In my school, we do an exchange every year of upper school. They are usually a week long. Every student is assigned an exchange student, with whom they will have to be staying. Depending on the host families and students, a trip can turn out good or bad. This makes it a very important decision, but it´s usually difficult to choose someone out of a group of people you don´t know.

The main reason these exchanges are organized is to give us students the chance to speak the language we learn with people who actually speak it as their mother tongue. It´s a great opportunity to see for yourself how well you can communicate in another language.

A few tips:

• bring along games
• tell them about your family/hobbies
• don´t stay in your room all the time
• generally just ask a lot of questions, my favorite is “What would you be doing if I weren’t here?”

My experience: For me it was interesting to get to know the life of a person that I normally would never have gotten to meet. Since we traveled to another country in Europe, there weren’t too many big differences between our daily routines. E.g. going to school by bus, doing homework, going into town with friends, etc. However, there were still some little differences that really stuck out. They of course also vary from family to family, but what I noticed was e.g. they have a “structured” dinner. First an entrée, than a main dish, after that everyone eats a little cheese with baguette and lastly dessert.

I spoke a lot of French, and enjoyed doing all the different activities with the school: city rally, bowling, trying out their daily routines and going shopping. A highlight for me was the walk through the sea, while the tide was out. It hailed, rained and was freezing cold, but in the end the sun came through again to dry our clothes.

I want to encourage people to participate in exchanges, if possible, they are always an experience. You can have bad luck and not get along at all with your partner, but you can also become great friends and stay in contact even after the exchange.