20 Time Reflection

Being an exchange student during these past ten months I have learnt a lot of things, and lived a lot of different experiences, so I decided to do my 20 time about it. As soon as I got here I realized that the people had a wrong idea about what it is to be an exchange student, so this motivated me to show the reality of this experience.

There are a lot of differences in the people's life in Spain and here, so in my posts I have been comparing them. I also included other exchange students opinions. 
I really thought that writing posts will be easier for me, but at that moment is when I realized that I need to improve my English because as soon as I needed to write explanations, I needed to use the translator. Another failure that I found is that I thought that there will be more exchange students in this area but everyone of us has a different schedule so was hard to meet with them.
What I take out of this experience of 20 Time is that I should share more my personal experiences and opinions to my friends here so they will know better what it is being an exchange student and how is our lives. There are such activities as Homecoming or Prom that we don´t have in Spain, so letting the people know that I think that they realized that there are different ways to spend your High School years.
If I had the opportunity of do this project again I will open a YouTube channel telling experiences, so people could see me and give more comments. Nowadays the people don't really use blogs, they like more social medias.
The next thing that I want to do is continue posting in the blog and animate people from Spain, and around the world to want to participate, so we can show all the benefits that this experience can give you.
During this project I have been working hard, I did a survey where the graphs showed that one third of the students didn´t know what was being an exchange student; also by writing all the different experiences that I had in the posts, and comparing them to the ones in Spain, I made more people aware of the situation. After all these, I will say that maybe I could have used more time in this project so I think that I deserve a 90%. 

Real Opinions

There are a lot of exchange students around the world and reading about their feelings and situations makes me feel more comfortable because I'm also one of them. Most of them talked about the judgement that they had before coming, and how their opinions changed over the time they spent in America.
America is viewed as a fast food country, but this is only true in the big cities and when you have a full time job or short lunch time, but the reality is that there is a wide variety of food to choose from.

Another common situation that I found to be true was that public transportation is far more common in Europe, as when they get here is hard to move around without a car.






Is US more than a country? Before coming the people think that all the citizens and type of lives in US are the same but it's completely different depending of the States and the area.

Almost Back Home

During today's post I will write about a summary of all the good experiences that I had during the last 9 months in USA and also and actual situation check-in.

I'm living in California so of course the first trip I did was to San Francisco that is near from where I live, Saratoga. During this trip I still had jetlack, so I didn't really enjoy how I would have want the experience. During Christmas I went to San Diego and LA and I really enjoyed all of the different activities that I did, like ice skating, going to Disneyland or going shopping. The other trips I did where to places of the area. During all this whole experience I had been with two different families and both have been wonderful, so if I could I will repeat next year!

I will go back home in 6 weeks. I'm so excited to see again all my family and friends but there is also a sad part because I'm going to miss a lot all the friends that I have made here, now they are part of my "family" so it will be strange don't see them during next year. All the people had accepted me since I came, and sometimes they made my life easier.

Basically I'm going to feel strange as at the beginning, but this time because of leaving all this new community that I have met.

Different Countries

In today's post I will talk about the differences between my country, Spain, and the one in where I'm staying right now, USA.
I'm going to talk about the food, school and distances differences.


Food: One of the most difficulties for me at the beginning of the experience was the fact that I was used to eat my homemade food, I never had really ate anything spicy but when I came here I started trying this types of food

School: In Spain the education is completely different because the way that we do the tests is with writings and answering the question and here all the tests are multiple choice so in some way is easier guess if you don't really know the answer, the other main difference is that in Spain you have less choices from choosing subjects, all the people learn the same math, languages and sciences and the only choices are the electives that are extra language or extra art.

Distances: I'm used to live in the city and near the city center so all the stores and supermarkets are less that 5 minutes walking from my home, the fact the here the distances are longer makes me feel that all this places are further than they really are.

The language of course was a difference between countries, but I will give more details in my next post.

Learning from others

During this past weeks I have been finding information about another exchange students that had the same experience as me in the USA.

All of them say the same about the fact that we are not used to be away from our families so at the beginning of the experience is easier to don't miss them because you have not spend enough time away and all is new so you don't really think in negatives things but when the moment of returning of your country is there, you really realize that you miss them and you are so excited to see them again. Another common fact between all of them is that we try new and different food from the one that we eat at our homes.

From all this information I have learnt that I'm really lucky and fortunate because I have a wonderful family who wanted me to extend my languages so they sent me here, here I also extended my friends that I will always remember. Another thing that I realize is that each person live their experiences differently so I found differences in the ways that all this people lived their experiences.



http://www.alliance-exchange.org/node/2555
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/imane-karroumi/the-exchange-experience-c_b_243895.html
https://www.internationalstudent.com/study-abroad/guide/exchange-student/

Beginning of My Experience.

During this post I will talk about my life before coming to USA and "Why?" I came.

I'm from Valencia a city of Spain, I had never spent more than a month in a foreign country and less out of Europe so for me this was anew experience. The first month in USA was different but not hard for believe, I was feeling like in holidays. After the second month was when I really started assuming that I was going to spend the next 9 months the same way until the moment; before coming I used to live my own life without depending of my parents but when I came all change because at the beginning I didn't know all the streets and my grammar and vocabulary were horrible in case I felt lost. Other thing that changed at the beginning was the early schedule that the American people had, in Spain we started the school the second week of September. The beginning inside the school was weird because I didn't know anyone and during the first weeks I was alone at lunch time but a couple of weeks after started the school I met incredible people that helped me in all my necessities.
Now the "why" of coming was because my mom gave the opportunity of expand my languages and experiences, she work sending people to work abroad Spain and also studying, mainly in USA, Canada or England, so I chose USA. Since I was super little I wanted to came to California, it was my dreamed place, so this was the perfect time to realize how was the live of my city. My friend heard that I was coming so she decided to tell her parents to live the same experience and her parents said yes, so now my friend is in Iowa and we talk weekly and we tell each other the different interesting stories that happen to us daily.

Learning

During this weeks I was asking people about some of their customs and comparing them with mines. My topic was to talk about my exchange experience and my costumes to other people and see their reaction. All the people that during these weeks met me or met my exchange situation got shocked because some of them didn't really know that this was possible. I learned about myself that when you go to a foreign country the worst thing that you can do is live your life like in your home country. You need to accommodate yourself to the country people's life, you need to try different food also to experience quotidien situations of the daily life in the country. The firsts months that I was here I made this mistake, and if now I could go back I will try all the new things that I could. The next step in my blog is include people opinions about actual situations of the daily lives, also tell more things to the cultural exchange that I think I'm leaving. I will try to apply inside my community all the diversity of living with other people from differents cultures that until now I had learn.