Dear exchange diary,

as I have already left notice of in my last post, I’ll herewith be starting a new series which will revolve around my experiences as a hostbrother and AFS-volunteer. I hope you will stick around with me gaining experience from a now flipped perspective.

So after I had been in Portugal for another two weeks in the second half of August, abusing my to-an-end-coming holidays, the day finally came. I felt privileged to be called hostbrother by a Norwegian exchange student, who had just arrived in Austria and therewith started his own ‘life in a year’! Admittedly, I was quite thrilled by the thought of my grandparents and me enabling an adventurous adolescent an experience such as I had. And it all started off super smoothly, as we picked him up from the railway station on a rainy September day, later on enjoying getting to know first bits of Sami culture. (Note: this hell of an example of an exchange student we got here is actually coming from the furthest north of Norway and is an ambassador of the indigenous Sami people… and yes, that’s as cool as it sounds and gets! Oh, and not to forget to mention: he actually brought a cheese slicer in the form of a reindeer with him. I just feel like I have to worship this godly tool, which was prolly forged by the Nordic gods themselves, as much as I can.)

Next, around one and a half months ago, my first introduction to the volunteer life was given to me at the so called ‘returnee camp’, which is an AFS camp meant to function as a lighthouse for home-coming exchange students and which, in this case, was held in the borders of my hometown Salzburg. Although just a small margin of the original exchange students of our districts came (since the whole spiel wasn’t obligatory as the normal AFS camps any more) it was great fun, and we got to hear some first valuable information on what’s to be expected as — back then future — volunteers.

Eventually, by now (to be precise exactly a week ago) I have been fully introduced into the volunteer life through having attended AFS’s ‘basic training camp’ for volunteers, which found place in Vienna, in the same youth hostel as my first preparation weekend did. It was super inspiring meeting a vast majority of the Austrian exchange students of last year again and experiencing first-hand how they had changed. On top of that great experience, we were taught a lot of useful stuff there, which I most definitely see my volunteer journey benefiting from.

Back to my experiences as a hostbrother; I admittedly can just say good about being one till now. Foremost, I ended up having many time-shredding but highly interesting discussions about anything political, economic or philosophical with the adventurer residing here, which I all found very inspiring and thoroughly appreciate to this day. I must say I might laud my past self for choosing whom I chose. Plus, as far as I can tell, he’s also having quite a decent time here and obviously that’s what’s to be achieved as a hostfamily!

Summa summarum, my experiences as an AFS-volunteer and a hostbrother have been wonderful and nothing short of enlightening so far. I’m looking forward for more, and I hope as are you!

Julian

29/10/17

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