Dear exchange diary,

today a bit of an experiment. A little more than two years ago, I wrote two letters during the AFS Austria APFP (= future and current exchange students) camp, which was part of my exchange prep: a ‘letter to my self’ and a ‘letter for dark days’. Originally those letters were intended to be opened during my exchange but since I might have forgotten to do so and just encountered them a little while ago, I had this grandiose idea… opening them now, whoooo! What I plan to abuse this post as is the toilet for the mind dump which opening these two letters will result in. I am simply going to open these two bad boys, then brainstorm and write down a couple of thoughts. Let’s see what comes out of this!

First the ‘letter to my self’. What a cute one. 15yo me decided to start off with reminding me of all I wanted to achieve during my exchange year. He came up with a bunch of points which I should’ve had conquered by the halftime of my exchange year (that’s when I supposedly should have opened these two letters). “Laying the first brick for my later life”, that’s what he told me this life in a year should be all about: “Learning Portuguese next to creating strong & lasting ties!” I guess I had actually lived up to my expectations for my exchange and wouldn’t have had to resort to the last phrase of my ‘letter to my self’: “If you haven’t yet been able to tick off this little checklist: Pull your self together, you can do it!” (The ‘you’ was even underlined, what a dork little Julian was.)

Second comes the ‘letter for dark days’. Wow, that one starts off pretty rough with my 15yo self telling me to “shut the fuck up”. In the line below starts the good stuff though: “Take a step back and remember your roots, your strengths, your values and convictions.” Truly, there were six or seven days when it would’ve been appropriate to open that letter and get these sentences thrown into my face. I survived without them though… something I can’t call anything other than a proper success.

Thank you for bearing with me during this tiny voyage through my messed up mind. Have a life-changing day!

Julian

20/04/18