The Exchange

When an accident happens, as people, we tend take credit for having some sort of control of the accident that worked out, but when something happens that doesn’t go as planned we are so quick to say it was just an accident and try to distant ourselves as quick as we can and move on. Well what if a series of accidents and things that are out of one’s control keep happening, is it fate pushing that person in a direction or is it just the luck on the draw and said person should just rolls with punches. Even after everything that has happened in my life, I have no answer to that question. What I do know, is whether it was fate or just another boring collection of happenstances, I had an amazing, heart wrenching and downright life changing experience.

My adventure began back in the spring of 2001, when I was approached by an advisor of the high school I was attending at the time. It was my junior year and I had academic progress report and scheduling for next year as well as college preparatory tests and classes. After my evaluation my advisor had realized that by fall of 2001 I would be done with all my high school credits and I had a few choices, I could finish early and wait for graduation in spring, volunteer in local middle schools or outdoor schooling (which I briefly did both and I couldn’t stand teaching), or I could look into high school exchange for my senior year of high school. I took a long look and all my options and I was invited to an exchange student return dinner to see if this was something that I would want to do.

With so much to think about and my home life was not exactly the best at the time, anything that would put me farther away from home the better. I had to think about possibly attending community college class, jobs, moving to the big city (if you can call Portland, Oregon a big city), or heading out of the country. I flew back to Omaha, that summer to talk to the rest of my family about the possibility of leaving the country for my senior year of high school. None of my relatives really gave me any good advice and most of them advised against it. It would be expensive, and there was no point so just go to college and hope for the best. Finally one specific conversation with my grandma, made me realize I could be missing out on something great. My grandma had lived in Europe about 40 years earlier so she was the one voice I listened to simply because she did something no one else in my family had done, so I figured why not take advice from the adventurous woman I had come to admire.

When I returned to Oregon in late summer of 2001, my father and I had long talk about why I needed to do this. So with financial help, scholarships and family contributions we started the process. It took about 5 months of hard prep-work that need to be done and we were organized and diligent and soon I was all set. There were meetings, counseling, and orientations galore. If my memory serves me right I believe I went to a total of 35 exchange programs meetings, events, and appointments to make sure I had all the proper paper work, and student and work visas to live in another country. In all these events, there was an emphasis on how students change; they become different and better people. I never really understood the personal growth aspect of things, simply because nothing in my life up to that point (and even today) had really wanted me to be better or change for any grand purpose. I just felt this was one more thing to do before I go to college, get a job and live in small town bliss with no change to me or the world around me. I have noticed that people who have grand dreams have to be so connected with those dreams to make them come true, for the rest of us we have to try things and hope something works out. That’s not to put down putting effort into everyday life, it just means, that there are two paths in life, content with life or discontented with no hope. So to listen to some of the returning exchange students claim huge life changes and then see these same people at Oregon State University going for a degree with the hopes of getting a thirty-thousand dollar a year job( for the record back in 2001 $30,000 was a lot of money). That is not to put down those people and all the changes they went through, it’s just hard for me to see how someone changes that much as a seventeen year old and then less than a year later this mature changed person is doing body shots at a Kappa Kappa Gamma mixer (not that I know about any underage drinking and sorority or fraternity parties).

When I returned to high for the beginning of fall term in September 2001, I was ready to be done with high school, head off to Europe and begin something new. Well just about seven or eight days into my senior year September the 11th happened. I was already nervous about leaving and now I had to worry about anti-American sentiment and terrorists. Which in my view they were never terrorists but criminals that got lucky with a few attacks (Adolf Hitler in my view is a terrorist, Osama bin Laden just another criminal). So with this new world event that had happened, we went back into exchange program damage control mode and more meetings about safety and who to contact while overseas.

As fall term drew to a close, I began packing for my trip, I had everything ready so that after winter break, I could just get on a plane and fly away. When I came back from winter break I got a ticket to fly to San Francisco for my first stop to meet up with all the west coast students before we went on to New York to meet up with the rest of the Americans going to Europe and Russia. When I get to the airport, I get stopped by a news crew asking people entering the airport how we felt about the new security measures and I don’t remember saying anything important I was so distracted with the tasks that had been laid in front of me. So with my bags packed and one final hug from my dad, I was standing at my gate and away I went.