Importance of Host Families

I’m so sorry I haven’t written in a long time, but here are some I wrote earlier but haven’t had internet to post them.

In my family, I truly feel at home and it is the best feeling ever. Your host family during your year abroad can really make or break your entire experience.  It is really important to have one that you feel comfortable in and can talk to them about anything.  During your year, there are ups and downs and you will experience every emotion you’ve ever had to great degrees.  With learning a new language, being in a different culture, and living far away from your family and friends, there is a lot of pressure and emotions flowing through you at every moment. They call this the wave or the roller coaster.

Sometimes the waves come week to week, sometimes day to day, and sometimes in time periods of months.  It really depends on what’s happening around you.  You will have the worst and best days of your life and the worst moments and bests. You will question yourself why you ever came, why this was a good idea, and what the hell am I doing here at times.  And at other times you will think to yourself that you never want to go home, keep traveling forever, and eventually move to your new country.  At the low points, it is common to have mental breakdowns like a three-year old don’t worry, the day will pass.  It is important to prepare yourself for these time periods and to know that the best days of your life are awaiting you and that bad day will be over before you know it.  For these highs and lows, ups and downs, it’s very important to have a host family you feel comfortable in and feel like they truly are your second family. 

My family now, is truly incredible and I couldn’t have any more luck.  My friends from AFS are jealous of my family and tell me that I am so lucky, which is all true.  I have two brothers, and a mom and dad.  My brothers are really the brothers I’ve ever wanted and we do everything together.  My parents always go out of their way to make sure I have the best experience I could ever have and make sure everything’s okay all the time.  They are open and talk to me as if they were my birth parents.  I couldn’t be happier and my year completely flipped around in the past five months.  I can now honestly say that I don’t regret my choice of coming to Paraguay and I have made memories here that I will never forget.