Before you leave on an exchange, you might want to think about your departure details, an event that seems light-years away when you haven't even left home yet.
What if your school is over for the summer but, for whatever reason, you can't get a seat home until a couple of months later? Will you have a place to stay? Will the sponsoring organization be responsible for you? Will they make you formally absolve them of that responsibility? And what if you won't? They can't send you home because there are no seats home, remember? Will you be living in a culture where houseguests are too foreign a concept to get past, or the homes so small that there won't be room for you once their children return from their exchanges? Will your home organization take up your cause if the host organization refuses to? Or will you be stuck making your own living arrangements and depending upon the kindness of acquaintances? Don't forget; you cannot legally work.
Chloe's late departure date is okay only because we'll be traveling and she's coming home with me. If not for that, she would have been there nearly a month after school got out, and who knows if she would have had a place to stay - officially - in the meantime. If she didn't, it would not be the first time an exchange student was left in that position.
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