Hi everyone, let me start by saying that going to the Czech Republic was the best experience of my life. I can’t even put into words how much I have learned throughout the 3 months and how satisfied I feel about doing it.
On my first day, I and another Argentinian (with whom I established an amazing bond) arrived at a camp in Prague and I was feeling so overwhelmed that I cried all day. Why did this happen to me? I was living in a place different from mine, and I felt alone. But the next day when I met my host family and arrived at my new home everything changed. I don´t know why but from the beginning I felt part of my new town and family, everything was great(and it was just the second day haha). Then on Monday, I went to school, when I arrived the majority of the students were boys, with my host mum we realized it was because it was a střední průmyslová škola(which means a technical school where it´s not likely to find girls around) and this was a challenge for me because in Argentina most of my friends were girls but I said to myself “you wanted something different from your home country so here you have to accept the challenge”. Despite this fear I had, my first day was incredible, I met amazing people and the school took us to visit Prague (just to clarify my school was in Prague), so I knew I couldn’t ask for more and that was living the dream.
At the end of my first month, I was getting a little bored in the classes because of the language and I didn’t do much after school with my classmates, so I decided to ask the headteacher if I could go to other classes and there is where I met my two best friends from the Czech Republic now. They took me to see ice hockey and surprisingly I took them to places in Prague they didn’t know about. In addition, I have made other friends outside of school not only from the Czech Republic, but also from my home country, Italy, Mexico, and Chile.
Talking about my host family, I established a great relationship with them. I had two younger sisters (Emma and Marleen) and a mom (Helena). Helena took me to awesome places in Czech Republic, such as: Rokytnice Nad Jizerou (where we went skiing), Plzen, Brno, Karlovy vary, Ceske budejovice, Cesky Krumlov and Prachovské Skály. We also traveled outside of the Czech Republic. We went on trips during the weekend. I consider Helena as my second mum because she was always there for me and now I can count on her for anything and with Marleen, we usually watched movies at night, cooked sweet things, or went to the cinema together.
Finally, now I feel like I will never come back home because now I have two homes, one in the Czech Republic and one in Argentina. Personally speaking, it wasn’t easy for me to return to Argentina because I knew I would miss the people, the safety, and the beauty of the Czech Republic so much.
– Victoria A., exchange student from Argentina in 2022