Introduction

“Are you sure you don’t want to go for just five months?”
“No,” I insisted, “I want to go for the whole year—I’d miss out on so much if I went back home earlier!”
In hindsight, that was both the worst and the best decision I have ever made.
The worst, because ten months—or three-hundred days—are a really long time. But on the other hand, I would have missed so much—the good times with friends, so many activities and all the fun we’ve had in the last weeks!
There were countless great moments during the year—from Curling, which was a new experience for a lot of the students, to sailing later on, not to mention the Vancouver and Rocky Mountains Trips—so many, that I will be sad to leave, but at the same time that I can be sure I will have memories that can last a life time.
There is something about being an exchange student that few people but felloe internationals will understand. It’s being thousands of kilometers away from home, away from everything you know and love. It’s having to build a new life in a strange country with a foreign language. It’s everything you never thought you could do, and all the things you knew you had in you.
Somebody told me, before I left, that an exchange year is like a roller coster: Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, but there isn’t anything you can do to change it, you can only hang on for the ride. That’s not completely true. There’s so much you can change, as long as you take opportunities and maybe venture out of your comfort zone, but it certainly was right in that you can’t control every aspect.
All you can do is make the best out of it. And I hope—and believe—that every one of us has done that.
I had a great time here, a chance to try something so very different, and I have learnt a lot.
I’d like to thank you—all of you—for sharing this experience with me, and I’d also like to extend my thanks to Ms Snuggs, Ms Graham and Ms White, for helping us all along the way and organzing all the different activities for us.
I hope you all get home safely, or have an amazing time here if you’re staying, and that you’ll never forget how much you can do.
Yours,
Julia Roigk