Important note: This article was written by the exchange students that Newport Harbor is privileged to host.

What would you think about going to a foreign country and experience events that don’t exist in your home country? How would you feel before a school event, would you be scared, excited or nervous? These are thoughts that crossed our minds before experiencing something completely foreign. We are two exchange students from Germany and Sweden and we are going to write about our thoughts and feelings about experiencing our first homecoming dance.

Since we don’t have homecoming dances in Germany and Sweden we had no idea what to expect. Our only knowledge was based on American teenage movies and they are not always very reliable. Before the actual dance we both felt nervous, curious, and excited. To be honest, we were kind of stressed out. We didn’t know what to wear or how to do our hair and makeup. Lucky, we had friends that could help with explaining the dresscode. We helped each other get ready; we curled our hair, did our makeup and painted our nails. In the meantime, we were listening to music and just getting ready, which was a lot of fun.

We arrived at homecoming  and our first impression was that it looked extremely fancy and unique. We were both ready and excited to experience our very first homecoming dance. We met our other friends there and all danced to the music that the DJ was playing. There was a variety of good food and desserts, such as chocolate fountain, brownies, and cookies. We also took a lot of fun pictures in the Photo Booth with our friends. The photos are a great way to remember this night. To summarize, we had a great time and this was a really nice American experience. We are grateful that we got to experience something that doesn’t exist in our home countries and we both fell asleep with a huge smile that night.