Hi everyone! Its been a while since I've made a blog post. I have been so busy with the end of the year (AP tests, the SAT, summative projects, finals, etc.) and with making plans for the summer. However, CBYX has been at the back of my mind the whole time. As school ends, I've been thinking a lot about this year and everything that's happened. This year has really been a transformative year for me, which I know sounds cliche but it really has. I know I'll never really be totally prepared for exchange but I think if I had tried going on exchange last year, I really wouldn't have been ready. This year I've put myself out there more than ever before and I've made so many new friends that I'm about to leave. Luckily, however, many of these friends are also going abroad, so it's not as painful.
The biggest thing that happened with CBYX recently was the Pre-Departure Orientation, which dealt with all of the issues of getting prepared mentally for exchange. I ended up going to the orientation in the DC area, even though I am actually part of the Baltimore area, because I wasn’t available for Baltimore’s orientation. This meant that all of the people that I know going on exchange from Baltimore weren’t there, but that was totally fine. It was held in the basement of the National 4H Youth Conference Center, which was slightly outside of DC. We all signed in, got name tags, and got all of the materials that we would need for the rest of the day’s activities. I went with my biological dad, Larry, and after we signed in, we walked down to the basement where they had snacks and chairs set up. Our first activity was writing out a couple of words and phrases with our non-dominant hand, and then discussed how the feelings we had while doing this activity related to the feelings we would have on exchange. They split up the children and parents and then split the children group into two more groups. The next activity was a list of expectations we had for our time abroad and then we had to create a drawing that represented all of our expectations. The orientation included everyone that was going on exchange with AFS from the DC region, which meant that people going on year long exchanges were there with people going for summer or two week exchanges. Also, people there were going to all different countries, but most were either going to Germany with CBYX or to Finland with a leadership scholarship. Although it was fun meeting people going to all different places and listening to why the chose to go that country, it was kind of inconvenient because many questions couldn't be answered because the answers were different for everyone in the room. I think even limiting the orientations to everyone with the same length of exchange would have been really helpful, but we still learned a lot about how to deal with exchange in a general sense. Also, I feel like I know what to expect for the gateway orientation, which I think will be a lot more specific and helpful for me personally.
After every activity we would either discuss everything as a big group or speakers from each group would present what their group talked about. There were a variety of activities throughout the day, and sometimes the volunteers would come up and go over things like rules and the history of AFS, which is actually really interesting. Basically, the program started as an emergency ambulance program during the first World War, but after World War I and World War II were over, they arranged an exchange so that the volunteers from the United States could meet the volunteers from France that they had become friends with during their work during the war. Eventually, since there weren’t many wars in the immediate future, they focused their attention on providing exchange program opportunities for people all of the world, because they thought that that would help lead to peace, tolerance, and acceptance of cultural differences.
One of the most memorable activities from that day is when all of the students went into a different room and each person was handed a little slip of paper. Each piece had a certain difficult host family scenario that we then had to discuss how to deal with. Some were pretty simple, like what to do if you don’t want to go to church with your family, but others were harder to think through. My scenario was that I got along really well with my host dad and he liked me, but my host mom didn’t seem to like me at all, and it seemed like she was jealous of all of the time that I was spending with my host dad. We discussed and thought that a good way to work through that was to spend time with the mom alone and finding activities that both the student and the mom enjoyed. It went a lot longer than expected, which made me nervous because I had finals the next and really wanted to get back home so I could study and finish an essay and a lab, but other than that it was very organized. The volunteers were all very sweet and it was interesting because they often had different ideas of how to deal with conflicts with host families based on their own personal exchange experiences. Also, I found it really interesting when the AFS alumni from Germany would take about their culture shocks from their exchange, because I could relate with my experiences from last summer.
Also, I recently reached 100 days until departure to Germany, which was very exciting. I posted about it on Instagram and although 100 days seems like a long time, I've started getting more nervous about leaving. Every day that passes is one day closer to leaving for Germany which is hard for me to imagine because I've stopped thinking about it nonstop. I still feel like its very far away and I'm worried its going to sneak up on me and I won't have done enough preparation. But I'm also really excited. My friend Ellsie and my friend Jo have both found out their host families and are very happy with where they are and have been writing back and forth with their families. Everything that they're doing makes me really really want to know my host family. Ellsie is a train ride away from Zurich (which is my absolute favorite place in the whole world) and Jo is very close to the border to the Netherlands. I'm keeping my hopes low though because I know that its still possible that I won't know my host family until I'm already in Germany.
