Lost in a new world: my unforgettable adventure in an American high school

My first days at school were an adventure every day! On the first day, I went to my counselor's office to choose my classes. There were so many options to choose from that I didn’t know what to pick! After a long hour of conversation I chose, considering both the American and Italian requirements, these classes: Yearbook, ERWC (Expository Reading and Writing Course), US History, Government and Economics, Pre-calculus, and Theatre (which I changed after with AP psychology). Then my counselor introduced me to my first and second-period classes, everyone was curious to have an exchange student from Italy, and everyone asked so many questions! Talking about the school, it starts at 8.45 am and it ends at 3.30 pm. My school campus has 13 buildings and we have to change classes every hour. In Italy, I’m used to being in a single building and staying in the same class all day for the whole year. In my American high school, at first, I was lost every day for more than a week, not knowing where I had to go, even if I had a school map! Each building has more than 5 entrances and every day I walked around the campus I got lost in a different entrance. The thing I liked the most from the first days is the attention and respect that teachers give to students. On the second day, I met one of my current best friends. I met her in the yearbook class since we sat at the same table, and she invited me to have lunch with her and her friends in the tennis coach’s room. Once I met the coach he asked if I wanted to join the varsity tennis team, and even if I had never played before it wasn’t a problem for him at all. Joining the tennis team was one of the best decisions of my life. I get along well with the team and the coach is a great point of reference when I need to talk or when I’m not feeling good. One of the things that worried me the most was the language. Even if my knowledge of English is good I was afraid to talk because of my Italian accent. I was the only one who had this fear though, in fact, everyone was fascinated by my accent, I was complimented a lot and asked to repeat the words because they liked how they sounded with my accent. Overall, besides the initial fear, I loved my American high school right away. It’s the end of October now and I started school two months ago. I’m still enjoying going to school every day without anxiety, I’m enjoying every class I am in, I’m enjoying tennis, and most of all, I’m enjoying the school spirit. All the football games, the pep rally, the homecoming, the senior assassin, the senior night, the movie night... and many more things that were organized by my school will always be some of the best moments I’ve ever experienced here. I’ll be forever grateful to my parents for letting me live this experience and I’ll never regret my decision to study abroad for a year!