Hello you,
This is a very difficult and exciting time, which is a bit of an odd combination. My journey continues as I plan for the exchange approaching faster than I could ever have expected. With this adventure ahead, I face a time where I must make some huge decisions. I have never posted on this blog before out of fear, yet as I type these words I feel lighter. Sharing is a coping mechanism I turn to in times of GREAT need and I guess this fits the bill. See, if you aren't a foreign exchange student or another student going through the application process to become one, then you might not understand the tough choices coming up. This is the make-it or break-it time. I have to choose my "when, where, who, why" and that's a pretty scary notion when the last five years have been mere foreshadowings of my answers.
See in March 2013, I visited this country called France. Maybe you've heard of it? Yeah that one. I'd just turned sixteen and it had been My Dream to go on exchange since I was twelve and it seemed at the time it wouldn't work out due to costs and finding a host family and blah blah blah. So I "settled" (yeah, no, there was no settling involved, this was an incredible trip I will remember for the rest of my days and I am infinitely grateful to Aunt Rosie and Uncle Danny.) for a nine day trip across the Atlantic to visit my lovely Aunt and Uncle who lived in Versailles. My parents and I split the airplane ticket cost and then I was off. I landed in Paris before morning, and Aunt Rosie and I hit the ground running. I strolled through an echoing Notre Dame without another soul present. Nothing can compare, I promise you that. And the rest of my time is a blur. A magical, beautiful blur. But that blur ended in slugging my suitcase into the back of my mom's car in the California heat and heading home. Home is such a funny word and it confuses my heart. Images flash through my mind of my hometown in North Carolina, of an elementary school in Virginia, of a cabin on a cruise ship to Bermuda, of a walking path in California, and finally a desk. My desk in my room in my house, surrounded by my immediate family in a town I've lived in barely a year. Yet somehow, the gardens of Versailles and the metro line speeding underneath Paris felt as familiar as every one of my "homes." I thought to myself on the day before I left, There is no possible way that I am leaving this place, nothing, no one can make me leave. And even as I sit here at my desk back in California, I know in my heart, that I haven't. I haven't left that time, that place, that untouchable feeling of being completely submerged in the unknown.
My difficult decision is whether or not France is the place I want to spend the first semester of my senior year. Will France feel the same as it did then? Or should I strike out for another country that shares my native language? Can Great Britain feel as remarkably foreign and familiar as France? I am not sure. I am not sure at all. I'm drowning in doubts, I'm buoyant with excitement, I'm not sure what I am at all. All I know is, I am ready to find out. I have a very short amount of time to make up my mind, and I'll let you know how it goes.
All the love my heart can spare,
Savannah
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