Change Edition – My Year in the US as an Exchange Student

As an exchange student, when they told me that the theme of this edition was Change, I thought that I would have it easy. I really always talk about one country, but in this edition, I am going to talk about two; Spain, which is where I come from, and the United States, which is where I am spending the entire school year.

The first change that I noticed was the neighborhoods. In Spain, it does not matter if you live in a town, in the city, in the center or on the outskirts, you will see all buildings with at least 4 individual houses, one on top of the other, they are still individual houses, but we share a garden in the community. Here you all have your own individual house with your own individual garden, which makes the houses bigger in general than in Spain. I think what scared me at first is that because there are houses and not buildings I did think it easier for someone to enter your house. 

The weather is not so different, but there are certain changes that you notice as soon as you arrive, such as that the cold begins at the end of September, while in Spain it does not arrive until the end of October, at the earliest. Certain years, we are in the middle of November, and it still seems like August. Here, it rains much more than in Spain, but there are fewer storms. In Spain, it does not rain so much, but if it rains it always storms. 

Food is undoubtedly one of the biggest changes. In Spain, we have large meals to eat at around 2 pm. We usually sleep till 5pm and then we have a coffee or snacks. However, here you eat less and much earlier. A curious thing is that you drink coffee at all hours while we only drink after eating lunch, your coffees are also way bigger than Spain coffee. 

The last change I’m going to talk about is the educational system, and I think yours is much better for several reasons. The first is the wide selection of subjects that prepare you for adult life, and help you specialize in what you like from a very young age, while in Spain we have to wait until university to start studying what you like. Your schedule is also much better, with fewer classes per day but longer, which makes us take advantage of the classes more. At the same time, by only having four classes and not 7, they are much more enjoyable and tire you less.

The culture of clubs in Spain does not exist, at least not in high school, and I think it is super beautiful. It is a way of meeting people with common hobbies, which also encourages teamwork, healthy competitiveness, and effort in a very good way.

In general, Spain and the United States are very different, and both have their good and bad points. The changes help us to grow and look at things from another perspective, and this experience is really helping me to think about many things about myself and the world. I am meeting incredible people and I am enjoying it very much.