Exchange

The weather is 20 degrees with humidity. The sun is shining brightly in the Sindorim neighbourhood as teenagers and young adults take the streets to enjoy their Saturday afternoon. While I am at a realtor office waiting for my rental agreement to be processed and finalized. I stare at my phone, laughing to dissipate my emotions. 

Before you leave, you are beyond excited about new experiences, new people, new adventures… Then you get there and realize that it’s gonna be WAY harder than you ever expected it to be.

That’s what happened to me when I went to the University of Hertfordshire in England. When I was picking a place to go to, I picked schools in the UK and Australia because I didn’t want to add a language barrier on top of the adversities I already figured I’d face. But I didn’t expect to hit the lowest point I’d ever hit.

After passing by customs and immigration with the appropriate documentation, I drove into the
Seoul metropolitan area at around 7 P.M. with one of the local taxi companies.

“한국어 차랬어요” (Your Korean is very good)
“안니에요, 지금의 공부해요” (No, I am currently studying)

My biggest fear by far about going on exchange was the language barrier. Before I left on my exchange, I had travelled to Germany the year before for about a month, and during that time I was only able to attend a week of German language classes. So it is safe to say I was going in pretty green!

Something to note about Germany is that it is a very culturally diverse country. This is part of why I chose this as my destination country for my exchange semester abroad.

After sleeping for most of my first two days in Australia, I attended my first orientation meeting and the conductor of the seminar said: Don’t think of everything we do here as backwards, wrong or bad, think of it as something different and embrace the change while you’re here.

One of the most incredible moments that I experienced when I was living in Huelva, Spain happened on the very first day I went out into the city, and ended up completely changing how I would remember my time in Spain. My mom, my dad and myself had just came back from the University of Huelva after getting all my papers signed, finding out where my classes would be and what materials I would need. We got off of the bus heading back into the center of the city and decided we needed a well-deserved cervesa (beer).

Hello fellow VIU students,

Before you go abroad you hear and learn all about culture shock and you also talk about re-entry and the possibility of reverse culture shock. But the idea of returning to a country and culture you grew up in or are extremely familiar with and feeling discomfort and unfamiliar seemed strange. Especially since I had only been abroad for five months. However, this is an experience I had returning back home. Now, it may not have been necessarily reverse culture shock by definition, but the feeling of discomfort and unfamiliarity was definitely felt upon my return home.

Getting that letter stating that you’ve been accepted to the exchange destination of your dreams is a feeling that I cannot describe. Thoughts run through your head at a million miles a minute: will I love it? Will I make memories that will last me a lifetime? Will I form relationships with people I could have never met otherwise? I’m so excited and unsure and amazed and scared… where do I go from here? I made a list to help combat those nerves and answer the questions so that you don’t have to. Here is a list of things I wish I knew before I went on exchange: