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.
