“You know you’re an exchange student when…”

1. Before waiting to see if anyone understood what you meant, you start acting it out.

2.  You spend a lot of time smiling, nodding, and pretending you understand what’s
going on.

3. You classify ”doing your homework” as translating half of it. And that alone took three hours.

4. You sometimes use the excuse ”Sorry, I don’t understand” to avoid answering aquestion… even if you do understand.

5. You want to hug the people who attempt to speak your native language to you.

6. You’ve called every person who says ”hi” to you your friend… because you don’t really have any yet.

7. You’ll read anything in your native language just to have something to read… even packaging labels.

8.  Your dreams are bilingual.

9. Sometimes it takes you about 5 minutes to remember a word in your native
language that you were going to use.

10. You begin to enjoy foods that you had previously despised at home.

11. It becomes a habit to introduce yourself by saying: ” I am from (country) and my

name is (name).”