The FIUTS Experience for a Recent Graduate
Kailyn is teaching English in France this year - and, in her free time, meeting up with FIUTS friends across the globe!
Guest post by Kailyn Swarthout
Kailyn with Christian and Lukas in Zurich.
My name is Kailyn and I started volunteering with FIUTS in 2012, at the beginning of my junior year. I have been involved in several aspects of the organization since then: a facilitator, lead facilitator, CulturalFest committee member, intern etc. I graduated from UW in June and recently started teaching English at a high school in Marseille, France.
Leaving Seattle and moving to a new country was simultaneously exciting and really difficult. Saying goodbye to my Northwest family and friends, and to the FIUTS community that had been such an integral part of my college life was one of the hardest parts. Luckily, I soon realized that FIUTS is a community that extends far beyond the reaches and time constraints of two years in Seattle.
I arrived in Marseille at the end of September and started my teaching position on October 1st (but really after paperwork and orientation I started on the 7th). After a full week and a half of classes, my school district had a two week vacation. From the beginning, our big group of language assistants had been talking travel plans. I have had the privilege to spend some time traveling around Europe before. I spent a semester in Prague in 2012 and visited many European capitals, wonderful museums, monuments, beautiful buildings and gardens, and ate all sorts of delicious food. All of those experiences were great, and I learned a lot about Europe and about myself.
But the experiences that remain the most vivid in my mind are usually not the beautiful sights I saw, but the times I spent with friends going to softball games, sitting in hammocks by lake cabins during thunderstorms, spending way too long on public transportation after starting off in the wrong direction, and making crepes by the pool with garden fresh raspberries. So this time around I made the decision to try to visit more people than places. I have FIUTS to thank for having the ability to make that choice.
Over my two week break I had a wonderful time wandering around the parks and markets of Berlin with my friend Christian whom I met at FIUTS camp last autumn, caught up with Zuzana and Ben at National Day festivities in Vienna, both of whom were in my campus tour group during Winter 2013 orientation, and then went on a wonderful tour of Zurich and celebrated Halloween Swiss style with Lukas and Dominic who both came to UW for a computer science exchange during successive quarters in 2014. I met Dominic on a trip to Leavenworth in February and was introduced to Lukas during spring orientation. Despite my visit falling right in the middle of a busy semester, everyone was extremely welcoming and gave me great insight into what it’s like to live in their cities.
When I am done with my teaching program in May, I plan to go visit my SUSI friends in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka and then hopefully stop by Japan on my way back to the Pacific Northwest. And the community doesn’t end there. When I finally get back to Seattle I can become a homestay host, and continue to attend CulturalFest, community potlucks and other events. That’s the most amazing thing about FIUTS. It’s an organization that you can be involved in for a lifetime and a community that reaches all the way around the world. Moving to a new country can be really hard, but knowing that you’ll always have FIUTS friends just around the corner makes it much, much easier.