Helena from Portugal is starting her sixth year at secondary school in Deinze (East Flanders) today. The 16-year-old exchange student is staying with a host family in Kruisem (East Flanders), where, temporarily, she is taking the place of Sienna, the family’s 15-year-old daughter, who is leaving for Greece at the end of this week for her own exchange programme.
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16-year-old Helena from Portugal starts Flemish exchange adventure
Helena will attend school in Belgium for one term and then complete the rest of her final year of secondary school in Portugal.
She’s looking forward to her first day at school in Belgium, but she’s also finding it quite nerve-wracking. “I’m worried I won’t understand everything when people speak Dutch. That’s probably what I’m most nervous about,” she says. She’s already popped into her new school to pick up her textbooks. “It’s a really big school, completely different from what I’m used to. That’s nice.”
Helena deliberately chose to do an exchange programme in Belgium through AFS Low Lands. “Belgium isn’t too far from Portugal, so I can easily come back later,” she explains. “I’m also thinking about perhaps continuing my studies here later on. If I learn Dutch now, I’ll be able to keep using the language later on.”
She already has a clear goal in mind for when she looks back on her time in Belgium in a few months’ time. “I hope to have made new friends and to be able to speak Dutch,” she says. “And I hope that by then I’ll be able to say that I’ll miss this place later on, because I’ve had such a lovely time here.”