G'Day, Alabama // surprising myself on student exchange

Sometimes you really wonder how much your fragile body and your precious mind can grasp. If I can navigate myself from one side of the world to the other, reside in a completely unfamiliar foreign country, while leaving behind the most fundamental people who I depend on intensely and having to endure different battles intellectually on my own… I believe that I’ve pushed my body and mind to a certain limit. I can embrace and adopt anything from here. Having proved that I’m durable and self-assured during extensive situations, I am now determined to venture myself even further and I am on the pursuit of happiness. I’m ready to face the world.

Being a foreign exchange student is about fast, brutal and stunning changes. Everything you thought you regarded as the right and wrongs of society, everything people instructed you with beforehand and everything you thought life was about before you cut across that span of blue ocean is wholly and surprisingly wrong… You think you know who you are. But, exposing yourself to uncomfortable situations, presenting yourself to new incredible strangers and immersing yourself into extraordinary culture awakens you to dancing full of happiness for no reason, crying for no logical reasoning and laughing about that guy you said ‘Hello’ to when he asked how you were feeling. 

I will never gain a better perception from anything other than feeling a connection thrive between myself and someone new I’ve just met. The two most ridiculously, amazing and entertaining people I have ever come across welcomed me into their hefty, classic American home with generosity and so much love. Everyday something new and unique is revealed from both their lives, experiences and regrets that I will always cling to and learn from. I wouldn’t call them my host parents, I would call them my new best friends who I know will cherish me, as much as I cherish them. 

Foreign exchange is throwing your 'old self’ over your shoulder, putting your 'normal’ life on hold and then letting your true self grow and getting rid of the burdens of your 'old self’  that you don’t need to drag along with you anymore…