Today we had our first face to face interview with a previous exchange student! Her name is Constancia Johansson, she was born in 1987 and currently study in a university in Stockholm. But she was born and raised in Gothenburg and her family still lives here so she called us to let us know that she was coming to town. We decided to meet at Espresso House for the interview.

First she gave us a little background information of where she had been and with which organization; she had spent the year 2005 / 2006 in Salvador which is a city in Brazil and she travelled with YFU. She told us that she really liked the family she stayed with and that they made her feel really welcome and as a part of the family. She thought that the school she was attending was a little bit boring in the beginning when she didn’t understand anything (she went there with no Portuguese knowledge what so ever), but the positive thing was that she wasn’t the only exchange student in the school. There were 5 other students from different parts of the world so they supported and helped each other.

She also said that she really learned and developed a lot during her year abroad. First of all she learned to talk Portuguese fluently, but she also developed as a person and got more mature. She challenged several cultural dilemmas, but by doing that she learned that “it’s not right, it’s not wrong, it’s different”.So as a summary of the year she said it was wonderful and she would definitely do it again if she could!

Now it really feels like we are starting to get somewhere! But we feel like the easiest thing to do is to gather all the information we need in order to make the handbook, and then start putting it together. So we are going to continue with the interviewing of previous students before we move on to the next part; hearing thoughts and worries from students that have not yet begun their exchange year.