My exchange year started around two years ago, yet every single day of my exchange year feels like it happened just a short time ago. On this day two years ago, I was in a new world. You could have offered me to be the first person to space travel with Elon Musk himself, I would have chosen the beautiful, weird, awesome, different world that is the United States of America.

After this much time, most exchange students are probably “done” with their exchange year and have moved on to other things. Pursuing careers, studying exciting subjects in university or travelling the world. 

Not me. 

Whenever there’s a High School in a movie, my mind instantly goes into nostalgia mode. I can only think of all the things that were so different, so new to me. My sole thoughts will be devoted to somehow recreating the curiosity that I was able to experience for this one school year. The smiles of people on the hallway, the cute cheerleaders in their uniforms and the feeling of unity when everybody wears school clothing for game day. And the weird kids who didn’t ever care what was going on. And how much I love all of it.

An American home in a movie will reliably bring back memories of movie nights with my weird, yet beautiful host family, that could barely take me midst all their own troubles but did so anyway. Laughing endlessly with my little sister at the worst TV shows that could possibly be on air. Simply the feeling of being home and being so indefinitely, even if it was only for those few months.

Any stupidly funny picture of American sports team couldn’t not remind me more of showing up to practice in a freezing Colorado winter or the burning mountain sun. It will never cease to create in me a feeling of wanting to bring back that time.

Everything comes back to mind and awakes in me a feeling which I can’t describe. It’s definitely closer to sadness than to euphoria, and has a hint of gratitude as well as regret in it. I do realize that I am describing a feeling in the way that sommeliers might rate wine, but this is what it feels like to me. 

The funny thing is that my exchange year was a rather hard time and god knows that I had a hard time finding friends, competing in sports, talking to girls and maintaining grades in school, all the while eating mountains of food that would have served three normal people (right mom?). My family both American and German will tell you that my problems, especially with the attitudes of American people towards friendship would never have indicated that I would ever write this. Most people were even annoyed for my bashing of Americans because I was so desperate to have a real group of friends. From a rational standpoint, I consider the American school system even worse and more boring than the one here in Germany. There is a pile of things that are not great about America (insert Donald Trump joke here) and that I didn’t even find great back when I was in Colorado.

And yet here I sit, with a couple of tears streaming down my face, reminiscing of that time when everything was made out of curiosity. When I could walk down the street, finding everything just so amazing, that it didn’t matter whether it was better, worse, uglier or prettier. When things were the way they were and everything was new.

The fascinating thing, to me, is that while I lived in this wonderland, all the American kids lived a normal, ordinary life that was no different than mine, judging by the surface level. Perception is weird like that. For somebody, my school here in Germany might be what Arvada West was to me.

I will never be able to comprehend, what this exchange year did to and for me. 

When I look around now, what I see is so far from anything I’d wanted life to be like. In America, everything seemed like a party. People were so friendly, not even knowing me. A simple “Hey, What’s up?” could brighten my day immediately back there. When I go to school now, most people are somewhat bitter and frustrated, living through series of tests and exams, all the while anxiously thinking about what the next three quarters of their lives should be spent this. And I know this not to be true and that there are others, who don’t live life in this gray, boring style. But I perceive it to be this way after my exchange year, as nothing will compare to the excitement, that the world around me seemed to be built of.

School to me is no more than manual labor in the vile factories of the industrial revolution. And yet it isn’t, from any rational standpoint.

The disillusionment that my High School year left me with opened the door for ambition and a longing for a life in which I can be curious about everything but also for hardship and feelings that only a sommelier could perfectly describe. 

I didn’t always have a great time in America. But if I could, I would take two years out of my life to spend another one in the United States of America. In this absurd world in which everybody is the way they are, in which dreams are made and crushed, in which people with blue hair with hippie ideals in mind walk next to business tycoons gearing up to destroy native American holy land for profit. 

All in all, I love America and the way it is. No, it’s not the greatest country in the world, but it’s been my greatest life so far.

Written by Finn Lobsien