So my name
is Alma and I’m going to spend the next semester in South-Carolina as an exchange
student. That was probably the most relevant information, I guess.
But, well… this is an exchange student blog,
so I’ll spend the next 11 months writing about my experiences in USA. I’ll
start my journey in three weeks via a relatively small exchange organization
located in Tampere. Up Education has been a well-functioning organization and I
can warmly recommend it to anyone thinking about going on exchange.
Starting this whole blog did prove itself
being quite a challenge. I have moved founding it forward and forward ever
since I got the idea in January. You can just wonder where those six months
disappeared… Well, better late than never, right?
Who, where, what?
Writing
this first post feels rather interesting since I don’t have any idea about
where to start. I still haven’t completely internalized that I am indeed going
abroad as an exchange student, even though the things I have experienced so far
could already fill a couple of books. A good start would be answering the
questions of who, what, where and why.
To begin with, I am a high school student from
the coastal city of Pori with around 85 thousand inhabitants. My family consists
of my mother and father as well as two dogs and two guinea pigs. My hobbies
include playing violin and piano, and also photography. During my free time I
like to watch crime series and different kinds of movies. I also often draw and
listen to music so I guess I could be called artistic. Different languages have
always interested me in school. During secondary school I studied English,
Swedish and German. After my first year in high school I can speak some Russian
and know the basics of Spanish.
So I ended up with writing a blog because I am
going for an exchange year in USA. The idea of an exchange year formed already
during the English lessons of secondary school, but I didn’t think about it so
seriously until last summer. The first thing that we did was to agree for an
interview, and that is how things started rolling.
The placement information arrived in mid-April,
and now a family of three with two dogs awaits me in a town called Summerville.
Current thoughts…
My summer
job ended the previous day. I got used to working alongside with those great
people during the six-weeks-long period I was on the job and the fact that it’s
over came as a bit of a surprise. When I walked down the stairs from the office
I realized just how near the day I leave is.
I feel a little weird because I really can’t
tell what I am feeling right now. Excitement has not yet settled in but all
kinds of thoughts run around in my head for 24/7.
What do I expect most about my exchange year?
Well, of
course the thing I expect the most is the first time I’ll be meeting my host
family. Second thing I’m looking forward to is indeed the beginning of school
and everything connected to it. Another thing I look forward to is the
entertainment culture in the US. The thing I especially want to know about is
how people in the United States think about different movies, TV-shows, books
and that sort of things.
About paper bureaucracy
The whole
process for my exchange year really started as long as a year ago, in last
July. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork that has been going on
during that time. There have been medical certificates, school certificates,
sheets and tons of other stuff to fill and sign. Scans have been required from
every last certificate to the English teacher's statement. The war with (and
against) papers has pretty much ruled the household.
I guess the
next step is packing up my things and buying some Finnish souvenirs for my host
family. All it takes is warm clothes and then I can step outside to the summer
of Finland and head for the city center…
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