Sitting in the uncomfortable airport chair with six hours to kill is a good place to start. The sky was clear, people buzzed around, and silent images of departing planes created a picturesque background. My mind went back to the moment five months ago when a scared, exhausted, and very unprepared me stumbled out of the international terminal. Not quite ready to bear any novelty, all I wanted was to turn around and fly back.
“There are three stages,” said the lady from student orientation while drawing a deceptively simple graph on the whiteboard. “First is the honeymoon, and you will love the new place. Then the anxiety comes, homesickness makes itself known, and you will reach a critical point, wanting to go home. After that the acclimatisation happens and you will finally settle into the new culture.”
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that UFV takes this into account in the first place. But, of course, it’s not that easy. There were moments I never wanted to let the snowy top of Mt. Baker out of my sight again, but there were also moments I would have given everything to walk along the Vltava’s shore.
Before leaving my home in Prague, laying on my bed as the last day of August slowly passed by, I thought: this is it. In five months a different person will be here. Five months later, past me was right. The thing is, we are constantly on a journey. When you relax and let that shift come, prepared to take whatever it may require you to do, it will be immensely beneficial. Suddenly issues that seemed bigger than life don’t matter that much anymore. You stop caring that somebody somewhere did not approve of your ways and in general you gain some much needed distance to evaluate things through a new perspective. As anyone who ever sketched, painted, sculpted, or modelled something knows, you can work like hell on details, but it isn’t until you step away from your work that you can truly see how it’s coming along.
Maybe this article should have been more light-hearted. After all, being an exchange student is about booze and partying without messing up your GPA. That is part of it, but ultimately we travel so that we know; know people, cultures, ourselves, our friends, our world. If you are thinking about going on an exchange, but your worry about home and friends and that doughnut from that around-the-corner bakery stops you, give yourself a chance. You can never predict what will happen, and usually your predictions will be the total opposite of what your experience is going to be. More so, you’re going to realize a very important thing: people are people and things are things. You’ll figure both out quickly. After all, Earth is just one big village, one huge kanata.
