From the 2nd to the 4th
of September I got the amazing opportunity to meet and greet other exchange
students from around the world living in my state as me. I knew I would get
along with them, I just didn’t realise how much…
After running around the house and
trying to pack and leave on time, my host mother, my host father and I finally
left for Aticibia. Two house late we arrived and the hotel that I would be spending
the weekend with the other exchange students. Upon arriving I found all the
other exchanges talking in the lobby. I checked in, put my bags in my room and
went and joined them. There were students from all over the world, from Canada to Japan and all the counties in
between. I introduced myself and naturally I expected myself to have a British accent.
What I didn’t expect was a crowd of people to suddenly crowd around me and ask
me to repeat the words “harry potter” and “bloody hell” over and over again. But
something that did make me laugh was, when I said that I am from London, one of the students asked me if it was in France or America! After a couple house of socialising
we had a meeting with the international contacts from out host counties. We
also met Rotex; a group of students had already been on exchanges and returned
to Brazil.
We played a few games to get to now each other better and after a very intense
game of musical chairs with all 34 students participating we finally went to
our room. I shared a room with two other students from the United States and Taiwan. We spent ages talking about
each other cultures and finally got to sleep at lie one in the morning, which
wasn’t the best idea seeing as we had to be up at 6 the next day :/
The second day included more talks
and meetings with various different people who explained the dos and the donts
of being an exchange student. They shared their personal experiences and we
gave some of ours. By time everything was finished it was about 10 in the
evening. The Rotex group put on some music for us to listen to but it turned
into a nightclub type disco with lots of singing, dancing and picture taking. Unfortunately
it was cut short at 1 in the morning because the head of all inbound exchange
students told us that we had to go to bed.
Sunday came and we had one final
talk in the morning and then we had free time for about five hours. We used
this time to check out the hotel swimming pool. Before we knew it, it was two o’clock
and time to check out. After a final round of badge swapping, picture taking
and “oh Alison, say hay potter again!” (You would have thought they would have
gotten bored of it but no, they were still mesmerised as ever >.<) I was
ready to leave. I was sad to say goodbye to people who could speak fluent
English but it was great to know that people were feeling exactly the same as
me, it mean I was a normal exchange student!
