“Love in any language, straight from the heart,
Binds us all together, never apart.
And once you learn to speak it, all the world will hear,
Love in any language, fluently spoken here.”

This in one of the many treasures this exchange program has given me. The gift of understanding and empathizing with everyone in the world.

No matter how they look, what language they speak or where and how they grew up. All I know now is that, every person in the world, in his or her hearts is similar.

I learned this the first time I met all the other exchange students in our district at Telluride. We were eighteen of us, from fifteen different countries.

On the outside we all looked different, spoke different languages and dressed differently. Any outsider would not know what connected us all.

But we all had one thing in common. We all had the same spirit within us. We were all willing to learn something new and ready to take a chance.

By the end of that day, I knew that I had made life long friends. To me, the world would never be the same again.

An exchange program is a hard choice to make, when you are sixteen, to leave your friends, family, every place you grew up in and everything you knew and understood to go to a place you have never seen or heard of before, make new friends and have new families.

But today, I can say that this experience has been wonderful, and this has definitely been the best year in my life. I have matured a lot.

All the things that mattered to me one year ago do not quite seem that important anymore. Winning a handball game, losing my voice before a debate competition, finally getting an A in history, my face breaking out in to ugly pimples on the night of the biggest party in my life (or so it seemed), were the highs and lows of my life.

Well not any more. Now I worry about the war in Afghanistan and the riots in Argentina. Because now, I have a friend in every country.

This exchange program has given me time to rearrange my priorities. I have become more confident and independent. I am on my way to achieving a dream, I never thought would be possible.

Thanks to the Rotary Youth Exchange Program, I believe in myself and always will.

 

Imagine. You're an ordinary kid, aged about 17, living an ordinary life, in an ordinary city, going to an ordinary school: then, everything
changes: now you are an "exchange student".

Just a word, nothing more, with which everybody starts addressing you. Life continues like this until mid-August, when you travel thousands of miles, approach a new world, then that word becomes a reality, invisible but tangible.

Being on an exchange does not just mean that you live in a different country and speak another language: the language is one of the last reasons you're there.

You can read every book or every encyclopedia and learn everything about a culture, but nothing will enrich you more than living that culture.

And that's not the only thing that enriches you. Being away from your home, from your family and friends makes you more responsible.

You start facing new problems, cope with your possibilities and yet recognize your limits Being an exchange student makes you responsible for your decisions: you have to weigh up your choices before you make them.

If you fail you'll be on your own, even if a lot of people are around you. You're not going to have the immediate support of your family.

It makes you more responsible about money: your financial resources are limited and you have to choose wisely what you're going to spend that on.

It also can appear as a paradox. Even if you are away from your everyday reality, living a different culture, you start appreciating and reevaluating your own culture, your own country with its own traditions.

Being an exchange student makes you an ambassador both for your own country and for your visiting country. As well, you start giving the right value to those small things earlier considered useless.

First you value those small things you had at home, because now they are not next to you; second, you value every single moment of your new life, to enjoy as much as possible of a different culture, because you know that you will not be given another chance like this to live it again.

Being an exchange student shakes your life and allows you to grow as an individual and as a part of a group, both of your native country and your host country.

 

I never let myself forget that the possibilities are endless. It is perhaps because of my utter faith in our future that I find myself in a land far away from American skyscrapers and shopping malls.

I applied to be an exchange student not fully aware of the impact it could make. It is only now that I am beginning to realize the potential of my year abroad.

Not simply my own life will be changed forever by my time here, but others’ lives as well. After having experienced life in a foreign country, I truly believe that if everyone were to study abroad, it would make a world of difference.

On a personal level, my exchange has produced notable changes in me thus far, and it will undoubtedly continue to do so. Leaving behind my family, my maternal language, and the only way of life I had ever known, I was forced to adapt.

At the very least, adaptation builds character, and at the most, it can broaden the mind in enormous ways. I no longer believe that there is a “right” way of doing things.

The differences between cultures is something I am learning to appreciate. Upon returning home, I will speak another language fluently, be independent and responsible, and respond to change in a more positive manner. The amount of colleges and jobs at my disposal will be unfathomable, giving me the chance to accomplish the things of which I am capable.

Moreover, I will posses something considerably more valuable: the tolerance, compassion, and respect for other cultures that can only be gained by experiencing their lifestyle.

Another important aspect of an exchange is its effect on the lives of others. By living in a foreign country, I am showing the people there my desire to understand them.

In times where discrimination is prevalent, understanding is crucial. In my opinion, hatred comes from ignorance, something easily cured by education.

I have brought with me the ability to teach and the potential to learn. I use my knowledge of the American lifestyle to clear up common stereotypes, and I commit to teaching Americans how to respect cultural characteristics that my be unfamiliar to them.

Sharing my insight will bring us one step closer to creating the world we have always dreamed of: a place in which each culture is equally valued and its unique contribution to the world is able to enrich our lives.

The worth of my exchange has become quite evident to me in the past few months-what this opportunity has to offer is priceless. This is the event in my life which has made the largest impression on me.

I consider myself privileged to be a Rotary Youth Exchange Student, and my only hope is that everyone has a chance to do something so extraordinary. If not for my exchange, I would not be who I am today. As for tomorrow, I can only imagine.
 

Honorable Mentions 

The Honorable Mentions essays are in a .pdf file.
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