Perspective | Opening your life to someone new: Reflections on foreign exchange from a Guilford High School senior
In August of 2025, I welcomed a German exchange student into my life. A month later, I wanted him gone. However, despite my initial frustrations with the program and the person, foreign exchange taught me how to cohabitate and forced me to reconcile a relationship I believed was over. Ultimately, the program gave me a brother.
At the end of my sophomore year, I learned about the opportunity to host a foreign exchange student. A flyer was distributed around Guilford County Schools to advertise a 16-year-old German boy who needed a home for the upcoming year. The flyer showed a picture of Frederik (Freddy, as I would come to know him) on a podium at a swim meet.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but out of everyone in my family, I was the most eager to host Freddy. After a year without my older brother living at home, I thought having another person around would make things less lonely.
When Freddy arrived in Greensboro, my mother picked him up at the Piedmont Triad International Airport and drove him to Emerald Isle to spend a week at the beach with my family.
During that week, I wanted to know everything about him: what type of music he liked, what restaurant he was most excited to try, and everything in between. We became fast friends and stayed up late talking every night, trying to catch up on the last 16 years of each other’s lives.
He found humor in parts of the American experience that surprised me, and he was unfamiliar with the landscape. But because we were the same age, our differences didn’t matter. As I watched Freddy’s face light up as he tried Cookout and Cheerwine for the first time I realized how little is required to be friends.
But our relationship shifted once summer ended.
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The exchange program forced Freddy to take a full six-period schedule at Northern Guilford High School. Although we shared no classes at school, I woke Freddy up every morning for swim practice and drove him everywhere. Year-round swimming is a grueling commitment that is life-changing at best, crippling at worst. Spending that much time with anyone turns you into family, foes, or sometimes both.
I began to resent Freddy because he felt like an overly charismatic younger brother. We walked through the stands at the first football game, and I immediately gravitated towards the friends I’d made over the past two years. In contrast, people gravitated towards Freddy. After one month, I was jealous and tired of Freddy.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was silly. I could not stand it when Freddy swam in my lane. I didn’t want to confront Freddy, so I asked my coaches to assign him a different lane, but whenever he got the chance, Freddy moved back.
I asked him “Why don’t go back to your lane?” Unconcerned he replied “Because I don’t want to.” Once we got home, I couldn’t hold back the tears.
I remember thinking, “I hate him, but everyone else loves him, so they’ll hate me if I make him leave.” I was sick of Freddy “ruining” my training, my school, and my life while I felt responsible for him.
But my parents came to my rescue by doing what they do best: calming me down and showing me that I didn’t want all the attention Freddy received — the start of my junior year had been stressful, and I was focusing solely on the way Freddy was making my life difficult.
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The aftermath of this outburst was awkward and slow to settle. The next time I drove him to practice, I told him I was sorry and that no matter what I’d said, I didn’t hate him. He shrugged it off and said he didn’t care.
The drives were quiet at first; we just played music. Despite his indifferent facade, I realized Freddy truly cared about me and wanted us to get along. Slowly but surely, things got better.
Ultimately, our differences allowed us to build a powerful friendship because we complemented one another: I am reserved, and he is outgoing; I am driven, and he is carefree. When it comes down to it, we are fiercely loyal to one another.
Driving Freddy to the airport in June of 2026 was bittersweet. I no longer had to wake Freddy up for practice every morning, but I was also saying goodbye to my brother. Foreign exchange forced me to open my life to someone uncomfortable and unfamiliar. It challenged my perspective on who we choose as friends, and it taught me that family can come from anywhere.
To anyone considering hosting a foreign exchange student, a word of advice: Do it.
By giving someone else a unique opportunity to experience a part of the world foreign to them, the uniqueness of your own world will become self-evident. It will not be easy, but you will walk away with more confidence in your ability to get along with others and maybe even someone to visit in a place foreign to you.