An exchange year will change your life for good.
(5.0)

I felt really prepared going into my exchange year. I had a weekend long orientation where we learned about the important things we need to know. For example how to handle homesickness, culture shock, american high school, host family, etc.
Also helpful was that returnees were part of the orientation. This was nice because they were able to talk about their experience and answer our questions. Since covid happened I had to move my exchange year to next year. Over that time periode iE stayed in contact with me and before I left I had an additional online orientation to freshen up my memory.
I had a good realtionship with my local coordinator. We had several meetings over the last 10 months where we did fun activities, like pottery, building ginger bread houses and a pool part in the end. Otherwise we stayed in concact with each other over text messages. She was always there for me when I had a question or a problem.
I really enyoed going to school here in the US. I felt extremely welcomed at my school and immediately found friends who helped me become part of this school. All my teachers are really nice and they have a good connection with us students. I feel like american high schools have more school spirit than some european schools. School sports are a big thing here which is a lot of fun and really connects the students, because everybody is cheering for one team. I experienced a lot of cool events here. For example homecoming week where we dressed up everyday with a different theme. Then I went to a lot of football games and joined the basketball team which was probably the best time of my exchange year. I had around 3 games a week and the other days we had practice after school. I met my best friends through basketball and made some awesome experiences.
Then one day we had tractor in school which means that everybody came to school in their tractors. That was fun because you would never see that in a german school. The next day was one of my favoite days, because we had bring your animal to school day. People brought their cows, horses, pigs, goats, rabbits, chickens and more animals to school. That day we were allowed to stay outside and pet all the animlas but also learn something about them. Then we had junior prom which was awesome. We all dreesed up took a lot of photos, went out for dinner and then drove to the dance which was placed in school. To sum up high school was the thing that made my exchange year special and a lot of
fun.
My hostfamily consits of my host mom and dad and three host siblings. Two are my age and one younger brother. We have four dogs, two cats and since we live on a farm we have three horses and a lot of chickens. I have a beautiful room by myself which is nice for some privacy sometimes. I get along with every one, but the closes I am definetly with my host sister. We do a lot of things together, for example going on trail rides with the horses, going for swims in our pool, going shopping, eating mexican food, reading books, watching tv shows or simply just go on car rides and listen to music.
I am really thankful for my host family that they let me be part of their family. I also got really lucky because they traveled a lot and I was allowed to go with them. I traveled to South Dakota, Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, Tennesse, Alabama, Mississippi, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. This was cool because i was able to see not just one part of the US but multiple.