If you also went on exchange during high school, you probably know that between the moment you send your application abroad and the moment you receive your host family’s information there’s just a long wait that slowly drives you insane. All you want to know is where you will spend one year of your life. But when you less expect it, the information you waited so long for reaches your mailbox. One night, I was using my laptop and after concluding everything I was doing, I decided to check my mailbox once more because who knows, maybe someone sent me something important. It was meant to be because not even ten minutes earlier my host dad sent me an email in which he introduced himself and his family. “I am Brian, I am texting you from Colorado USA. Kim is my wife and Hunter is my son.”

Getting to know them.

In one of the hundreds of emails that we exchanged over time, my host parents told me that they were going to be in Switzerland at the end of July and they asked me if I could reach them so that I could meet them in person, they could meet my family and give me advice upon my arrival at the Denver International Airport. 

Meeting them felt right, as soon as I met them I felt like it was always meant to be. The few hours we spent together went by very quickly. We had lunch together, walked around the little village and chatted most of the time. I was happy because my parents had the chance to meet the people I was going to spend a year with, which was good because my parents did not worry as much. 

Not everything (or everyone) is easy to deal with.

I finally arrived in the USA and everything looked gigantic and weird to me. I could literally not stop looking out the window while we were driving to my new home. My host brother instead could not stop staring at me. I assume he was just trying to “study” me and getting a first impression of the Italian sitting next to him. 

Over the next few days, I could see that he was trying to be nice but he also behaved differently depending on where we were. At home, he was all nice and then at school he would not consider me as much as I thought he would. I even started playing tennis because he was on the team and he asked me to. I thought that accepting the offer was a good move because that way I could meet people and I could get to know him better, but eventually, it turned out to be a poor decision. I enjoyed playing but I did not get close to any of the team members.



I guess my American brother and I really started to bond in early November when we had lots to celebrate: my seventeenth birthday, my American parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary, Thanksgiving and winter break. He started inviting me over to his room, playing video games with him, watching TV series, eating junk food at two in the morning... That’s all I wanted from the start. I wanted to bond with him and see his true colors because I knew that the person he was at school was far from what he is really like. At the beginning he would introduce me to people saying “this is my exchange student from Italy” but eventually he started telling people that I was his “Italian brother”. It sure felt good to be introduced to people as a member of the family rather than a person from a foreign land. He also started to appreciate my company and told me that he looked at me as a role model. If he had to deal with something, he would think about what my reaction would be in the same exact situation. I think this is really cool. Not only we became friends, but after this sentence that he told me I felt like I really succeeded in having a younger brother.

Why am I writing this?

Because I do not want you to expect that things will be perfect from the beginning. It is best to arrive in your host country without expectations so that you won’t be disappointed by it. Do not make this mistake but work your way through instead. At the end of your year, you will have a completely personal experience and you will have walked your own path rather than following the kind of exchange you wanted to have. Reading someone else’s experiences before going on exchange is a good thing to be inspired and maybe do even better, not to copy them. Don’t compare your own path with someone else’s. And more importantly, you have to build up your relationship with your host siblings but also with anyone else, you can't assume that everyone will be your best friend from day one. You might feel lonely but eventually, everything will fall into place and people will get to know you and love you the way you are supposed to.

- Cris