my exchange experience

I'm right here, sitting on a chair that is not mine, not in the country where i was born! I've never been ALONE so far from home, but always there is a first time! Today is MY FIRST TIME! This is the first time I've make a decision all by myself.. and sometimes it seems to be too hard, too a stupid decision taken without thinking!
I'm sitting here, in one of the Computer LAb of the Decatur High School, GA...I'm an exchange student from Naples, South Italy.
I'm far from home, far from my friends and from my boy, but someway I'm here where I want to be!

Here everything is so different from home: the school, the guys, the way teenagers live their teens, the way they love their country, what they do, the subjects taught in school (in Italy we would never have a culinary class) and surely the way they teach here. Every morning here the students stand up for the flag; in my country no one could ever ask a teens' class to do something like this. We don't have so many sports at school, an official team, so students are not very unitd like here, where our Bulldogs are THE TEAM!
Before I left every one of my relatives said that they were proud of me, but I think that "proud" is not the right word; I think I'm crazy above all because while all my friends are in the their bed I'm here writing this.... thinking about what I've done!

I've spent a lot of time thinking about Why I decided to do this experience, but actually I don't have an answer: for three years I wanted so bad to be where I'm now, but I still don't know why I've made this hard decision!
AFS is a big international volunteers' group, and this year for the annual program in the USA there are more or less 300 Italian teens that are hosted all over this country, but every story is different from the others, and I'm here to talk about mine!
Three years ago I decided what could be the BIGGEST decision in my life: attend a year in an American high school, living there in a true American family, having an experience that, I think, will have changed my life forever!

To pass the selections for this dream wasn't so easy: three days of tests, some interviews with psychoanalysts and four months waiting for the answer. But on February 23rd finally the answer arrived..:U.S.A., I'm coming!
Some friends of mine weren't very happy when I told them the big news, but it didn't matter....I was going to spend a year in the U.S.A. What could be more important than this?
Somebody told me that this experience would be the biggest mistake of my life; some others told me that this would be the best experience of my life; "after that you will be a different person,not another person, but completely different from what you are now!" they said.
However... it's going to be a hard and exciting year, with a lots of changes, discoveries, and news....but hard!
The real question is "Who am i NOW?!?!?!"..!!! I think that it's complicated to put on paper what a person really is, hardest if the language you have to use not your own.
However I am....I am.....I am...ME: no stereotypes, I cannot say "I'm the one always dressed in black, that listens only to metal music, and thinks that life is only hard and NO GOOD!!!!!"
I'm the one that starts every morning with a smile on the face, even if I'll lose it during the day sometimes...
I'm the one "I want it all and I want it now" but that knows it's not possible and sometimes I can only sit and wait...
But anyway I'm the one that usually cannot JUST sit and wait: I'm the one who has to stand up for what she cares about and FIGHT, even if sometimes it's easier give up..
I'm the one that thinks that some days are worse than others, but the good days are the best reason to go through every bad day of our lives...
I'm the one that usually thinks about what to do, before doing something... because I know that everything we do has consequences..and we have to accept them....
sometimes you have to spread your wings and fly away, without thinking that that sky is high and this is a wide wild world, just go...it's not important the destination if you don't take a look during the journey!

Everyday is easier than the day before; everyday I feel more home than far from home and even if I am still wondering why am I here, I think I can figure out the answer to this question, because I know I'm in the right place, where I'm supposed to be!
Anyway our mind is not the simplest thing on the face of this planet...and so if one day I'm so happy and enthusiastic it doesn't mean that all the saddest moments are gone away, it just means that I've to live the best of the happiest moment, so I can remember them when the sadness sometimes still knocks at my door, asking for my company....
There are so many fears that sometimes I have, and other times the same fears seems to be so stupid, so senseless...
Being there I'm discovering how many emotions a person can have in the same moment, how friends can be together even if there is an ocean between them, and how it is simple sometimes just to talk with new people about your country...your city...your Italian life!

I suggest everyone who wants to play a different game from the classic lifestyle of all teenager of the world to do an experience like mine!

if you are the kind of teen that loves trying different things, discovering how is life on the other side of the world, who is not afraid of difficult and unusual choices, an AFS experience is what you need, just to know yourself better, to understand what is shared, to grow up better!!!

I know there will be moments harder than others, but I know that I am strong enough to go through these months, having the best experience of my life!
Growing up is a complicated job, maybe for this reason it takes a lot of time, and sometimes it's a little bit frightening, but I want to leave you with a question, it's better be like Peter Pan for all the life, even when your body looks like the one of a old person, or grow up like Wendy and keep inside the best memories of our childhood?