“You build a life for 16 years and leave it for 10 months. You build a life for 10 years and leave it forever. Which one is harder?” My name is Tuna Safak and I am an exchange student from Germany at State High for the 2017-18 school year. Going to America was a childhood dream for me. America seemed so close and so far at the same time. I saw all those series where the American way of life and high school was illustrated, which made me feel like I was there by being so close through the screen and the passion I watched it with. But then, looking at the map, you obviously realize that it is far away, on the other side of the world and unreachable. America: a melting pot of 320 million people from different ethnicities and a country tied to an incredible amount of superlatives. New York, opportunity, the American dream, football games, hamburgers, Thanksgiving, open mindness, school spirit:  these are the first words that come into my mind, when I hear America – but is that reality? We do live in a world full of bias. The knowledge we have is based on what we perceive from the media. My mission here is to experience the REAL culture and way of life as oppose to being a tourist. Let the adventure begin