You are literally about to be birthed. You might not realize it yet, but you are currently stuck inside the womb of your exchange. Thats right, you are a high school student who just so happens to be stuck inside of a womb.
You were just recently conceived. You sent in an application, sat through a terrifying interview, maybe you took some type of tests and most likely you wrote some kind of essay. You were at first an egg and if you as an egg were anything similar to me, you probably checked your email at least fifteen times a day, and you most likely sat in front of your phone for hours on end, until you got THE email or THE call. That was the moment that you turned into a fetus.
If you are reading this and you have never been an exchange student you are probably thinking I have lost my mind, and this might be the strangest comparison you have ever read. But I swear it will eventually make sense.
Now you will sit inside the womb until you are birthed. You will sit inside that womb, growing and kicking. Your physical being will be outside of the womb, going through out daily life. You will sit in class in your last semester of school, you will look like you are paying attention but in reality you are somewhere else. Your brain is suffering tsunami tide after tsunami tide as you fill it with every expectation, curiosity, worry and hope. Instead of your hands shaking when you pick up your pencil to take your final exams, your hands will shake every time you check your email, because you are waiting to hear from your new families. You will grow a little bigger with every goodbye you say, and every last time you have. There will be moments when you feel one hundred percent prepared and then there will be moments when you cant help but worry about everything. Extreme joy and extreme sadness will come and go. You will find out your due date, and that is when crunch time comes. You will grow as much as you can, saying goodbye to all the things you will miss, researching more about your country, attempting to learn a nearly impossible language, and packing up all of your things. Before you know it the date will come, and wether you feel ready or not you will be born.
Your parents will drive you to the airport, and you will open the car door with your shaky hand. You will pick up your fifty pound suitcase and lug it into the check in line, you will say your final goodbyes, and then with out thinking you will cross the security line at the airport. Where if you were not already crying before, you most likely will be now. People will look at you strange, because your exterior is a teenager, but what they cant see is that you have just been birthed and had your umbilical cord cut.
As an exchange student you are forced to grow up very quickly. You will get off of the plane in your new home, and a group of people you have never met will greet you, and your life as a toddler begins. You are now expected to learn the customs, and the culture of this strange foreign place, and you are expected to simply just pick up the language as if it is nothing. When in reality as a baby you learn to communication, customs and culture throughout the first few years of your life. As an exchange student these critical years of learning are smashed together and shrunk down to become three months. These three months will be hard, you will struggle. You will struggle because where you are living will probably be strange, you will struggle cause no one will understand you and you will struggle because at times you will feel alone. You will miss your life before birth, you will miss the food you ate before, and you will miss little things you never thought were possible to miss, for example I miss reusable water bottles. It will be strange. These first few months as a toddler will be a real struggle but eventually you will move onto your teen years. Which at first glance may seem easier, but you will continue to face challenges even in these years.
Just like every teenager you will probably go through some type of rebel phase. Wether that be breaking rules, testing limits or just complaining about every little element of your life. It is natural. You are growing up and hormones are happening and stuff. You with out realizing it will start to mature. You will grow into a person who you have always wanted to be. You will become more independent then ever. You will continue to miss things from “home”, but you will look back and it will seem like a completely different life. Days will continue to slip away, and before you know it you will be an adult.
You finally feel like a real person. You have figured your self out. You have probably been through a self realization. You can communicate your feelings. You have become someone. Someone completely different then who you were before you were birthed as an exchange student. The days will continue to slip away until you only have a few left in your host country, and you will realize all of the amazing things you have done with your eleven month life. Now I do not think I have much to say about this whole adulthood stuff, as I do not think I have gotten there yet. But what I do know is that as the days turn to night, I am running out of time. I will soon be faced with a big decision, as I fly thousands of kilometres home I will have to make the decision of wether I return to the person I was before, or I continue to carry on my eleven month life.
So exchange students who are in the womb. I just thought I would let you know that you are the lucky few who get to experience being birthed during your teenage years. You are the lucky few who will understand living a double life, and you are the lucky few who get a real say in who you will grow up to be. Do not take this whole growing up thing for granted again. Take every day into your hands, try your hardest, take every opportunity you given and live your eleven month life to the fullest.
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