Friends

After a couple of weeks it is very common to get a culture shock. You might feel miss-suited in your new country and that you don’t belong there. It is usually just a period of your year you will feel like this and it is important that you still try to be friendly and happy anyway.

If you are open and friendly you will as an exchange student get many new friends. People are very interested in you and wants to now more about you. You should therefore not be afraid of talking to new people and ask them questions.

Don’t be scared of calling people if they want to hang out. It is just a way to make them feel interested as well and almost every time they will help you get into the friendship-gangs.

Nicoline Nielsen Windom, MN - USA (2004 -05)
It’s hard to be all alone in a new high school, full of students, who all belong to some crowd. All these new people I had to get to know, and find my crowd. In the beginning I sat at this lunch table with some senior girls, but I soon started to talk to some sophomore girls, and moved to their table. I sat with them until February, then I moved to freshman girls table, because I played basket ball with them during winter, and really became friends with them. I sat there for the rest of the school year and I loved every single lunch break. We talked about classes, sports and other stuff. We had a lot of fun. I tried to become friends with a lot of people. It was easy to talk to people, and they always had questions about my home country and life back in Denmark. It was so weird when I had to leave all my friends, I hated it, but I have been back three times since, because I miss them all so much.