Tuesday, August 8, 2017

The Negatives of my Exchange

I did not have many negative experiences during my exchange but there is one I would like to talk about.

In January of my exchange I was getting prepared to switch host families. My current one was small, It was only my host mother, my host father, and me. My host father had a job within the military and every three days he would go to the military building and have a 24 hour shift. Leaving my host mother and me alone for a day. I was really excited to switch host families because in my next host family I would have a host brother and I would not be so alone all the time. My host mother held off the switch for a month because she had to go to Germany as a representative for the insurance company she worked for, for 3 weeks. She did not want the other boy (who didn't really speak Croatian) to be stuck with my host father (who didn't really speak English) for 3 weeks trying to learn the rules of the apartment and such.

So from February till I left in June my host mother spent 3 weeks every month in Germany, and I would be home alone with my host father. Then every third day I would be home alone completely for 24 hours.

At the time I saw nothing wrong with it. It was a chance to get even more out of the apartment and spend more time with my friends. My host mother was very strict about my curfew; even if I was 5 minutes late in the door (on time at the building but we lived on the third floor), she would threaten to send me home. Which did happen on a couple of occasions. To be home on time or to do as she'd like me to do I would spend 4 hours just commuting from my apartment to the part of town my friends hung out at and back which did not leave me with much time for hanging out and establishing relationships. So her being gone, and me being home alone was less stressful for me. Even though my host dad did not talk to me much, he was quite funny and it was simple to spend time with him.

It wasn't until I was back in the states I saw what commotion it caused.  I realized how it was wrong that I was alone so much. But, I felt very safe in Croatia and it never even crossed my mind that I could ever be in any danger there. The only problem it caused for me was that I was a little lonelier.

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