Hello! My name is Matthew, I am 17 years old (18 in just five days!), and I'm from Illinois. I just graduated from high school, and instead of heading straight to college like many of my peers, I will be taking a non-traditional route by spending a "gap year" in China for the 2010-2011 school year as an exchange student with Youth for Understanding (YFU). YFU is a student exchange organization that gives students like me the opportunity to study abroad as high school students in foreign countries. A YFU exchange student moves to a new country for a school year, lives with a local host family, learns the local language, attends high school, and essentially just discovers a new way of living while being immersed in a new culture.
All throughout high school I was driven to go on exchange and was determined to find an opportunity to do it. I wanted to not only learn creatively, but also to push my boundaries and discover more about the world in which I'm living. I decided that I wanted to go to China for far too many reasons to list, but basically because Chinese culture has always strongly appealed to me. After approaching my school about my ambition to study abroad, I was shut down immediately. I tried multiple times, and every time I received the same answer: no. Unfortunately I never got a chance to become an exchange student any time during high school. As a compromise, my family decided to host an exchange student during my senior year, so I could still somehow get the benefit of learning about a different culture. An exchange student from Japan lived with my family for ten months and taught me much about Japanese culture. This enriching experience of hosting was what led me to discover YFU. After doing a little research, I discovered that I still actually could go on exchange, that I could fulfill my dream of being an exchange student after all. I decided to take a gap year (a year in between senior year of high school and freshman year of college), applied to go on a yearlong exchange to China, and was finally accepted as a YFU exchange student in March 2010.
A few months after this, I was ecstatic to hear that I had received the James Bradley Peace Foundation to China scholarship, which will pay the full expenses of my exchange year to China. Every year, Mr. James Bradley sponsors a few American students to go on a high school exchange to China or Japan, and I am fortunate enough to be one these scholars. Mr. Bradley is the author of Flags of Our Fathers, Flyboys, and The Imperial Cruise, and his father is one of the five men pictured in the infamous Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima picture taken by Joe Rosenthal during WWII. When talking about his foundation, Mr. Bradley said, “For future peace, it is important that young Americans understand their brothers and sisters in this big world.” As a youth ambassador to China, I hope to create friendships between the United States and China. Furthermore, I hope to demonstrate that despite significant cultural differences, we share many similarities as human beings that we can not only bond over, but also work with to create cross-cultural understanding and to foster peace.
I am scheduled to depart for China on August 13, 2010, exactly 3 weeks from today! Since my departure date is not too far away, I am starting to wrap up my life here in the US and am getting myself prepared to leave home for a year to live a completely new and different life on the other side of the world. I will make sure to keep this blog updated before I leave and while I am in China to share my exchange adventures and experiences with all of you!
