ABOUT ANNE

My name is Anne Burker and I'm a twenty-one-year old female living out my life currently in Washington State. Youngest of six children and the only girl, it has given me super-natural powers of survival. Owner of two dogs, four cats, and a fish, I like animals. Especially my kitten Brutus who is following in the steps of Opie and likes to attack without be provoked. My family lovingly calls him "CrackCat!". I just call him 'Brutus the Ball-less' or 'Brutavis'. He's just misunderstood. Proud aunt and nanny of Tyler (who is now over a year old, gulp!), I won't be quiet about him if you get me started on talking about how cute he is. :) I also graduated with my Associates in Interactive Media and Design in December 2005 at the Art Institute of Seattle. Hoping for further torture, I'm going back to earn my Bachelors in the same program at Art Institute of Phoenix in January.

My family first became involved in the whole exchange student experience when my uncle was in high school in the 1950's and did an exchange to France through AFS. Later, when my Mom was in high school they hosted an exchange student from Germany for a year. My brother Mark similarly went to France and in turn hosted an exchange student from France when he was in junior high. So, I had the family influence.

How I personally became involved in becoming an exchange student for a year was sophomore year of high school (fall 2000) I asked my Mom to go to an informational meeting at my high school about exchange. When she came back she said she had heard AFS talk and knew they had a good reputation. I instantly thought of going to Japan since I had loved the country since elementary and recently had started learning the language. So, lots of paper work, interviews, and preparing later, March of 2001, eleven days after I had turned sixteen, I took my luggage and headed off to a foreign land to be an exchange student for a year.

I will say the experience was one of the toughest ones in my life and also one of the hardest, best, challenging, and rewarding ones. I learned what it is like to be an outsider on a culture, making mistakes, not being able to communicate verbally so finding others way to express myself, and just the experience of independance at the age of sixteen thousands of miles away from my parents. Some times I wanted to give up, like when my first host family did not work out or my cat passed away while I was gone (what a reason!); but other times I just didn't want to go home and stay in Japan forever.

It was hard but one of the best decisions of my life and I wanted to share my experiences with others so they might think of going abroad to get this rewardly experience.