Someone asks "how is it to be a foreign exchange student?" This question is not just answered with a sentence or a word. Exchange means so much more and it can be so different for everyone. Every exchange student has their own experience but in most part it means for everyone the same things. Crying in the bathroom the first day of school because everyone in your class just stares at you like you're an alien, frustrating, when you put so much effort in an English essay and people still say it's not "proper" enough, lonely, when you don't know someone to eat lunch with or what to do on the weekends, missing your old life and knowing it still takes a long time until you can go home. To count the days until you get into the plane and will see all of your family and friends again but at the same time being afraid that everything changed and that you don't fit anymore in your life that you lived before the exchange year.
Now comes the question "why should anyone do it when it is that hard?"
Well, in all of this bad feelings and experiences. You'll always know it was worth it. There are these moments when you go out to lunch with a friend and you're sitting in the car the music loud and the windows down. You're singing, dancing and having fun with this person without thinking about going back. The moment when people try to talk to you in german and it just sounds so funny because it is so wrong pronounced. The moment your host family introduces you as their "new child" and it makes you feel like being a part of their lives. The moment when you can't stop laughing because someone seriously asked you if you can speak fluent german. All those stupid questions make you realize, people are interested in you and how it is from where you are. That makes you feel good.
You meet new people not only from the country you visit but also a lot from different countries that seemed to be placed in the same region/school/family as you. After an exchange the world is so much smaller.
Exchange is not a year in a life it is a life in a year.
