There have been times when we've felt so helpless being hours away from home when we kmoe our families or friends needed us the most, and there are times when we know we have made a difference. Just weeks from now we will leave. Just weeks from now we take down our pictures and pack up our clothes. Just weeks from now we will arrive. Just weeks from now we will unpack our bags and have dinner with our families. We will drive over to our best friend's house and do nothing for hours on end. And somehow, in a way, we will find our place between there two worlds. In just weeks…
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It is going to be awkward when we are not the foreigh kid anymore when we go home, nor will they care about us being exchange students. For a month they might comment on it but our awesome stories will bw forgotten to them, we will fade in with others at school. Family gatherings might bring it up or the curious teacher, but our eventful life will be forgotten to everyone, except us. The way we live from the day we return is influenced by our host country, with our self esteem boosted, confidence amazing, humor worldly, and all barriers broken. They may not see it, but we will always be exchange students, kids who actually grew up and saw the world.
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And my personal favorite:
An exchange year is like a good book. It has bonding, friendship, family, suspense, excitement, tension, fights, making up, relevations, tragedy, a touch of romance, bittersweet endings and you can see the amount of pages you still have to read getting smaller and smaller. When you finally reach the last chapter, feel the end of this world coming, you try to stay in those pages a little longer, read more carefully, flip back through the book. After you finally close the book staring into nothing, it leaves you with a feeling of emptiness and you first wonder what you are gonna do with your life. The world has sucked you in and it is hard to let go. Then you open the book again, reread your favorite scenes, smile and see connections, ruffle through the pages, skimming them, remembering the almost forgotten chapters. Then you put it on the shelf where it has its own place, the colorful cover sticking out between the other books. Once in a while you will take it out and read it again, remembering the old you, reading it for the first time.
An exhcange year is like a good dish, the saltiness of tears and the sweetness of the moment, the savoring of the last, delicious bites, framing one perfect memory. An exchange year is the year when you sure as hell will never run out of metaphors.