Keeping in Touch

One of the hardest things to completely grasp as an exchange student is how to stay in contact with the people at home. Although I feel this differs for everyone and is dependent on the type of person you are and your situation, I feel that hearing other peoples experiences can be really helpful.

I personally did not talk to my dad that much for the first part of the program although I talked to my mom very often. This was just because I felt my mom could understand my problems more and it was easier to share them with her. Although I did talk to my mom, often, which was multiple times per week, it was usually for short periods of time, around five or 10 minutes. I felt this was different from most people's experiences in my program, as many people talked to their parents for roughly an hour on a certain day of the week. 

In the second half of my program, I started not talking to my mom as much, although I started talking to my dad more. I feel as though both my parents were very understanding of the time I was taking to talk to them. This is because they understood that I was going through life without them and I possibly needed more or less of their support at different times in the year. 

Although, at language camp, I did not talk to my parents at all, as I felt that it was really hard to talk to them about how I was feeling. I think this was very different for each person in my program, as many people really wanted to talk to their parents and others did not want to talk to their parents at all as they were very busy and were having a lot of fun.

Talking to my friends was a very different story. I decided to use my Snapchat stories to try and communicate with people back home. This was in order to convey large life updates to a group of people, rather than texting each person individually. This meant that I talked to some people more and some less. 

I feel as though regulating time to talk to people at home is something every exchange student has to figure out. Exchange students also need to understand that how much you talk to people changes throughout the year, which is perfectly normal.