Studying in the United States has been my biggest dream since my childhood
Reka’s FLEX experience in Arizona
Written by Reka Zanto - My name is Reka Zanto and I’m from Hungary. I live in a tiny town, called Paks at the southwest of the country, right next to Danube River. I spent almost 8 amazing months in Arizona and unfortunately my time has been cut shorter because of the pandemic. My host town was a lovely town, Goodyear (I know, it’s a pertinent name) which was about 25 minutes from Phoenix, the state capital. I was very happy when it turned out that I was going to be placed in Arizona because my goal for my exchange year was to try new things. It already started with my host state because the climate, the nature, the landscape or even the heat is completely different than in Hungary. It’s an enormous desert itself. However, I loved it. I loved hiking in the middle of nowhere, I loved the super tall cacti, I loved the beautiful sunsets and I loved that I could wear shorts even in wintertime. I love hot weather so it was a perfect match for me, even if we couldn’t go outside in summer because of the heat. Goodyear was amazing, I lived in a very nice and safe neighborhood right next to some beautiful lakes and mountains.
This year was the first for the FLEX program in Hungary, so when I first got to know it exists, I thought it’ like a dream. Studying in the United States has been my biggest dream since my childhood, so I applied because I didn’t have anything to loose. And finally my dream came true. Before I arrived there, I was afraid of how to make friends and how to live my life without my family. Fortunately, after a while I got used to everything, I didn’t have problems with the language anymore, made some amazing friends and learnt how to manage my life independently and a lot of things, especially about life and myself. My biggest expectation of American people was to be open minded about new people or cultures and to accept the difference. And they did. Because of that, the strangest thing that I’ve experienced there, in a good way, that they were incredible helpful with me and treated me as they have known me for at least 10 years.
I had a really good relationship with my host family as well, I got really lucky with them. We travelled a lot all around the country and had a great time together. They will always have a special place in my heart. I loved to go to school in the US. I loved all of my classes and was excited to study and do my homework. I was on the cheer team and was a member of the tennis team as well where I met amazing people. I was in Earth and Interact Club at school, so I did a lot of volunteer work and community service. I’m not joking when I say that I had always something to do after school or on weekends as well. I was a part of several useful things with Interact Club. We cooked meals for poor families, cleaned up our neighborhood, helped orphan kids with learning, read books to sick children and I would be very happy to have these activities to introduce to my community’s life in Hungary as well. A few of my proudest achievements that I got selected for WYLET in Washington D.C., got a special award out of all the students in my school for my hard work and improvement in my English class and represent my country at RYLA Camp. My favorite memory from the States that I had the opportunity go to Hawaii with other exchange students from 20 different countries and spend an unforgettable week there. One of the best things of being and exchange student is to meet other exchange students. It would be very hard to pick one thing I miss the most from the US, I really miss my friends, but super excited for them to visit me here and show them my home country around.
For all the future FLEX applicants who think about applying for this amazing scholarship my advice is to try. Try because you don’t have anything to loose. Try because this could be the biggest opportunity of your life. Try because for me this was the best decision of my life. Give yourself, but adapt for the circumstances. Be open minded and try as many new things as you can to get to know a completely different culture. This program showed me what I want to do in the future. I couldn’t be more thankful for FLEX for giving me the best year of my life.
