When Friends become Family
Autor: Paulo Madeira de Souza | Publicado: 2010-10-25T21:09:00-02:00

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&nbsp;Today I want to share something about “When your friends become family” - Let’s talk about friendship. I’m talking about long-term old friends and those ones who made a huge difference in your life, and what happens with those. How important are they to us? Who made differences in our lives?One thing I feel is that when I become more distant from my family members, I find my friends become my family – my family of my own choosing. So I take friends much more seriously than I ever did.In 1999, I traveled to the USA to became the only one exchange student in a 500-students school in the city of Edinburg, Mississippi.Exchange students are of all ages, usually ranging from ages twelve to nineteen. These students usually go through a multiple interviews, background checks, maintain a high grade point average and demonstrate a high&nbsp;level of maturity. After the selection process these students are placed in a host family situation. A host family is chosen for its ability to offer the hosted student support as cultural and personal growth is coped with while being abroad. Most of the time, the host family is also selected since there is a child of the same age in the household.Traveling abroad to stay and study is such a great experience. The first few weeks are thrilling and exhilarating while learning the regions dialect, testing new foods, getting comfortable with the host family and so on. Then, out of the blue, something clicks in the mind that something is missing. Signs of displeasure, frustration, sleepiness and et cetera occur without prior warning. It is like waking up on the wrong side of the bed and just feeling things are wrong with the world for no reason. This is the common case of "culture shock". Culture shock is usually after the hype of living a dream as a foreign exchange student and when everything that has occurred has sunken in. Since culture shock is when a traveler gets comfortable with the surroundings, a short exchange program student may not endure culture shock.But then, I lived in a house where love was shown in such different ways that you can imagine, I guess I had all kinds of family love there with the Posey’s. Older Brother, Older son, friends and I had the love of my host parents. Which I still thank God for those blessings.At school, I had the classmates love. Some people made my day happier just by looking at me and smiling, just letting me participate in all school activities I could. I just felt at home. I made too many friends there and most of them are in Facebook list. JBut one moment I will never forget, was the moment after the last class I had. I just sat on floor and started pretending that I’ve lost something in my backpack. But I was all tears, already missing my friends…who became my family. To all of you who still are a part of my life.&nbsp;
Paulo Souza 
And remember: "The best part of life is when your family becomes your friends, and your friends become your family." Danica Whitfield