So I was on Instagram the other day and I saw a post from a Spanish girl who normally goes to my school here but is studying abroad in America this year. It's a post that she found on Twitter about being an exchange student and I love it so much that I'm going to post it on my blog. So here it is:
I am an exchange student. How do you know what is a dream if you never accomplished one? How do you know what is an adventure if you never took part in one? How do you know what is anguish if you never said goodbye to your family and friends with your eyes full of tears? How do you know what is being desperate if you never arrived in a place alone and could not understand a word of what everyone else was saying? How do you know what is diversity if you never lived under the same roof with people from all over the world? How do you know what is tolerance if you never had to get used to something different even if you didn't like it? How do you know what is autonomy if you never had the chance to decide something by yourself? How do you know what it means to grow up if you never stopped being a child to start a new course? How do you know what it is to be helpless if you never wanted to hug someone and had a computer screen to prevent you from doing it? How do you know what is distance if you never, looking at a map, said "I am so far away,"? How do you know what is a language if you never had to learn one to make friends? How do you know what is patriotism if you never shouted "I love my country" holding a flag in your hands? How do you know what is the true reality if you never had the chance to see a lot of them to make one? How do you know what is an opportunity if you never caught one? How do you know what is pride if you never experienced it for yourself realizing how much you have accomplished? How do you know what is to seize the day if you never saw the time running so fast? How do you know what is a friend if the circumstances never showed you the true ones? How do you know what is a family if you never had one that supported you unconditionally? How do you know what are borders if you never crossed yours to see what there was on the other side? How do you know what is imagination if you never thought about the moment when you would go back home? How do you know the world if you have never been an exchange student?
Now I have no idea who wrote this, but whoever they are, they captured the very essence of being an exchange student in that short paragraph. Being an exchange students is one of the hardest things you could ever do. You're taking a year out of your life to move to a foreign country, leaving all of your friends and family behind to live with a new family and try to make new friends, speaking a new language (which is extremely hard at first, btw), growing up and maturing away from everything you've ever known. It's so hard. There were times when I wanted to quit. It's been great since the beginning, but there were times when the "bad" outweighed the "good" and I just wanted to go home, quit, give up. I didn't even want to try anymore. I know I'm not the only one who has felt that. Sometimes you cry for nothing or for everything, because you just miss everything so much. And sometimes you're so upset that you can't even make yourself cry. You're just depressed and the sky seems darker and the experience seems helpless.
But it's not just difficult. It's also one of the most amazing things you could ever do in your life. It's one of the most humbling, one of the most nerve-wracking, and one of the most exciting things you could ever do. There are times when you're going to feel like you're on top of the world. There are times when you feel like you never want to go home because you're so happy here. There are times when you're so beyond proud of yourself for all the things that you've done and that you continue to do every day. There are times when it seems like your life here is eternal, like you never want to let it go. And hey, yes we have to go home eventually, but that doesn't mean we have to forget about our life here. I don't think that's even possible.
The truth is, I am in heaven here. Spain is my savior. I swear I have never been happier in my entire life. The thought of going home tears me apart, genuinely, because half of me can't wait to finally be home with my family, to finally be able to laugh with my friends that I've had since I was like 7, to go back to normality, to be able to speak English. But there's another half of me that's never going to be happy there. There's another part of me that belongs here. That's the part of me that's changed, that's grown, that's matured because of my experience here, because of being an exchange student, because of seeing a different side of the world, and being a part of it. There's a part of me that grew along side my family and my friends and my school HERE. There's a part of me that belongs to the Spanish culture, to the Spanish language, to Bilbao, to these people, to this life that I made...the one I made for myself. I found myself here, and there's always going to be a part of me that can only be satisfied if I'm here.
I think that's the only bad thing about being an exchange student.....I'm never going to be fully satisfied again. There's always going to be part of me left in another country, left with other people. I'm always going to be half happy because I'm with a part of my family, a part of my friends, a part of my life. But there's always going to be a part of me missing that which isn't with me, that family, those friends, that place, that ME that's in a different country.
It's scary to think how much my life has changed in such a short period of time, and how nobody that I know, unless they are or have been an exchange student, will ever understand that. But I wouldn't change it for anything. This is hands-down the most amazing experience of my life, the most amazing year of my life. Being an exchange student is the best thing that ever happened to me.
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