Many years ago (back in the previous millennium!), I spent my senior year of high school as an exchange student in a little place called Thomasville, GA, in the US. Beyond meeting some pretty cool people (some of which I’ve kept in touch with over the years) my year as an exchange student was, all taken into consideration, one of the strangest years of my life so far. I guess the fact that I was a hormonal teenager who moved from a 700K country capital city to a 20K Southern US town didn’t help any. The year involved changing host families halfway through my stay as well as a series of culture shocks which can easily fill a whole book. Meanwhile, as a background noise, bombs were being dropped a borderline away from where my family lived. Did I say it was a strange year? But beyond strange, it was also a year of growing.

And by growing, I don’t only mean the maturing-emotionally kind of growth. There was also some serious physical growth; all of it, sadly, on the x scale. The summer I graduated I came back home weighing 10kg/22lbs (every single gram of it pure fat) more than I did when I left Macedonia, even though I was on the the cross country AND the tennis team and ran at least 5miles every day cutting like a knife through the worst humidity I am yet to know. I wonder what would have happened to me if I weren’t that physically active. I probably would have required two airplane seats on the way back home.