By Joyce Tagne (YES 2019-20, Cameroon, hosted by AFS-USA in Cleveland, OH)

Through these tough times, my host family and I are doing the best we can to cope with the pandemic. We wake up every morning without the stress of getting ready for school, my host mom always makes us a delicious breakfast with pancakes, bacon, and eggs. Pancakes are my favorite, by the way! She also made a schedule for schoolwork so we spend half of the day on our computers and once school is over, we can now have some fun. Last week my dad bought some new family games and yesterday, for example, we played family feud which is one of my host family's favorite T.V. show. As you may have understood by now, we love watching T.V. especially now that we have a lot of time!

Last week, we celebrated Easter at home and that was a new opportunity for me to discover American culture. My sister and I helped my host mom cook some mac and cheese, ham, and sweet potato pie and my host dad helped clean up after the dinner. My favorite part of the day was coloring Easter eggs which was new for me and was so much fun. We ended the day with a movie night watching JESUS which is a great play and I recommend it to everybody. My host sister and I did a 500 piece puzzle which was hard in the beginning but at the end, we were proud of ourselves. We also did a family TikTok, which was not easy because we had to learn the steps but we finally did it. 

We often walk through our neighborhood just to take some fresh air and also exercise at the same time. It is springtime and it's beautiful out there to just take a walk and enjoy nature. I thought it was a great idea to learn some new cooking skills so I taught everybody how to cook a tasteful and easy meal from my home country and everybody appreciated it. We are also looking forward to doing a scavenger hunt at home now that is about to be really interesting, I can't wait. 

Home is the refuge we have and always will have and family is the strength we need to go through this tough moment. This is a call to all exchange students and host families as well as everybody else around the world: now that we are all quarantined, let’s use this time to get closer to our children, parents, and siblings at home. I know it is hard because we probably spend half of our time thinking of all the things we could do outside if none of this was happening, looking back at all those cancelled trips, and those loved ones we had to say goodbye too early. I get all of that but I know we can do better on our days, have fun, and get closer to each other at home because there is a light at the end of the tunnel.