As you may or may not know, exchange students come from all around the world and spend a year in the United States to learn more about your culture and hopefully get one of the best experiences of their life. There are many programs that offer this opportunity like EF, WEP, the Rotary, and many more. They all have differences and it is up to the students to pick the one they like.

I come from Belgium and decided after my junior year to join the Rotary Youth Exchange Program to go to the United States after I graduate from high school. I have known I wanted to do an exchange year since my sister came back from hers (she went to England). She had spent the best year of her life and had grown so much she was almost a different person.

I picked the United States because I always wondered if what people were saying was true, and if it was like in the movies. There are so many clichés about America and I wanted to make my own opinion about this country that many people think they know because they went on vacation there for two weeks. I wanted to immerse myself in this culture and go to high school to make new friends and experience a different school system.

I did not pick the state I would go to, but I was very happy when I found out I was going to New York. It was hard leaving my family and friends but it was all worth it because I have a second family here and a lot of new friends. I love school here because it offers so much more classes and extracurricular activities than school in Belgium and it does not take as much time out of our lives. We would finish school at four o'clock almost everyday and had a lot of tests and homework everyday. There is no high school sports, clubs or musicals. If you want to play soccer (our most popular sport) or play an instrument you have to join a sports club or a music school and it is not free.

My native language is French but I took six years of English in school and have watched movies and TV shows in English with French subtitles for a few years. It helped me a lot with understanding people when I got here, even though I was very tired because I had to concentrate all the time. The best way to become fluent in a language is to listen to native speakers and try to have a conversation with them. When our brain keeps hearing the same language it becomes easier everyday to understand it and that is why exchange students usually come home being bilingual.

An exchange student’s life is not easy everyday because we are far from what we have known our whole lives but it is a once in a lifetime experience that is made of a lot of good aspects. We meet new people with a different culture and way of thinking, we learn to be independent and solve problems on our own, we learn a new language, we do and see things we would not experience in our home country and go back home with a head full of memories.

I would recommend this experience to anyone because the good and even the bad make it all worth it. I am very grateful for being able to do this and if you have any questions reach out to me! Most of my friends are in Belgium. Some more would be appreciated!