From Feeling a Foreigner to Becoming a Local: The Journey of an Exchange Student

Guest post by Stefano Haboud
Stephano is a full-time student at La Sorbonne in Paris, France. He was taking classes in the Faculty of Fine Arts when here on exchange.

Inhale. It’s all dark, you can hear a child crying in the back of the plane, people laughing somewhere on your right – it’s probably the couple in 14B and 14C – and you feel the air conditioning coming from the ceiling. You finally exhale and open your eyes.

You look out the window and see a place you have never seen before; the ocean, trees everywhere, a few lakes and, in the distance, you finally see the buildings, streets and cars. You are about to land in the capital of British Columbia and that’s the moment when all those thoughts and questions come rushing back to your head. What have I just done? What have I got myself into? Why did I leave all my friends and family back home?

And the answer to all those questions is because you are about to embark on the greatest adventure of your life so far, you are about to go through an experience that will change you forever. The country of hockey, Timbits, beavers and maple syrup is going to become your home for the next four – or eight – months and you should expect highs and lows, laughs and maybe a few tears.

Being an exchange student at the University of Victoria (UVic), in Canada, taught me several life lessons that helped to shape me into a more complete and well-rounded human being. They are lessons that I try to live up to every day and knowledge that I hope to spread to everyone around me. It’s not necessarily book knowledge – an exchange program is so much more than that – but it’s mainly life rules that you are only able to learn once you shake things up, when you immerse yourself in a new culture and are forced to get to know new people.

Inhale. Don’t be afraid of the unknown. The unknown is just another reality waiting to be discovered.

In your first few days on the Island, you’re like a fish out of water; you are trying to understand how life in Victoria is and actually become a part of it as fast as possible. You still don’t understand why everyone gets overly excited when they hear you are going to study in British Columbia and they go on and on about how it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth but, hold it, that is something you will discover soon enough.

The first thing on the list is walking around Victoria, seeing the Inner Harbour, going up Mount Douglas or just going to the beach and chilling there for a couple of hours – get used to the city and to its numerous landmarks and activities; try to feel at home there and try becoming a local – the city and its people welcome you with open arms, you just have to be brave enough to make the most of it.

However, there are still so many Canadian tricks and turns you are not familiar with yet but that are key points you have to acquire to feel at ease in this new city. You don’t understand why Tim Hortons is such a big deal or why everyone thanks the bus driver when they get off the bus. You don’t know that one of the best places to escape reality and immerse yourself in your own thoughts is Willows Beach or that you can find the best burgers in Vancouver Island at the restaurant Bin4 or even that Second Slice will become your best friend because it’s the best pizza you will find in Victoria at 2 AM.

You are lost on an island so far away from home where you don’t know which bus to take to get downtown as fast as possible. You have been put in a society where you don’t exactly get the reason behind painting you entire face yellow and blue while cheering at one of the Vikes games or why everyone talks about Tofino as if it were the best place in Canada or why Vancouver is on everyone’s mind as a quick 2-day escape from the rather calm life in Victoria even though you still see Vancouver as being a bus, ferry and train ride away.

These are all things that by the end of your stay on Vancouver Island you will get to know, accept and even adopt as your own. Though stereotypical, you will become more Canadian as you won’t have to ask twice what an Iced Capp at Timmy’s is, or what going to OJ’s for appies means, or that Boston Pizza is actually not from Boston.

Exhale. Every moment is precious. The present is just an illusion of reality because the moment you are in is already gone. Make the most of it.

Once you are settled in Victoria, time will go by fast as you will have so many places to see, people to talk to and things to try, and not getting overwhelmed by all of this can be difficult but never impossible. You should always have in mind one motto, four letters that, if you analyze them correctly,  can actually change the way you approach things. YOLO.

Yes, I know, a few years ago it became the excuse for people to do things they wouldn’t do on a daily basis and things that, more often than not, weren’t thought through. However, while in exchange, I decided to take those letters and give them the meaning I consider to be the true essence of that motto. You Only Live Once.

You DO only live once and you should make the most of every moment, of every experience, of every opportunity you have when you can proudly say “I’m living”. But, what does this mean? Yes, you are a breathing human  being so technically you are alive. However, you might be alive yet not be living. To be living means you are taking in everything happening around you; stop and see what surrounds you, find new places, discover new smells, see the world from a different perspective.

