This week I am going to go back to talking about one of my close foreign friends that I made over the course of my high school year. For a high school student, I am often asked how I know so many people from different countries specifically in Europe. My answer to this question is that I make a point to meet any person that comes into my school during an exchange program for they offer something that has tremendous value, which is the opportunity to learn about different cultures. Amanda is from Amsterdam, Netherlands, and she spent my junior year of high school as an exchange program. Amanda, she had just graduated from the high school equivalent, and she was only 17 years old. It is fairly common for people to graduate high school at 17 years old, but it is a lot more common to take a gap year after senior year and into college.
I first met Amanda at the beginning of the year, however at this time she was extremely shy and was still trying to find her way around the school. I tried my best to be her friend, but for some reason, I could not get through to her. At first, this did not disappoint me, I thought it was a cultural difference that I did not understand. It was not until the winter until I could finally break through to her that I wanted to be her friend. To this day we still do not know why it took so long to make this connection, but in the long run, we were very happy that it did happen. Amanda said she had a super rough transition into the American high school, and she was relieved that I was trying to be her friend throughout it all.
Over the course of the rest of my junior year, Amanda and I became lifelong friends and I learned about the slight differences in culture between the United States and the Netherlands. That year I ended up convincing her to join the track team and in the spring I asked her to go to prom with me with the most “American” promposal ever. Amanda told me before she left to go home how meaningful it meant that I kept on reaching out to her, and how that completely changed the outcome of her perception of the United States and the whole exchange year. Being kind to one another should always extend far past our language barriers.
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