CRIS GOES ABROAD

It's been months since I came back from exchange, but the desire of travelling and meeting people from all over didn't go away, and it probably never will. These days there are a lot of rotary exchange students on their EuroTrip: they basically travel through Europe on a bus for a couple of weeks. They stop in places like Paris, Strasbourg, Munich, Prague, Vienna, Venice.. and then my hometown: Milan.

I love the fact that we are in the 21st century. I follow a lot of exchange students on social networks and one of them happened to be on her way to Milan. I decided to text her and join her group. I showed them around and chatted for a few hours. I felt weird because not even a year ago I was the one road tripping. They were really nice to me, but seeing how excited, happy and close they were made me think about my exchange. I extremely miss everything and everyone. I remember laughing 24/7, proudly taking pictures with our own flag, making bad jokes.. I mean exchange is literally the time of our lives, at least so far. We experience so much in such a short period of time; one year seems a lot at the beginning but it is not that long, time flies.

It hurts to meet cool people in the morning and have to say goodbye in the afternoon. There's no time to really get to know each other. But I keep doing it, because meeting people from other places is fun.

After my bus trip and when my american family drove me to the airport, I felt like my heart was taken away. I felt empty and I couldn't stop feeling sad. I still remember the pain I felt back then, but I am about to start college in Denmark, which means I will start a new life, just like I did a couple of years ago. I just cannot stay at home. I know that I will probably feel sad and empty in a few years because of the same reasons I felt that way before, but I couldn't care less.

My point is: The hardest moment is leaving your host country because your exchange will be over forever, no more DQ blizzards with your host family, no more football games, school dances or rotary trips. Nothing. You won't take it back. It hurts when it ends, but IT IS WORTH IT. I'd go on exchange again and again.

- Cris

Cultural Curiosities

Final Thoughts

I think each one of us has a dream place, mine was and still is New York City. Don't ask me why, because I can't answer. I don't know. I grew up with the idea that NY was the perfect city. Crowded, busy, full of yellow taxis and skyscrapers. The city of lights, the one that never sleeps. There is always something going on and it's exciting.

Well, my dream became reality one year ago today. I woke up at 3 am in order to catch a plane and fly out from Denver to The Big Apple. I was so happy I couldn't describe how I felt wth words. I am not a morning person but I can tell you it wasn't hard to wake up, even if it was super early and I probably slept less than 2 hours that night.

I had a layover in Chicago, and it has been hard not being able to make a stop there as well, I bet it is beautiful. As soon as the airplane touched the ground I felt something inside me, like if the younger me whispered in my ear "I knew you would make it to New York".

I spent my first night at the hotel in Newark, attending a BELO presentation with nearly 90 fellow exchange students from all over the world. I will never forget when, the next morning, our bus came out of the Lincoln Tunnel. My eyes pictured the New Yorker building, and that meant just one thing: I was finally in Manhattan. I stepped out of the bus at 9 am, in front of the Public Library. I couldn't stop looking around me, everything was so huge.

Speaking about getting a full experience of the city, we even got stuck in the traffic and yes that ain't fun. We were supposed to spend approximately two hours in Times Square, ended up having like half an hour of free time there. What can I say? Beautiful, yes. But I've always pictured it differently in my head; like the Statue of Liberty, that I thought was enormous.

Sometimes I think back in time and I realize I had the beautiful opportunity to visit so many places that now I don't even know where I would like to settle in the future. Even if I visited NY, three days weren't enough to really live it, this is why I want to move there sometime, get lost in streets I don't know with a cup of coffee in my hand. I've always wanted to visit it but during my staying in the US I actually fell in love with another city of which I knew very little about.. San Francisco!
And you, did you manage to go back to your host country after your high school exchange?
Did you go elsewhere for college? Comment!

Check out "What to do in New York City." <--

- Cris

Freedom, according to me, has the smell of the hybrid waiting rooms of airports. [...] Freedom is shaped as an airplane which flies away with you and takes you far from familiar surroundings; the airplane that forces you to compare yourself with others, even the ones who have a different culture and who don't speak the same language as you.

Hitting an airport then, for me, means to attack my inviolable right of being free. Free of flying where my feet cannot take me, free of getting to know things that books will never be able to tell me. It means to prohibit to smell one more time the sweet fragrances of women from Miami, [..], it means trying to force me to the meanness of illiteracy, which is the cause of all the harm existing in the world. An harm so horrendous that, exactly like a mythological monster, asks for continuous tributes of blood to refill in order to live.

The first time I got in a plane I was 36. It was back in November 2009 and until then I lived with the certainty that on those metal things I would have died of scare. But when I heard the roll that introduces the take off, I felt happy like I've never been before. I felt like I was the master of the world, I felt the perfection of freedom.

I didn't have limits anymore: I could have finally seen my favourite painting at the London National Gallery, I could have seen where Audrey Hepburn used to stop for breakfast (on the 5th ave in New York), I could have walked by the Atlantic ocean in February, I could have seen Van Gogh in Amsterdam and the Frick Collection nearby Central Park.

Because in every single airport where I landed and where I took off I left something of myself, exchanging it with something of other people I've crossed path with. Every journey I've done has changed me and, I believe, made me a better person: I learnt the value of matter with people who don't have anything, I learnt the value of appearance with people who have everything. I suspended the judgment and eliminated the expectations, everytime I stepped in a new country of which I've read "everything" but I've known nothing. And I've never been disappointed.

I discovered that beautiful and ugly aren't categories of places but of people that live them. Traveling should be a right of every human being, for this reason everybody who attacks it, is a warrior of illiteracy. We cannot let them win. [...]

I cannot let the harm of the world, the one that would like me to stay out of an airport, out of a stadium, of a train station, or a pub, to make me a lazy, scared and ignorant woman. Because I want to live thousands of lives in one, I want to breathe billions of fragrances, to walk endless roads, and to shake all hands, of every color, that I will meet. And I want to do so with the smile of trust, not with the smirk of scare.

❤️✈🌎

Today I wanted to tell you about my American family. The people who took care of me for eleven months in the other side of the world. They came to Europe before I went to America and so I had the opportunity to meet them even before I arrived at their house. They hugged me and welcomed me as their son that day. We had lunch together and enjoyed landscapes in Switzerland. They had been the most beautiful thing on exchange for me. Of course I had wonderful friends and I did really cool things, but if I were in a different house it would have been all different. They were so nice to me since the beginning that I didn't even want to stay in my room like ever, I was always around the house, trying to help or to chat with them. Even my first morning there; I woke up so early that I went with my american dad to wash his car.

Wherever we went if my american brother wanted something, his dad would buy it for me too, saying "you are like my son". I am writing this here because sometimes exchange students, if something doesn't work at their house, say that it is their family's fault. As international students, who decided to leave the comfort zone for almost a year, we need to understand that when something doesn't work, it can be our fault too. Try to connect with your family, to get to know them, to prove them that it was worth it to host you. I am not saying it is the student's fault, I am saying that before complaining you should think twice.

In my case, my family didn't choose me, they received my application and accepted it, but most of the families choose the student they want to host, and at that moment they decide to trust you and to get to know you. You should think about that, whenever you feel like behaving bad. Is it really worth it to lie to them? I don't think so. I've always told them stuff and they trusted me, I could hang out with friends and even sleep over.

So concluding, talk to them, spend time with them, get to know them. If you think your host family doesn't like you it is probably because you appear weird or not really nice. Do all these things and everything will be better, they will start to know the real you. Even I met people who seemed weird but eventually became really good friends of mine: "Don't judge a book by its cover".

- Cris