If you go and study at UVic for a few months and by the end of your stay you think to yourself, “Yes, it was nice but it wasn’t life changing,” that might just mean you didn’t live. But if by the end of your exchange you accept that you have witnessed one of the best sunsets ever while in Victoria or that seeing more deer and squirrels than cats and dogs is actually possible; if you rediscovered what a sky full of stars actually looks like, if you recognize the smell of the grass after a cold winter’s night or if you can feel the breeze sitting at the beach and the heat of the campfire while making smores just by thinking about it, that probably means you lived.

Time is a crazy thing; when you are enjoying life to the fullest, time decides that it should go by faster than usual so it is your job to take in very moment as if it were your last –  not the last moment of your life but the last moment you might spend with that group of people in that particular place doing that precise thing.

Going up Mount Douglas with your roommates to see the sunset, or singing Robbie Williams’s “Angels” at Karaoke night at Felicita’s with your friends from Germany, England, the Netherlands and Brazil, going dressed all white and red on Canada Day with your new Canuck friends or driving up island on your first road trip with people you didn’t know two months before while singing “I Got a Pocketful of Sunshine”  – these are unique moments that will hardly happen again in the same conditions and you should be filled by them as much as possible.

So, what you can do to reach this stage of happiness and fulfillment is to take these five simple but very effective steps: Stop, close your eyes, wait for three seconds, open them again and appreciate the moment. Appreciate life, appreciate your surroundings, the people you are with, the food you are eating. Take a moment to actually listen to everything happening around you, to smell nature – or even the city –, to see the beauty of life.

People usually say nobody should stop being a kid because the moment you lose your inner child is the moment you lose all excitement about new things and, during my year in Victoria, I managed to actually understand what that truly means. I am not asking you to become a kid again, not at all, but what I do suggest is that you don’t lose the excitement about everything that is to come. Take everything for what it is, a unique moment that you can decide to let pass by or that you can take and enjoy.

Inhale. Loneliness is just pure perception, it is never a reality.

By the end of your exchange it will be impossible to sum up all the experiences and the memories – big or small – you have added to your life journey. Yes, you will explore new places and yes, you will try new things and yes, this country will blow your mind when it comes to beautiful scenery but there is one thing, on top of everything else, that will make this adventure you are about to embark on completely worth it and that is the people you will meet along the way.

Speaking from my own experience, being an exchange student was a roller coaster of emotions I shared with people who made me a better me, a more complete human being, but who also taught me I still have countless things to learn. It was in part thanks to all those friends who are now all around the world that a year that could have been exclusively about university, grades and studying was about personal growth and it became, without a doubt, one of the the most incredible and gratifying experiences anyone could ever ask for. It was a time when I realized I can be crazy and weird, that I can be completely myself and people won’t care.

When you go on exchange you might feel alone; your friends and family are not with you and you are in an environment where you may feel out of place. The thing you always have to remember is that you are not alone and that that feeling is just your perception of reality but the truth is you are surrounded by people who are there for you.

From your History teacher to the international student advisor or from you Canadian roommate to all your new exchange student friends, you are not alone. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help or, if you can, offer help yourself. Ask, say, share. Become an active part of this network you are getting to know and don’t be afraid of failure, don’t be afraid of judgement.

The community in Victoria is so accepting towards diversity – it doesn’t matter what your definition of diversity is – Victorians will be there to make you feel at home. One of the beauties of this city, which is now an almost universal truth but you can see it more in Canada and especially in Victoria because it is a rather small city, is that our society is composed of people so different from each other – ethnicity, age, sexuality, gender, religion or social status – it is basically a “people palette” and, even if sometimes it is hard being on one of the edges of the palette, meaning you are different and therefore unique in your own way, Victoria and the University of Victoria will make you feel like you should always feel: in the centre of the palette.

You have to realize, and this should be in your mind from the moment you step out of the plane, people are ready to welcome you with open arms, ready to accept you just the way you are with all your perks and qualities but also with the things you might need to improve. Don’t be hesitant, just go for it and be with others the person you want them to be with you.

Exhale. A song, a smell, a word. Everything can be the trigger, just wait for it.

I know this is just the beginning for you and that your expectations are probably really high so keep them that way. Two years later I still have a box full of memories – and you can take the word “box” in a literal and a figurative sense – that helps me remember one of the best times of my life. I do have a box with all the letters, pictures and small tokens I collected throughout my stay in Victoria, and that box has the power to make me laugh and cry, to make me remember and smile.

