. Suddenly, we find ourselves changing our definition of home. Home no longer is a place, but a feeling. People we know for a few months slowly begin to take a big part of our life. The family is no longer just blood related, but it extends to all those who have found their way into our hearts and we feel ourselves with. Nationalities and boundaries are now nonexistent. We comprehend that after all, we are all just people that love, laugh and suffer in all the same ways. And we are thankful that we have found those soul mates that we had been looking for all along.

Days become weeks, and weeks become months. We realized that time is going by so fast and we still have a long list of places we want to go and things we want to do. But we knew that this eventually would have to come to and end, and ever though we'd like to stay, we have a ticket back home. Our heart is unexpectedly broken into little pieces that will go away into different countries of the world not knowing when we'll be able to find them once again. But somehow manage to come back together with the memories of them.

The pain of living in two worlds where I don't fully belong is devastating, but at the same time, I know that this is a small price to pay when I have gained so much. The times I had and the memories I made can't ever be taken away by any time nor distance, and even though it hurts to have my heart scattered in different corners of the world, if I had to do it all over once again, I wouldn't hesitate to say yes.