Without Abby, Chloe will have one less reason to say nice things about her school (the other American exchange students go to different schools). She said that even other Spanish kids express sympathy when they find out what school she goes to. It's very rigorous, which is usually a good thing, but not so much when you're there mostly for the culture and there are no extra-curricular activities to soften the blow of the grueling workload in a foreign language, one you didn't know seven months ago. She's learning a lot and anything learned is never wasted, but she won't get a strictly academic benefit from her hard work this year.
She'll get high school credit for this year (many exchange students are not so lucky), but she will be, effectively, a year behind in most subjects. She can't take physics next year because she has to take chemistry first, which she would have taken this year. Same with calculus, because she's missing the prerequisite math class she'd be taking now. Likewise, she has one less year of American education going into the SAT.
What she's gaining this year far outweighs what she's missing at home, but it makes school there that much more of a chore (because she has to pass for credit, and she doesn't want to make her teachers angry) and will make school here next year a lot harder than it would be had she stayed home. In the grand scheme of things, a small price to pay for the opportunity she's had this year, but that doesn't make it any more fun in the moment.
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