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Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Im very pleased to share my experience with yall! It was the year 2015 - when I, aged 15, discovered my will to travel the world on my own! First, I would love to tell you a bit about me and my background. My name is Oliver and I am a 19 year old teenager, who is graduating this summer from a Highschool in Germany. As a kid, even though we never had a lot of money, my mother always did her very best to show me all the endless beauty of Europe in taking me to almost every country in day trips with our car or on trains and busses. Since I grew up in a German - Russian household my whole life has always been pretty multicultural! My grandmother has a little hotel in Sochi at the black sea in Russia where I always spend my whole summer working and communicating with international tourists. In 2015, after someone in my Highschool returned back from an exchange, I literally got so fascinated from all their stories and experiences which made me want to do that all by myself aswell. Of course, it was a long and hard time convincing my family to let me apply for such an programm but I did not let anybody take my chance to find me and seek for unforgettable adventures. So I went on and applied- with success! A huge Mexican family from the Houston Area in Texas decided to host me while I was attending the public Highschool there. In no time I made a lot of friends, saw a lot and made some rad memories with my friends. Even though everything was perfect at that time, a few days before Christmas my hostfamily decided that they were not able to host me anymore! WOW! what a statement! and what a huge shock for me! I had so many thoughts and anxiety about where I am going to live now because the exchangeprogramm would continue no matter what and I still had the dream to discover all of the US. This was a hard lesson for me, as I was just 16 years old and had to find a new home right before all the holidays for another six months! But the most relevant fact I learned that time is that you, even if you dont speak or understand a foreign language and you basically dont know anybody you always have to connect and communicate with the local people there, even if it is just your Uber. Communication will always be the key to a happy life wherever you are! As I was alone for a few days, staying at a schoolmates house I decided to try something new where I could find a lot of people that are able to help me. So i thought going to a church service will give me the opportunity to get to know a lot of people! Immeadiately the youth pastor caught me, a new visitor and just offered me to talk about anything, which I was pretty grateful for and what pretty much changed my view on communication forever. After I got home the pastor called me right away and told me he has found a very nice family that would love to host me for as long as I wanted to. It turned out, that the next six months were the best of all my life, so far of course. I had an hostbrother in the same age and we did so much fun stuff together that I didnt even realise how fast the time went by. At the end of the exchange I had to return back home, but wait, how can I go home if I am already there? I was really confused and didnt really know where my home was anymore! The next 2 months my hostbro, also my best friend and I travelled all around Europe just by ourselves and I learned that my only home will never be in Germany, Russia or the USA - it will be wherever I and my suitcase go and find new friends. I realised I will be a world citizen forever!