After months of revising and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, I found out that AFS Italy, known locally as Intercultura, had accepted my application. Then I had to wait again while they found a family for me. By May, a month after Intercultura accepted my application, I had a family in Sicily. My host family consisted of 4 people, Luca (dad), Antonella (mom), Alessa (sister), Andrea (brother). Alessia and I are 3 months apart, and Andrea is only a year behind us. Finding out that I had a family finally got me excited for my exchange. Until that point it hadn't quite sunk in that in a few shorts months I was going to be living in another country, on a completely different continent for a year.
Then more waiting... and packing.. and waiting.. and shopping.. and waiting.. and working.. and waiting.. It felt like the summer was gonna last forever. During this period of the endless summer I went on vacations with my family and best friend, got my driving permit, and counted down the days til August 26th. August 26th was the day that I was going to fly to Washington DC to spend a few days with my Great-Aunt Pat and Great-Uncle Ernest in DC and NYC before being dropped at JFK and beginning my journey with AFS.
DC and New York were amazing. It was completely surreal. And for me, it seemed like all of my dreams were coming true over the span of about a 6 days. Aunt Pat and Uncle Ernest were fabulous guides for these cities, because they had lived in both. In New York, Aunt Pat told stories about her jobs working in the center NYC, and Uncle E filled me in on all the amazing history. And, I got to see my dear friend from Orme, Nick, who I hadn't seen in forever. DC was wonderful too, and I think that I fell in love with the East coast. As an Arizona girl, it amazed me how green it was out there! We packed a lot into the few days that I spent with them.
After a week, I was dropped off on September 3rd at one of the many airport hotels and my journey with AFS had officially begun. 10 seconds after I walked into the lobby, I was surrounded by a crowd of other nervous and excited almost-exchange kids. For the next 24 hours I'm not sure that we were so much living off oxygen and proper nutrients as we were living off of our own hyper energy.
September 5th, I think, and we finally made it to Rome, nearly 450 of us from all over the world. And I think that's also the point when most of us admitted to ourselves that we were totally insane and absolutely amazing for signing up for this. In Rome, we spent 2 days in orientation after orientation after orientation. It was incredibly boring, and we were all itching to meet our families on the 7th.
The flight from Rome to Catania was a short one, only about an hour and a half. But we spent another hour and a half waiting for our baggage, which was super delayed. After waiting for months, we got to meet our families. I recognized mine immediately and was the first AFSer through the gates.
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And now here I am, already four months into my exchange. And here are some of the important and random things that I have realized so far:- Traveling and being an exchange student are two very different things. When you travel you stay in hotels, hostels, or campsites, somewhere lovely but impersonal. When you're an exchange student you're staying with a family, you have a normal life, you learn the language, and tourists begin to mistake you for a local because they can't pick up on the small grammatical errors you make when you speak in your host language. And it feels 100% normal, despite the fact that sometimes you still have no idea what everyone else is saying. You still watch Netflix in bed for hours, and you still love mac n cheese, and cold pizza for breakfast. People don't seem to realize that an exchange year isn't going to be that different from your life back home, but it's still going to change your life in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine.
- Exchange is a wonderful, magical experience. It gives you another life, fresh knowledge, and most importantly new perspectives and relationships. Exchange students are crazy, amazing, adventure seeking people who leave behind their lives back home for a whole new one in a brand new country. They're great friends to have cause they speak other languages, they have awesome stories, and they know good international vacation spots.
- Nothing can prepare you for going on exchange. No matter how many exchange blogs you read, or how many YouTube videos you watch, nothing can prepare you for the way exchange is gonna affect you because each experience is different. But I promise you it is more amazing and more challenging than you could have ever possibly imagined.
- Obviously there are some predictable aspects of exchange: exploring a new culture, learning a new language, making new friends, trying new foods, etc. But there are other aspects that come out of nowhere and hit you like a rogue sack of bricks. Like, how much you're going to change over the short span of time that you spend in your host country. Your perspective is either gonna change or become rock solid. Your exchange year is gonna have some downs, but it's also gonna have even bigger ups. So don't get into a total funk if you're having a few bad days. This experience is going to impact you no matter what, so be open to all the change and new experiences that it offers you.
- When you're about to leave on your exchange you make your sisters, brothers, best friends, classmates, and everyone else around you to promise that things will be the same when you get back. You make them all promise that they won't forget you and to write all the time. And you convince yourself that life in your home country will basically be paused for the next 10 months, while you are off on exchange. But then you realize that it isn't paused its on play, sometimes it even feels a bit like fast forward. Don't freak out when this happens.
- Exchange is great, and it is 173% worth the emotional roller coaster that comes along with it. So go and sign up and have the year of your life.
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