23 de fevereiro de 2015

An exchange is change. Rapid, brutal, beautiful, hurtful, colourful, amazing, unexpected, overwhelming and most of all constant change.
Change in lifestyle, country, language, friends, parents, houses, school, simply everything.

An exchange is realizing that everything they told you beforehand is wrong.An exchange is going from thinking you know who you are, to having no idea who you are anymore to being someone almost entirely new. You know how it feels like to be on your own. Away from home, with no one you know or love. And you find out that you can actually do it.
An exchange is thinking. All the time. About everything. Thinking about those strange differences, the strange food, the strange language. About why you’re here and not back home. About how it’s going to be like once you come back home. How your mother and father are going to react when you see them again. About who’s hanging out where this weekend, and what you’d be doing if you’re there. Worrying about who’s going to like you here, or if anyone here will like you at all. Who will invite you to things when you first step into the school, and in the end where you’re supposed to go, when you’re invited to ten different things.

Thinking about what’s right and what’s wrong. About the point of all this. About who you want to be, what you want to do. About whether you should go home after school, or hang out at someone’s place until midnight. Someone you didn’t even know a few months ago. And about what the hell that guy just said.
An exchange is people. Those incredibly new and foreign people, who look at you like you’re an alien. Those people who are too afraid to talk to you, and those people that you’re too afraid to talk to. And those people who actually talk to you. Those people who know your name, even though you have never met them. Those people you just know to stay away from, or those that are actually nice but are just different than anyone you’ve ever met before. Those people who make fun of you and your country. All those people, who aren’t worth your giving a damn. And those people who invite you into their homes, into their lives. Who keep you sane. Who become your friends.

An exchange is music. New music; music you will remember all your life as the soundtrack of your exchange. Old music; music that will make you cry because all those lyrics express exactly how you feel, so far away. Music that will make you feel like you could take on the whole world.

An exchange is uncomfortable. It’s feeling out of place, like a fifth wheel. It’s talking to people you don’t like. It’s trying to be nice all the time. It’s wanting to climb into the bigger bed and wait out the storm, but knowing the bigger bed is an ocean and a few thousand miles away. It’s cold, freezing cold. It’s homesickness, it’s awkward silence and its feeling guilty because you didn’t talk to someone at home. Or feeling guilty because you missed something because you were talking on Skype.

An exchange is great. It’s meeting people from all over the world. It’s having a place to stay in almost every country of the world and seeing beautiful landscape you never would have known existed. It’s knowing you’ve accomplished things some people never accomplish in their lives before you’re even 18.

An exchange is exchange students. The most amazing people in the whole wide world. Those people from everywhere who know exactly how you feel and those people who become your absolute best friends even though you only see most of them 3 or 4 times during your year. The people, who take almost an hour to say their final goodbyes to each other. Those people with the jackets full of pins. All over the world.
An exchange is falling in love with this amazing, wild, beautiful country. And with your home country at the same time, with a new thankfulness. And with the people there as well, wanting nothing more than to take them home with you at the end.

An exchange is frustrating. Things you can’t do, things you don’t understand. Things you say, that mean the exact opposite of what you meant to say. Mixing up which language you’re trying to speak and questioning a word’s existence in your mother language.

An exchange is not a year in your life. It’s a life in one year.

An exchange is nothing like you expected it to be, and everything you wanted it to be.

An exchange is the best year of your life so far. Without a doubt. And it’s also the worst. Without a doubt.

Exchange is something you will never forget, something that will always be a part of you. It is something no one back at home will ever truly understand.

And it is realizing that you can be on your own, that you are an independent person, carrying more wisdom and world knowledge than most adults that you know.

An exchange is a turmoil of every emotion possible.

An exchange is everything.

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Blogger Madu Rodrigues escreveu:
Saudade dos seus posts... Chorei com esse kkkk


28 de março de 2015 às 09:36  

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Beatriz, 16, Leonina, Paulistana e Intercambista. Mais?

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