By Safa Baccari, YES Tunisia '13 Alumna

I am Safa Baccari, and before my U.S. experience, I was a plain Jane; I was a typical shy high school student. I had a few activities that I did with my high school's only community service club. I tried my best to be amongst the top three of my class and have the best grades. However, this changed after the ten months I spent in the U.S. You might ask, "why?" or "what you were seems to be good enough; how did you change?" All you have to do is read my story.

Before leaving Tunisia, my home country, I was scared because the U.S. was unknown to me, and I was going to be alone without my family or friends. English was my third language, so I was worried that no one would understand me; but it only took me a week to realize how mistaken I was. The first week, when I first met my local coordinator, Betsy Dietz, her other exchange student from Albania and I cried because we were homesick. She cried with us and tried to comfort us and took us to the movies. When I went to sign up for classes, my guidance counselor, Mr. Douglas Wieg, was so kind to me, and he didn't even know me. Throughout the whole year, he was there by my side: whenever I wanted to switch classes, he was supportive, as he wanted me to try new things; after Christmas he asked me how my break was; when I went to Disney World he told me about when he went with his kids; whenever I had a problem like any other teenager and cried in front of him, I could see him holding his tears. If you would have told me this before I left, I would have laughed and thought it to be a joke. 

Before coming to the U.S., I did not believe that people could love each other unconditionally without being relatives. An NHS (National Honors Society) student was assigned to show me around so I wouldn't get lost at the beginning of the year, but this was not just an assignment for her. Alyssa Antonio cared enough to help me find a lunch group to sit with, to introduce me to people when I was still the shy Safa, to invite me to "cool" events, and she even gave me a wonderful gift from New York City on my birthday, when I was very homesick. My first host family taught me how to fish, taught me all about the civil war before my history class, took me to Disney World, and most importantly shared their home and values with me. 

But I cannot speak about my experience without talking about my French teacher; in fact this is when the real story begins. In December, two days after Christmas, my French teacher, Tracy Ripani, whom I fondly called RepRep frequently, took me to her house in the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania. In Maryland, it had only snowed a couple of times, not enough to keep the grounds covered, and I was from Tunisia where it snows in one city far north from where I live. My teacher thought it would be nice to take me to Pennsylvania to see the snow. During these few days I got to meet her brother Brian and her best friend, Sandy's, family. Sandy's daughters and I played in the snow, and I had the time of my life. To everyone around me the snow was cold and needed to be shoveled out of the driveway, but to me it was this sparkly, white, funky matter that I wanted to make a bracelet with; that was my first thought at the sight of the big mountains of snow.

Later on in the year, I needed to switch families, and my French teacher hosted me. I did not realize how generous Americans are, and how giving this nation is until my teacher hosted me. All that I had given since I had come to the U.S. was community service hours, presentations about my country and a few gifts from Tunisia to my friends and host families; but they gave me their home to live in, their school to study in, their time to listen to me, and their hearts to be in. My teacher's, or shall I say my host mom's, husband knew me only through those couple of days in Pennsylvania, and he did not mind me coming to live with them for four and a half months. I came in to their lives all of a sudden, and made them a family of three. My host father George, whom I fondly called Georgie Boy, and I soon became friends. RepRep, Georgie Boy, and their bird Whooie were the joy of my life. I would have never thought that I would care for or love my host family as much as I did with them. They not only took me to a different place every weekend for free, taught me traditional old American songs and told me every story behind them, and watched with me typical American movies such as "It's a Wonderful Life" and "The Wizards of Oz," even though they'd seen them before; but they taught me how to live life to the fullest. As much as they shared with me, I tried to share with them, but it was hard to make it equal. On my last day in Bel Air, Maryland, I asked my host mom: "How am I ever going to pay you back?," and she replied: "Safa, you don't pay it back; you pay it forward." 

I had seen the movie "Pay it Forward" before, so I was familiar with the concept, which consists of doing a big favor for several other people when someone does a big a favor for you. But right then and there it hit me; I will pay it forward to RepRep, Georgie Boy, the American nation, the YES program, and the world. The U.S. helped me become more mature, independent, outgoing, broad-minded, self-motivated and brave, because I learned that you don't need the world to do you a favor in order to act and change it for the better. Don't wait until you have to pay it forward; you can start the chain by yourself. Favors are everywhere, even in your own existence; you don't need to see them to do something good. It's free to be nice and happy; all you need is the right mentality.