Nothing new, Just the same excitement!!! :)

   Okay so I don't really have anything new to talk about but I have to talk about the excitement I am feeling right now ( and no I still don't have a host family which only makes me build up more expectations to what they will be like)!!!! I am seriously making so many friends and that is because exchange allows you to meet so many new people!!! And it is crazy because we all click and that is just the magic of all being future exchange students!

   Like all things in this blog you will see that it is really hard to understand what I am talking about unless you are an exchange student, but seriously I couldn't be any happier right now in my life! Exchange is already starting to change how I look at my own city that I've lived in for basically my whole life. I used to just not really pay attention to the details in my city but now that is all I do when I look outside, wondering if I will miss this or how different it will be in Italy! Words can't really express how happy it is to know that I will leave all of this behind and get to build new relationships in Italy and make my relationships here stronger when I get back.

   My peers sometimes question why I would go abroad my senior year of high school, but after switching to home school for eight months my Junior year because of surgery. I knew I became slightly too mature to go back to some of my fellow classmates at school. I mean they thought it was cool to break a teachers colored pencils when she was absent, like GROW UP. And to be honest I have wanted to go abroad since the first time I heard about it my freshman year of high school when Ms. Gamble came to my Spanish class and did an AFS presentation, which lead me to hosting the following semester and now going abroad. But back to the "SENIOR year" thing, I read all of the time when returnees come back they couldn't really connect with their classmates and that they really missed their host country and the freedom they had. (the freedom was especially hard to adjust to with their natural parents) and volunteers actually suggest senior/gap year. When I come back from Italy I will be 18 and graduated I will be able to visit when I want to and help prep me for my college years anyways. Some go their sophomore year but I think you will be a little bit immature, but to each its own. I thought I knew it all my sophomore year but now that I am older I can see that I definitely didn't. Most students go their Junior year, but Junior year is the most important year of high school and then you would have a lot of work to do your senior year (which will not be fun) so I don't regret leaving my senior year!!!! This will be the most memorable year of my life :)!!!

Arrivederci, Shayla