Our Students Left Us!

This week on the blog, we talk about the rock and hard place many foreign exchange students were in at the beginning of 2020.

Imagine this. Your exchange year is going great. Then: BAM! Pandemic. You are given a fraction of a second to decide to go back home, or stay abroad for who knows how long. COVID-19 isn’t getting any better in your host country. Your family desperately wants you back home, but if you go home, you might forfeit your chance to go to your top choice college you just found out you’ve been accepted to.

Will traveling back home change your graduation date? Is college now out of reach? What if your host family is beginning to feel like family? If you choose to go home, will you be safe from the virus if you take the long 2 day journey by plane to get home?

Our foreign exchange students were two of the thousands who experienced so many questions. For some, the answer was easy. For some the answer was hard. Others would never get the option. For ours, the answer had to come as a split second decision because it was one of the last flights to get back home. They chose home and I don’t blame them. I would choose it, too. Watch their adventurous Senior year begin. And end.