CRIS GOES ABROAD

Arriving in a foreign country on your own at a young age is definitely something hard to deal with, but what's even harder, according to me, is having to leave everything behind once your time abroad is up and you need to go back.

A few days ago I decided to read, after a long time, my old blog. The one I wrote prior and during my exchange experience. I must admit that it was a poor decision. When I was 15 and going on exchange was still just a blurry dream, I spent afternoons reading blogs of the current exchange students, to see what they were doing and get inspired, in a way. While I was reading mine I felt like I was reading someone else's blog. It's a fact that the person I was on exchange was different from my 15 year-old self, but now I can promise you that I already feel distant from my 17 year-old self. No doubt that we change every day but it is just interesting when you keep track of the things you do and think and go back to read all those records years after. That's when you realise that there has been an actual change. 

ARRIVING IN MY HOST COUNTRY...

When I arrived in the US I was incredibly excited. After 17 hours of traveling, when I arrived at my new home I couldn't fall asleep. I didn't want to close my eyes, I was scared I could wake up back in Italy. I woke up at 6 am, which means that I basically slept 6 hours or so, and before that, I stayed up for like 24 hours straight. I didn't really know what to do at that moment so I decided to set up my room and unpack my things. Subsequently, I went upstairs to see if someone was already up. My American parents were really surprised I was up at 8 am, they hosted 16 times before me and no one woke up that early on their first day. I was full of excitement and I went to wash the car with my American dad who drove me around the city to show me what it had to offer. It was amazing to drive through those big roads even though it all looked rural to me, very different from my hometown, Milan.

...DEPARTING FROM MY HOST COUNTRY

I can't really talk about just my last night in the US because I just cried my eyes out for hours, so I am going to talk about my last three weeks there. Even if they were the last ones, I was really busy. I had my last rotary conference, and that's when my friends and I started crying. It was a really emotional moment, everyone sang along and we said goodbye until... God knows.

The day I said goodbye to the most amazing people I've ever met, I stayed in bed. But then I told myself I had to live my last days to the fullest. I hung out with my American friends, I celebrated my American brother's birthday and I visited a new city in Colorado, Boulder. I went to Hawaii for about a week, I surfed in Waikiki and then I spent 6 days in beautiful Kauai. For my last dinner in the US, I decided to have Chinese food at a restaurant where we used to go really often. The interesting thing is that I had dinner with the person who I had my first dinner with, and I saw her just those two times. I got really emotional when my family was driving me to the airport.. Once I entered the car I realized I wasn't going to go back to my American home. My exchange was over. My American parents spoke with my American brother about other things, they probably didn't want to deal with the situation. That was the last car ride of my exchange, my last goodbye, my last human bean coffee. I kept looking out the window because I didn't feel like crying in front of everyone. I didn't want to admit it was over. I kept looking at the Rocky Mountains.. and then, before I realized it, I was checking in at the desk. There, I focused on the good things because I was tired of crying. Good things end too, and I had to be okay with it. I was going to see my family and friends after 11 months, how could I not be happy? But eventually, I took off and...

Then I arrived home, I spent 2 beautiful days, my best friend surprised me at the airport and my mom threw a surprise party for me. The day after my arrival it was my sister's birthday so I even celebrated that. It was amazing but then I started feeling weird, arguing with my parents.. I felt like I wasn't in the right place and things were falling apart. I was desperately missing my exchange...

Read more about "My Return Home".

- Cris

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.

❤️✈🌎