My Exchange Year

The Day I left

I did not choose to do an orientation with my organization but rather just fly to the town I was going to live in immediately. So, on the first of September, I flew from Zurich to a large town in Canada and from there I was supposed to fly to the town I was going to be living in. Unfortunately, due to my first plane arriving later than expected and having only 1 ½ hours between arriving and the next flight leaving ( which may I add should have been a red flag as well, an exchange organization who send students abroad a lot should know that with customs and getting a student visa especially on the first of September which is when almost all exchange students enter the country should know that you need more than just 1 ½ hours between flights) , I missed my next flight. I was standing in the visa section and did not see myself getting the flight, luckily there were other exchange students who even had a coordinator with them so I asked her what she would tell a student to do and she told me to contact my student coordinator which I tried to do, however, she did not pick up the phone. I had no clue what to do so I called the emergency hotline where someone did pick up the phone and was able to help me out. After having been told that the next flight out would be 9 hours later, I notified the lady from the emergency hotline about my flight number and asked if there was any way I could leave the airport as my parent's friends lived nearby and they were also my emergency contact which she said was not possible. May I add that the organization had a very large office in this town, and nobody offered to help me out or even make sure I'm ok when I am pretty sure there were coordinators at the airport that day because of orientations and students arriving . My student coordinator did end up calling me back and I also sent her my new flight number and time of arrival, luckily, I had the phone number of my host-parents and was able to tell them about the change in time of arrival as well. When my host-dad messaged me saying how cool it was that I would get there hours earlier than I had told them I was very confused and asked him who had told him that and he said the student coordinator had informed them I would arrive at 9 pm that night... my plane was supposed to land at 1:30 am the following day (additional red flag). Anyway, so after a 7-hour flight I got to spend 11 hours at said airport. This airport did not have any possibility of sleeping or even having any type of privacy anywhere, so I just sat at the children's play area for like 8 hours. My mom was nice enough to call me every 15 minutes towards the end to make sure I was awake and that nobody could steal my luggage. As soon as I sat down in the plane and had my noise-canceling headphones on, I fell asleep and slept for the entire flight. When I finally arrived at my final destination my host-dad picked me up and I went straight to bed and slept until the next morning which thank god was not my first school day.