However, the box can be, as I said, conceptualized in a figurative sense. You are the box and by the end of this adventure you will be filled with memories that will come back to you when you least expect it. A song, a smell, a word. Everything can be the trigger, just wait for it. It is crazy how the mind works, it can keep track of so many moments and emotions without you even noticing it. They are hidden somewhere deep inside of you and there are things that you don’t even remember happened. But they are there, they are a part of you and they will hardly ever leave you. Faces in the crowd, smells in the air, a sound, a feeling, a déjà vu. Anything can make you have a flashback filled with emotions, with so many feelings in one mind, in one body.

All these feelings come from living and breathing a very particular reality. Having the opportunity of being at the University of Victoria as an exchange student is a once in a lifetime adventure and yes, the city of Victoria is a great place to be but, even if you don’t leave the university Ring Road, you are guaranteed to have a good time. All aspects of college life will be a vital component of your full experience – from going to classes and always learning new things to going to the library and writing your papers, from reading at the Quad to going to Mystic Market and filling a day-long craving – every moment, every space at Uvic will make you feel as if this place is where you were meant to be at this point in time.

Inhale. Live in the present because time goes by fast and you will be going back home before you realize it.

By the end of your exchange program you will face a range of emotions you might have not been confronted with before. You will ask yourself how in such a short amount of time you grew to care, love and cry for people you have known for a few months. People back home will ask you how the experience was and if you got along with the people you met there and the answer is much more complicated than a yes or no.

You will be amazed at how deeply you can get to know someone while you are on exchange. But, why? How can people coming from different countries, having different backgrounds, studying different subjects and liking different things bond and become friends for life? At the end of the day we are all the same: we are all away from home, we are not in our comfort zone and we are all confronted with a new reality where we are all foreigners; and people who go through the same struggles find and understand each other.

The first step of your bonding experience will be exactly that, finding who each other is and comparing countries. But little by little, and without even noticing, you will realize that your new friends are more than exchange students; their identities are so much more complex than just being the funny girl from Australia, or the German business student or the Danish girl who is actually from Portugal. They have all been through things in life that made them who they are right now.

Believe it or not, going on exchange requires some strength that not everyone has because not everyone has been through things in life that have made them stronger. So there is a reason they are there, with you, experiencing the same reality as you.

At the beginning you will portray yourself as this strong and confident person and others will too, but it will come to a point when you will let your guard down – this might happen unconsciously – and you will show your true self, the self that is very strong and confident but also the self who has doubts and fears, the self who’s been through low points and who has maybe learned a few life lessons the hard way.

You will find out it doesn’t matter if someone is from Taiwan or from Chile, it doesn’t matter if they are from a big city or a small town, it doesn’t matter how many differences you can find between you and them; what actually matters is the “we”, it’s all the things that make you relate to the person you thought was your complete opposite. It is sometimes the hard moments in life that actually bring you closer to people because you see their humanity and your bonding experience reaches a new level.

Get to know them because if there is one thing I have learned, it is that everyone has a story. Everyone has had struggles and victories, they have been places, seen things, learned about life. Everyone’s own path has made them a very complex person who is worth discovering because you might learn more about yourself if you are willing to learn about someone else’s self.

Exhale. Don’t be scared. Be ready for it. You will be OK!

You should know everything will turn out just fine and that all the things you were too afraid to think about, all the doubts you had running around your head and that emptiness that did not let you sleep were just ways of your body trying to tell you to stop, to back down, to scare you and make you think twice about the decisions you made. Fear is a very interesting emotion; it can be a very paralyzing feeling but it can also be the push you need to be daring and do things you were too afraid of doing.

Even though fear often has a negative connotation, fear can also be good, it can be a good-fear. It can be an “I am going to a city I’ve never been to before and I’ll explore new places”-fear or an “I will meet so many new people from all over the world that I don’t know if I am going to get along with”-fear or even a “these next few months might change my perception of life”-fear.

These are all good fears, they are the motivators you need to go for the things you want, for everything that might seem challenging or different and that you usually would let go by or be too scared to try, these fears will push you to put yourself in situations where you don’t necessarily feel comfortable. Don’t shy away from this kind of fear, embrace it because the final outcome will be so rewarding you won’t be able to understand how, at some point you thought of not embarking on this experience.

Inhale. Then lie back, relax and think of all the good things to come. Close your eyes, listen to the child crying in the back, appreciate the laughs from the couple in 14C and 14B and feel the air hitting your head. Exhale.

Inhale one more time.

Exhale.

Open your eyes and go for it.