Program Reviews

My year abroad in Italy was amazing. I went abroad knowing almost no Italian and, as a 16 year old, terrified out of my mind. But I made it, thanks to AFS and the Intercultura Italian chapter. My AFS correspondent near my house treated me like a daughter, always available if I needed help. I got lucky, my family was so welcoming and helpful, and I am still friends with them to this day. I'm going back to visit this summer!

No exchange is perfect, I had my problems throughout the program but these problems where the ones that help you grow as a person and make you more independent. On the first day of this journey I made life long friends with people I only spent 4-6 days with. You will meet amazing people and was the year that I discovered my true self. Everyday I miss the wonderful places and people I met Saudades

Without a doubt, my study abroad in Spain was the most transformational experience I have ever had the privilege of having. It is something that I want to share with everyone and I wish everyone could have the experience I did. Staying with a host family, learning about a new culture, speaking in a new language, and creating life-long friendships with people my age from around the world was an incredible experience. The food in Spain is amazing as well so that always helps. Overall, I would encourage anyone considering studying abroad to go to Spain because it is a beautiful country with awesome culture.

Hi! I spent three amazing, whirling weeks in Paris in July 2015. The focus of my program was cooking and learning French. We made all sort of food at our culinary school, everything from chorizo stuffed chicken to seared duck breast in honey wine sauce and won ton wrapped fried prawns with mango. Of course desserts were not neglected either! We hand whipped vanilla cream filling for our pastry, were handed blow tourches to lovingly kiss the tops of our meringue, and made lime Madelines, the official cookie of France! The staff were all really great. One time the culinary instructer, Remy, (yes like from Ratatouille)tested whipped cream doneness by turning the bowls upside down over our heads! If it fell out, well you had to keep whipping by hand. If not, it was time to dollop on apple tarts! The only thing I wish was different would have been our housing arrangements. We stayed in a youth hostel which was cool since we got to meet lots of different people our age from not only france but England, Germany, and Spain, but due to cost had to stay six to a room. Fortunately I loved all my new friends, in fact I just received a Christmas card from one of them! Seeing the sights was not neglected, we had tons of free time and were allowed to go where ever we wanted as long as we had a buddy or after dark, two buddies. We had tours of a few places such as the Louvre, but most places we explored on our own. Our favorite place to be was on the banks of the Seine river, near Notre Dame. We would buy pain de chocolat, (chocolate filled croissants) or crepes avec Nutella and sit or walk for hours there, admiring sights or artwork or writing in our journals. Nothing was more beautiful than Norte Dame at sunset, when it looked as if it has been gilded in golden splendor, the magnificant towers and face, painstakingly carved, with the fading blue sky behind it, only serving to make the contrast between the golden church and its surroundings more apparent. Every moment was perfection in itself, three weeks was not enough time, I hope someday to return for good, teaching languages abroad.

I was an exchange student in Portugal for 10 months. It was the best year of my life so far. Now I have great friends from all around the world and a family in portugal. I learned how to speak a new language and it's indescribable how great it feels when you are just starting to speak a new language and being able to hold up a conversation. The best thing about my year in Portugal is that now I have a family, other than my own here in Iceland, that care about me and i call it my other home.

Japan was hard. There were much more awful days than there were good days, and even the good days were very bittersweet. I don't regret going though, I'm very glad I went; I grew so much, and learned so much about myself and others and how to carry on even when you feel like you can't possibly do it. It will be hard, but you can do it, I promise.

Below is an excerpt from my journal, what I think was my most special and happy day, when everything was worth it. I was living with my 4th and final host family, and we were staying in the countryside of Hiroshima over the holidays with my grandparents.

It was the day after New Year’s; my host dad and I had circled the mountain and were coming back through the snowy fields on the high road. The whole morning we’d been joking about Hiroshima’s elusive wild boars, how they were hiding in the forest, waiting to come out and get us. We hadn’t seen any - yet. But there now, in the middle of the road was the darkest, scariest, grove of bamboo I had ever seen. “Should we go around?” Tousan suggested. I pulled a branch up from the ditch and brandished it, “No way! We’re not afraid of any pigs!” But actually, it was very scary. Halfway through the grove, me clutching my branch, and Tousan very silent, there was suddenly a huge crash in the bamboo beside us and we jumped about a foot in the air yelling, standing close together, waiting for an attack. And then Tousan started laughing. “It’s just the snow! The snow fell from the bamboo!” I looked at him with the most surprised expression - then we both started cracking up, we couldn’t stop; the sun was bright and glittering, and we smiled until our faces hurt.

Later, by the river, Tousan showed me the tiny hard flower buds on the sakura trees. “Will I get to see them?” I asked, and Tousan said no, I’d be home by then.
It was first time I realized.
This was my home now.

The greatest six weeks of my life. I spent 6 weeks with 7 amazing people learning Spanish in school, while going out and using Spanish in real life situations. We lived with host families, traveled the country, and became natives. My family, and friends over there will always be with me. On our last night in Costa Rica, all 8 of us created a super bed. In one of the rooms we pushed together two beds together and all spent the night in the room. We sang Taylor Swift, drew tattoos on each other, ate foreign junk food, and watched Easy A. We played fishbowl laughing at things like pina colada, and eventually cried as we realized that we would be going back tomorrow. However in the end we knew that we would remain friends no matter the distance and to this date we have kept our AFS group chat active, keeping everyone updated on our lives.

I participated in this program the summer after my freshman year of high school, which was a rather difficult time for me; I was shy and hesitant to try new things. My time in Spain increased my self-confidence and global awareness exponentially. I was pushed beyond my comfort zone and discovered a new side of both myself and the world through my immersion in the Spanish language and culture.

I was skeptical at first about leaving my life here in the United States for a whole year because this daily routine was all I knew. I didn’t know anything about life outside of my little town. The moment my airplane touched down onto Portuguese land and I looked outside the window to see the beautiful land covered with palm trees and other leafy plants, tears streamed down my face because I knew that I had arrived to my new home and new life. Life had never seemed so precious to me than it had during my stay in Portugal. Being able to see for the first time that there is more to life than routines was life changing. Finally being able to really witness that there is no limit to what I can do in life changed me. I began to appreciate all the little details for what they were really worth. All the nights that I would climb up to the top of my roof at night and stare up into the starry sky and all the days that I would wake up at 5 in the morning just to go for a walk through the hills of my village shaped me to be who I am today.

Where to begin...Probably one of the most unique experiences I was lucky enough to have was hiking to the top of a mountain (Vífilfell) and viewing a solar eclipse there. It was sort of representative of my ten months in Iceland as a whole in many ways: it was cold; things didn't go according to plan (the thawing snow had wet the gravelly surface of the mountain, causing a lot of slipping and sliding on the way up and down); the natural scenery was beautiful; people--total strangers--were more than happy to help each other; and perhaps most importantly, I had to push myself in order to keep going. This opportunity was an outlier, of course, as most of my year was spent doing regular activities like going to school or hanging out with friends, but adventures like this one are out there if you seek them out, particularly in a country as small and packed with nature as Iceland. So, in conclusion, it was an interesting--and rewarding--year that I would do again in a heartbeat.