• If your school hosts exchange students, make some connection with them. Ask your school if they have a “buddy” program you can participate in. Student buddies help new students get used to a new school, introduce them at social events and other activities and cope with day-to-day challenges. If not, work with the school to create tools to help foreign students feel more at home in your country. It is a good way to learn other cultures and maybe find the next destination for your future journeys! • Keep in touch with your host family and friends. Now thanks to Facebook, Twitter and other social media it is really easy to keep in touch with somebody in another part of the world. You can share news and current events that are happening in your country.
Teaching is a great way to learn!
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haring your culture is the best way to open your mind towards those you might meet during your stay. Use each new experience as an opportunity to learn more about your host culture and educate yourself about different values. Sharing your experience with other exchange students, friends and family will help you remember all you learned as well as teach them something new about your country and the world. Keep in mind that not everyone will want to hear every detail of your experience. Your friends will likely be curious about your exchange experience, but do not overwhelm them with too many stories and details. And once in a while it is actually a good idea to also ask your friends about their year. Ask other exchange students to share their stories with you too. Even if they were exchanging in the same country as you, they might have had a completely different experience than yours. Thanks to sharing experiences and cultures, other exchange students and you can learn even more about the world. Try to find a way to share your experience within your community. There are plenty of ways to do so: offer to write a column for your school or local newspaper, participate in school events, promote the country you lived in on your Facebook page, volunteer to teach your host country language or...just invite your friends to try some special recipe you learned during your exchange year.
All these activities will help make your friends and community more aware of the cultural diversity of your host country,. Yo may even find someone interested to share their experience with you too! “I went as an exchange to Sweden in 2007, and of course the one thing I was thinking is that this experience is all about me. What am I going to learn this year, will I be able to speak the language, will I meet and make new friends and how will all this benefit ME! After a while you realise that you are actually an ambassador of your country and people will learn from you whether you try to teach them or not. More importantly your experience goes on even longer long after you have arrived back home. You now become an ambassador for the country you came from, you are the magnifying glass everyone will see that country through and develop their first impressions...
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