One Decision Can Alter So Much
Marhia McAndrew

  I remember a few weeks before the day I was to leave.  That was when a good dose of fear settled in me, and I decided there was no chance I was going anywhere.  I cried throughout most every day, I told my parents there was no chance that they really loved me, and I begged anyone I thought had any impact on anything to not make me go.  What had ever possessed me to want to be an exchange student?  I can’t leave this small town in which I live.  I’d miss everything!
  When I first learned I had made the cut to be a Rotary Exchange student, I was thrilled to the core.  Once again, I had proven to myself that I had accomplished something that not everyone could.  Just like I had made it into Scranton Preparatory School or St. Cyril’s Academy.  Of course, I never went to either of these places.  I was too scared to leave Forest City, Pennsylvania.
  As days passed, I never forgot about going away.  When I learned I was to go to the Philippines, I did some research on the country.  It seemed like a very interesting and beautiful place.  Once I realized that it was nearly time to pack and get on that plane, my knees commenced to quite a loud knocking.  There was no way I could go.
  Naturally my panic was a bit too late.  Nonrefundable plane tickets were already in my hands, host families were expecting me, and a good Catholic school was awaiting me on the other side of the world.  I was informed that I could come home only if I was still unhappy after a month of living overseas.   This suggestion was insane!  In my mind there was nothing more terrible than living there an entire month.  This merely hatched a new idea into my head: My parents hated me.  There was no ignoring it.
  I unwillingly got onto a plane at the airport in Philadelphia.  I realized that this was the end.  I wasn’t afraid of flying, as I had flown many times before this.  I knew that the Philippines was going to kill me.  I spent nearly the entire 23-hour flight thinking about all the ways I was going to die overseas.  Oh, yes, they would all be sorry then.
  Honestly, I despised the Philippines the moment I reached Iloilo.  When I finally arrived in Iloilo City, I met my host parents.  They were a nice couple with 6 daughters of their own.  I was the only daughter of my hometown’s most popular doctor.  It may be a slight understatement to say I was used to a pampered lifestyle.  Seven school age girls in one house is a scary thought alone.  The actual life one lives in a house with such a group is hectic.  Furthermore, we had no hot water.  Cold showers in the morning might not sound so terrible when you imagine a country fairly close to the equator.  Yet it does get chilly at night, so mornings were not fun for me.  Worst, there were cockroaches.  These creatures terrified me.  Coming from an upper-middle class family in a nice suburb of Pennsylvania, you generally don’t know what a cockroach even looks like.  Nor did I feel the need to know.   Naturally I called my mother crying daily.  I imagined this place to generally be very comparable to what I pictured hell to be in my mind.  My mother stuck with her month plan.  The woman informed me that since I hadn’t even started school yet, I had no right to fully criticize it so terribly. 
  After that month had passed I had just started school.  I was still very uncomfortable with the people.  After all, I was a white girl in a country with people characterized by dark skin, hair, and eyes.  It was tough being a white, grey-eyed redhead.  There were still those cockroaches and the tiny house filled with cranky teenagers. 
  My mother never removed the option of coming home.  I chose to stay.  After a few more weeks, I had a group of wonderful friends, another girl going through my experiences as an exchange student, and a development of ease with the people and creatures of my new country.  Halfway through my year abroad, in place of the new girl in a foreign planet was a young lady, speaking the language of a country she now considered home as much as her native land.
  After this experience, I came home a mature, open-minded woman where I had left a childish, scared little girl.  Naturally, I hadn’t missed much, and nothing had changed in little Forest City, Pennsylvania. Except for me.
  I am proud of myself for my choice to travel.  If I had just stayed home, I may still have been a scared little girl afraid to leave home alone.  Now I feel that I am a more educated and reflective person.  I owe it all to the decision to stay and encounter a whole new world.