18 IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY

I took a plane to Belgium on August 23, 2012. I was about to turn 18 and I decided to take a kind of a gap year in Europe. It felt strange to leave Mexico for such a long time. I took a last peak of my country trough the plane´s window and said goodbye with a big smile.

I remember feeling so much excitement when I arrived, everything was so new and amazing. It almost felt like a was on holidays, I didn’t realized at all what I had done.

The first akward thing that happens when you go on exchange is to get to know your host family; I had to go into a strangers house, use their things, sleep in their bed, eat their food and even treat them like if they were my parents.

The hard thing is that people in Belgium are not that nice at first, they’re cold and reserved. So my first day of school was one of the loneliest, scariest days I’ve ever had. Trying to make friends was never so hard in my life and having lessons in another language was a total nightmare.

Then winter came and we had snow everywhere, so much snow I couldn’t even ride my bike. Days were cold, at 13:00 pm it was already dark and my host family was never home. This was the point where I started missing and loving my country so much. I missed the sun, the warm people, the smile of a stranger in the bus, my beautiful downtown, my cozy family and my best friends. Winter was the time when I felt very thankful of who I was and where I came from.

By the middle of my exchange year I was already getting used to the new life. At this time I started to understand their culture and why they were so different from us. Like for example they have several social rules: being always on time, planning everything, following rules as they are… this kind of things make them who they are; organized people who want to be always succesful.

I can’t name one thing in this year that really changed my life because it was everything. Every single day I learned something new. So I guess that’s it; my exchange year is the thing that has changed me the most. I arrived being a scared Mexican and I came back feeling sure about who I was and who I wanted to be, I learned to respect other cultures and I took the good things from both countries to make my own view of life. People are so different and, I think, that’s the most amazing thing ever.