Have you ever been an exchange student before? No? Well, you’ve missed a lot! Being an exchange student was and still is the most beautiful aspect of my life. I’m lucky enough to experience my second year of exchange in the United States of America.
My name is Nino Kemoklidze and I’m an international student from Georgia. No, not Atlanta, Georgia but Tbilisi, Georgia which is a small country in the Caucasus on the east coast of the Black Sea. Still not sure where it is?! It’s somewhere between Europe and Asia.
I first won a scholarship from the U.S. State Department in 1999-2000 and became a FREEDOM Support Act Future Leaders Exchange program finalist. I thought I had conquered the world: I was one of 50 Georgian High School students chosen out of 1000 applicants and it was my childhood dream to study in the States. I had never crossed the border of my country before so when I found myself in the airplane, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, heading to Arizona, that was when I first thought to myself: “Oh, my God!!!” and that was all I could think. The very first culture shock though was still ahead: I found out that I was accidentally going to Arkansas instead of Arizona. The people in our office back in Georgia were so excited that they mixed up the abbreviations of these two states: AR(Arkansas) and AZ(Arizona)
Arkansas!!! I had never even heard of that state before. Well, I hope the Arkansans will forgive me but…it was just too different from what I expected America would be. I had never liked people with some weird stereotypes about Georgia and Georgians, thinking that we were some uncivilized Asians living in the mountains and knew nothing but to make good wine. This time I couldn’t help getting wrapped up with stereotypes myself. I thought I was a city girl (as Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia where I live, has a population of 1,300,000 people) and expected that I would be placed in a city with millions and millions of people. I couldn’t wait to see the skyscrapers – those huge wonders of the 20th century. So imagine how amazed I was when I found myself in a tiny town of only 346 people!
Before I came here I thought Georgia was the most hospitable nation in the world, and the Georgian Orthodox church was the only way of salvation, but after living in a different part of the world, I understand that people are people everywhere. There are no good and bad nations, there are no right and wrong religions. I know now that Americans can be just as hospitable as Georgians and that Baptists can be just as kind as Orthodoxies.
Now, as more than three years have passed, I’m ready to launch into a different phase of my life. I’m one of 17 Georgian finalists of the FREEDOM Support Act Undergraduate program (selected out of 409 applicants!), and the very first thing I did when I found out about the city I had been placed in, was to make sure I was going to Portland, Maine and not to Portland, Oregon. And here I am, at USM, all the way up in the north from the very south. What a change! Portland, Maine is definitely different from Cove, Arkansas and the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, where I live, but two things they have in common: both are beautiful and very hospitable.
Nino Kemklidze can be contacted at [email protected]