A New Perspective

by Lucy Kuchma ‘18

When it comes to vacation, most people envision a calm, relaxing environment with good food, a nice place to stay, and fun activities. Imagine going to a foreign country with no idea what your lodging will be like, what you will be fed, or what you are going to do. Then imagine how great that adventure could be.

I was lucky enough to be able to participate in Sherwood’s annual foreign exchange with a high school in Marseille, a city in southern France. I could not have been more excited to see more of the world, as I had never left the country prior to this trip, and I have been studying French for roughly four years.

However, in that moment when we stepped off the bus and into the arms of our host families, I was arguably the freest and most terrified I have ever felt.

There’s something unexplainably vulnerable about being thrown into a family and basically becoming a child of different parents for 10 days. At the same time, it is so exciting to live in another person’s shoes, whether similar to your own or completely different.

Part of the reason so many people are able to get so close with their host student is due to the process by which students are assigned to one another. John Falls, foreign language department head and leader of the French Exchange at Sherwood for over ten years now, corresponds with Colette Ameliani, the English teacher at Lycée Paul Mélizan. The two discuss the personalities of all of the students participating in the exchange and personalize the entire process as much as possible. This makes it so that almost everyone is quite compatible with their assigned host to begin with.

The extent to which you really create a bond with your hosts in such a short period of time is extraordinary. If someone had told me I would develop such a uniquely close relationship on this trip, I might have said that was wishful thinking, but because you’re forced to live by their side and really rely on them for every aspect of your daily life, you become so connected to them. This sort of relationship is unlike any other relationship I have ever had in the sense that there is no time for any judgment. Regardless of whether you have shared interests, you simply have to adopt their interests for the time you’re staying with them.

On the average day, you either go to school or go out on the town and just simply absorb culture. It sounds cliché, I know, but I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t entirely true. I observed so many similarities and differences between just the ways people exist. For example, the way of life is so much more relaxed there. People move slowly and appreciate everything in the moment. Whereas here, things move quite quickly and the appreciation is often done in retrospect.