The thing about being an exchange student...

"Exchange is not a year in a life. It is a life in a year." I find myself thinking about this quote a lot. An international exchange is so much more than just a year-long vacation. I've heard that one of the most common questions that students are asked after returning home is "how was your trip?". On exchange, you go a year without your family. A year without your best friends. A year without your native language. A year without your bed. A year without everything that you have known as normal for your whole life. Calling it a "trip" could not be more inaccurate. This is not a vacation; it is life. And every life has its ups and downs.

Let's face it. EVERY exchange student carefully selects which photos to put online and which stories to tell their friends and family back home. We have mastered the art of illusion. We make it look like every day we have on exchange is a spectacular adventure. But that is just unrealistic. Yes, we are living in a foreign country, but we are still students. We go to school. We live with families. Sometimes life on exchange is flat-out boring. And sometimes it's sad, frustrating, or difficult. But that is just part of life, no matter what country you are in! The bad days are what help us remember and charish the good ones. And let me tell you, there are SO many good (and GREAT) days. 

Although not every day is outstanding, every single day of exchange is a day in which I grow and I learn. Every time I mess up my Spanish and have to be corrected, I know I am one step closer to fluency. Every time I miss something from the United States, I learn the importance of something that I had always just taken for granted. Every time I talk to a classmate or another exchange student, I am building a closer friendship that could potentially last a lifetime. 

Exchange is such an incredible opportunity. I feel so lucky to be here in Chile. Every day, my eyes are opened to something new and I am sure that when I return home in July I will not be the same person I was when I left. Yes, it is hard. But it is hard in the best kind of way. As the saying goes, good things don't come easily. 

It's been a while...

Okay, admittedly, I have not been updating my blog as religiously as I (and everyone back home) had hoped. But that's because I've just been so busy! (And perhaps slightly lazy...). Anyways, so much has been going on that I don't know how I am going to pack it all into this blog post... but I will try!

In this past (almost) month since my last update, I have travelled to Santiago twice (which is about a 7-hour ride on the bus). The first time was to go to the Miley Cyrus concert with some other exchange student friends! We just spent one night in Santiago, but we had a blast. Although I don't really listen to her music, she is a great performer and I loved spending time with some other girls on exchange. The second time I travelled to Santiago was for a 2-day electronic music festival called Ultra. I went with my host brother and his friends, and we stayed in the apartment of his friend, who is currently in university in Santiago. Once I was at the festival, I spent most of the time with other exchange student friends (specifically, a few German boys, a German girl, and two other girls from the USA). I had a blast dancing all day and all night, and a highlight was actually getting to the front row with two of the German boys to watch the final DJ perform. It was so incredible and I will never forget that weekend.

I just want to take a few sentences to talk about how awesome and inexpensive it is to travel in Chile. For a round trip bus trip from La Serena to Santiago and back (about 14 hours in total), it only costs about $20 US. And the buses are very clean, comfortable, and reliable. I wish we had the same system in the United States! Thanks to such low fares, I am planning on doing lots of travelling this summer to visit my exchange student friends who are living in other parts of Chile.

I have also gotten much closer with my classmates, as well as the students in the classes directly below and above me. I joined a contemporary dance class at my school that meets once a week, and it is mostly just girls in the class below me. This is a really fun experience because it has given me the opportunity to meet people beyond just the people in my curso (grade). I actually should be in the grade below the one I am in because my 16th birthday was in July, which is the middle of the school year here (darn Southern Hemisphere), but because my host sister is older than me I just took her place in 3° Medio (the third year in high school) when she left on exchange rather than going to 2° Medio. Anyways, it is a lot of fun getting to know the students in other classes!

To keep myself busy (and from gaining excessive amounts of weight), I have been running a lot as well as surfing almost every weekend. I LOVE SURFING. I think I have found my passion. It is one of the most incredible and undescribable feelings in the world. It took me three times of going before I was able to even stand for a second, but I just went surfing today and was able to ride the wave for a good 5 seconds, which I am pretty proud of!

Spanish is getting easier by the day. In fact, last night I realized while talking to my mom over Whastapp that I was actually translating in my head from Spanish to English. And I find myself thinking in Spanish more often than not. Although I still make TONS of mistakes and I have a long way to go, I am extremely happy with my ability to talk and understand the language.

Well, because I don't want this update to turn into a novel, I will finish this update off with a few photos from this past month. Enjoy!

The Miley Cyrus concert!

Pre-Miley!

With my lovely exchange student friends at Ultra.

Ultra!

Kayaking (in a pool) with some classmates!