As previously mentioned, I had the privilege of flying home for the Christmas/ New Years holidays. To be honest, I did not really want to go back to Canada, but as had I not, I would have had to redo all the missed exams in Austria as well as catch up in every subject including Latin (I probably would have just repeated a year, which I really did not want to have to do as technically I would then be 2 years below where I was in Canada) I flew back. I had lived with my third host-family for about a week prior to flying home, and nothing had gone wrong (yet). I flew out of Munich this time, arrived at the same Airport in Canada I had previously also arrived at, just to find out that the weather conditions in my final destination were not safe to land/fly in. I then contacted the Canadian organization, as, at first the airline was not willing to give me a hotel room due to bad weather conditions not being their fault, but after I told the gentleman that was helping me that I had already spent 8 hours at this airport and that I was not willing to this again and since I was underage and traveling alone, they eventually agreed as long as someone from the organization would accompany me to the hotel, as they were unsure whether or not the hotel would let a minor stay on their own. I ended up meeting a coordinator at the airport who I have been on a WhatsApp video call with during probably the worst mental breakdown I had. She was really nice, but also pregnant, so, unfortunately, she wasn't able to be my coordinator. I ended up having to wait with her for other students to arrive who were coming back from going back home for the holidays, which I was surprised to see for one because why was there no coordinator at the airport when I first flew to Canada? And also, because the organizations had made a bit of a fuss about me going home for the holidays and yet there were like 10 other exchange students in my province that I knew of alone who did the same. It got pretty late and I hadn't eaten yet, so the coordinator ended up having dinner with me, she said that everyone was surprised that I came back and that nobody expected me to actually come back (this was the first time I had heard of the organization actually acknowledging that they had done something wrong). The hotel ended up letting me stay, no questions asked and I ended up taking a flight the next morning.
Obviously, I was not really excited about being back, however, I did hope things would change for the better and while it may have seemed as though they were in the beginning, eventually I saw people's true colors.
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My Exchange Year
Non-FictionI would like to make a few things very clear: this piece is not meant to hurt nor depreciate the image of any individuals/organizations mentioned. It is purely meant to inform upon the issues encountered by a foreign exchange student aka the author...
