Living abroad - Part I

Hey guys!

I have been thinking a lot about my time abroad and guess some might be interested in that part of my life as well.

Some of you may already know that I lived in Venezuela and Mexico for quite some time. In detail, this means that I was supposed to spend my 11th grade of school in Venezuela.

First, I wanted to attend classes in an English-speaking country. I applied for a place to stay in Australia, but due to September 11th all of those who had applied for a year in the United States switched to Australia or New Zealand. As a result, the places for Australia were taken, New Zealand was no option either - so I had to re-think my exchange year. Coincidently, I talked to a friend's cousin who had lived in Venezuela only a few years before. She was telling me about it very enthusiastically, what led to the decision to spend my year there too.

Finally, I left Austria on September 8th 2002, heading towards Barquisimeto in Central Northern Venezuela. After a very long flight from Munich to Frankfurt, the overseas flight to Caracas and a national flight to my hometown-to-be, I got to meet my host family after a 19 hours journey. I got warmly welcomes by my hostparents, my district's governor of the exchange programme and a German girl who had lived in Barquisimeto for quite some time. Honestly, I can't remember anything about the first days in Venezuela. What I quickly realized though: my Spanish wasn't as good as I thought it was.

I started to go to school, along with the girl from Germany I had met the day of my arrival, a guy from Quebec, Canada and a girl from Switzerland. Everything seemed to work out perfectly, the only point really bothering me at that time was that my Spanish didn't get any better because of speaking too much German instead of taking the chance of practising my Spanish. Unfortunately, with the days and weeks passing by the relationship with my host family got worse. With every day I spent around them, I felt more uncomfortable, because they were screaming and yelling at me for no reason all of a sudden. As a result, I spent most of the time outdoors with friends - and once again: not practising my Spanish. But that came to an end when the political situation got more complicated - and dangerous - for strangers. School was closed by the beginning of November, malls, cinemas and nearly everything related to public life followed the upcoming weeks due a national strike that about five months in total. Due to these two factors - the poor relationship with my host family and the political circumstances - I soon began to incredibly miss home, spending most of my days crying in my bed. The worst part was sill to come though....

Waking up two days before Christmas, I found myself home alone. That wasn't really surprising since my host parents rarely told me anything when they were leaving. Suddenly the door bell rang, opening the door, there was my neighbour telling me that I had to come with her because my host parents had left to see their sons in the United States and wouldn't be around until mid January. First, I was like: WHAT?! You have to be kidding me! But soon I realized, nope, she is not joking at all! I immediately called my programme's local chairman to tell her that I wanted to leave Venezuela asap! She was telling me to calm down and to move in with her, but I didn't want to stay any longer.

Two weeks later I took the flight back home, which costed half a fortune due to lack of gasoline and overseas flights in general. Believe me: tears were streaming down my cheeks when I finally arrived in Graz. Never had I felt that releaved before. Even thouh it were only three months I had spent in Venezuela, I had changed a lot. I was a quite shy and quiet person before leaving, but very vivid in comparison to the person I was when I got back home. Friends of mine didn't even recognize me, especially because of my physical appearance: I had lost about 15kg, pale skinned and very sad and exhausted eyes. That wasn't me...

I got spoiled in every possible and didn't spent one second on thinking about finishing my year somewhere else. Admittingly, I hadn't done much for school in Venezuela. As a result, I had a very difficult time keeping up with the others in order to pass my exams. It turned out to be completely impossible to make it through the school year without having to repeat it. This resulted in calling the chairman of the programme here in Austria and asking him about a place where I could finish my exchange year. I wasn't really confident about getting a chance to finish it, on the contrary, I had already started to do the impossible and tried anything possible to pass my exams. To the surprise of all of us, he told me to grab my stuff, buy a ticket to Mexico and leave the following week. First, I was somehow shocked and wasn't sure about leaving again because of the terrible experience in Venezuela. But I took the chance, what resulted in the best decision I have ever made in my entire life!!

But that's something I will tell you about in my next post...

so, stay tuned and see what I am going to tell you about my incredible eight months in Mexico!

I'll upload some pictures as soon as I get back home, for now: Have a nice day!