Dear Exchange Sister,

I remember the first time I saw you. It was beyond exciting to welcome you to the States, and I knew very little of what to expect from the experience to come. My aunt had hosted a foreign exchange student a few years prior, and it was an amazing experience for her, so I was hopeful that you would bring about the same for us. However, I couldn’t have begun to fathom what an impact you would have in my life.

Sharing a room with you, even though sometimes you drove me crazy, was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had. You taught me how to live with someone else, preparing me for the life that lay ahead at college, and you taught me how to laugh at myself. After all, you were really good at it.

Spending so much time with you, I learned to be less of an introvert. I was forced outside of my comfort zone for the first time in my life, and I survived. It’s made me less afraid to put myself out there, and it’s helped me ever since.

Because of you, my family and my heart grew. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was slowly gaining a second younger sibling. You showed me that family doesn’t always have to be blood, and that thought has become ingrained inside of me. You are my sister, my foreign sister until the rivers run dry.

But the final lesson that you taught me had to have been the hardest to grasp. The day we drove you to the airport, your ample luggage in tow, it set in that this way the last time we would see you for an extended period of time. We had no specific plans to reconvene, and this was goodbye. It was the first time in my life that I wished a year had been longer, that I could just have a few days more with my little sister. We hugged, we cried, and we watched you walk away. A part of my heart broke, knowing your bed would be empty that night, and the night after, and the night after that. You taught me how to say goodbye.

A month ago, we saw you again. It was the first time in two years that we saw you again, and it was as though we picked up right where we left off. You were still the same, only older, and it made me realize how much you had truly changed my life.

No matter how many miles away, you will always be my sister, and I’ll love you as such for the rest of my days. Thank you for coming into my life. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Until next time,

Your American big sister.