When I was a child I had a big dream. I wanted to be an exchange student in the future. I wanted to go for an exchange because I thought that it would be really nice experience to live in some other country for a year and get to know people around the world. Then finally at the age of 16 my dream came true and now I will tell you about that.
Why did I choose Italy?
It was very difficult to choose the country where I want to go. I believed that so many countries would have been amazing. I read many blogs and watched many videos about other exchange students experiences. After some time I had two countries left on my list, Italy and Portugal. I chose Italy because I liked more Italian language. Other things that made me choose Italy were for example food, music and culture.
Italian countryside
I got the details about my host family five months before my exchange started. My new hometown was located in the region called Puglia. Puglia is in the southern Italy. The town was small, it had 10000 inhabitants. The town was located next to the national park called Alta Murgia. Puglia is known for olive production and it has the longest coastline of any Italian mainland region. I was so excited to go to a place like that! It sounded so different than my home in Finland.
I arrived to Italy on September and the weather there was still really warm and it felt like summer. I had never been in Italy before my exchange so I had a big culture shock at first. Also I did not speak any Italian when I arrived there so I had some challenges with that. My host family did not speak any English. I learned pretty quick Italian because nobody spoke English with me. I got a lot of attention at school because the town was small and the local people were not used to the foreigners. At first it was not easy to make friends because we didn’t speak the same language. My best friends were other exchange students but I got some good Italian friends too. I learned a lot of new things about myself and other cultures. My exchange year was awesome and I recommend this experience to everyone! Even though some days were really hard but still I would say that it was the best year of my life!
Coming back to Finland
I was sad when I had to come back to Finland. It would have been lovely to stay longer in Italy. I had some kind of a culture shock when I came back here. After that experience I was more independent than before and I knew better what I want to do in the future.
Now six years have passed after my exchange and I still miss Italy and my friends there. I have visited Italy three times after the exchange but I have not visited the place where I lived during my exchange. Some day I want to do that. I’m so happy that I had the courage to move abroad alone. Nowadays I can speak Italian very well and I have used that skill some times at work.
A typical day as an exchange student in Italy
In this video you can see how is life as an exchange student in Italy. The video is in Italian but there are subtitles in English.
Thank you for reading! If you have been an exchange student it would be nice to hear about your experiences.