My name is Carlota, I am an exchange student from Spain. Today I am here to talk about the differences and expectations of my exchange to America.

I came with very high expectations and this exchange is not fully reaching them. It has, however,  been a very cool experience and I am fully enjoying my time here.

I came with the idea that as soon as I entered the school, people were going to be super friendly and they were going to include me everywhere from the first moment. But no, I had to be the one who introduced myself to people to be able to have friends and who asked if I could sit at a table with some girls at lunch to not eat alone. 

Now, after eight months here people have started to recognize me as “the girl from Spain” and will start conversations with me.

I was also told that the classes were going to be super easy and that I was going to have almost no exams or homework. While this is partly true and most of the syllabus is very simple, here there is a lot of homework. Some subjects like history have a lot of new vocabulary that I still don’t understand most of the time.

There are many things that I did not expect, such as having only eight classes in total with only four periods each day. In Spain, I took 12 classes each year and would have eight different periods each day.