Also, the last day of school was a few weeks ago, and it was a really emotional for me. I absolutely love the school that I go to and although I was ready to get out, I really did enjoy most of my classes and teachers and I knew I would miss all of my groups of friends that I had in each class. Summer has been awesome though. I've spent a lot of time with my friends, biked a lot, gone to a Beyonce concert, and gone to my cousin's wedding. I'm really excited because later this summer I am going to Washington to do conservation work in Olympic National Park and before that I'm spending some time in Whidbey Island with my neighbor's friends and then going overnight hiking with my cousin and her boyfriend. Then after my crew is over, I'm spending some time in Seattle. Also, in my free time I have been doing lots of German practice. I've been reading in this book "Der Weg zum Lesen" which has a bunch of short stories with some vocabulary translations and practice questions about the story. I've also been doing lots of Duolingo and watching a bunch of foreign films. Netflix is really great because any original tv shows or movies have audio and subtitles in a bunch of different languages including German. But I am very unprepared when it comes to packing. Since I have a uniform, I don't have a lot of other clothes and many of my clothes that I used to wear don't fit anymore, which means I have a lot of shopping to do before Germany. Also, I just joined the Facebook group and am looking up all of the 2016-2017 blogs that I can find to try and get to know the other exchange students.
Well, this is just an update post, but I am getting more and more excited every day, If I could leave tomorrow I would, but I am also glad to have the little time that I have left (73 days!) to prepare myself, do some fun things, and spend time with my friends. Either way, I can't wait! :)
After every activity we would either discuss everything as a big group or speakers from each group would present what their group talked about. There were a variety of activities throughout the day, and sometimes the volunteers would come up and go over things like rules and the history of AFS, which is actually really interesting. Basically, the program started as an emergency ambulance program during the first World War, but after World War I and World War II were over, they arranged an exchange so that the volunteers from the United States could meet the volunteers from France that they had become friends with during their work during the war. Eventually, since there weren’t many wars in the immediate future, they focused their attention on providing exchange program opportunities for people all of the world, because they thought that that would help lead to peace, tolerance, and acceptance of cultural differences.
One of the most memorable activities from that day is when all of the students went into a different room and each person was handed a little slip of paper. Each piece had a certain difficult host family scenario that we then had to discuss how to deal with. Some were pretty simple, like what to do if you don’t want to go to church with your family, but others were harder to think through. My scenario was that I got along really well with my host dad and he liked me, but my host mom didn’t seem to like me at all, and it seemed like she was jealous of all of the time that I was spending with my host dad. We discussed and thought that a good way to work through that was to spend time with the mom alone and finding activities that both the student and the mom enjoyed. It went a lot longer than expected, which made me nervous because I had finals the next and really wanted to get back home so I could study and finish an essay and a lab, but other than that it was very organized. The volunteers were all very sweet and it was interesting because they often had different ideas of how to deal with conflicts with host families based on their own personal exchange experiences. Also, I found it really interesting when the AFS alumni from Germany would take about their culture shocks from their exchange, because I could relate with my experiences from last summer.
Also, I recently reached 100 days until departure to Germany, which was very exciting. I posted about it on Instagram and although 100 days seems like a long time, I've started getting more nervous about leaving. Every day that passes is one day closer to leaving for Germany which is hard for me to imagine because I've stopped thinking about it nonstop. I still feel like its very far away and I'm worried its going to sneak up on me and I won't have done enough preparation. But I'm also really excited. My friend Ellsie and my friend Jo have both found out their host families and are very happy with where they are and have been writing back and forth with their families. Everything that they're doing makes me really really want to know my host family. Ellsie is a train ride away from Zurich (which is my absolute favorite place in the whole world) and Jo is very close to the border to the Netherlands. I'm keeping my hopes low though because I know that its still possible that I won't know my host family until I'm already in Germany.
Also, the last day of school was a few weeks ago, and it was a really emotional for me. I absolutely love the school that I go to and although I was ready to get out, I really did enjoy most of my classes and teachers and I knew I would miss all of my groups of friends that I had in each class. Summer has been awesome though. I've spent a lot of time with my friends, biked a lot, gone to a Beyonce concert, and gone to my cousin's wedding. I'm really excited because later this summer I am going to Washington to do conservation work in Olympic National Park and before that I'm spending some time in Whidbey Island with my neighbor's friends and then going overnight hiking with my cousin and her boyfriend. Then after my crew is over, I'm spending some time in Seattle. Also, in my free time I have been doing lots of German practice. I've been reading in this book "Der Weg zum Lesen" which has a bunch of short stories with some vocabulary translations and practice questions about the story. I've also been doing lots of Duolingo and watching a bunch of foreign films. Netflix is really great because any original tv shows or movies have audio and subtitles in a bunch of different languages including German. But I am very unprepared when it comes to packing. Since I have a uniform, I don't have a lot of other clothes and many of my clothes that I used to wear don't fit anymore, which means I have a lot of shopping to do before Germany. Also, I just joined the Facebook group and am looking up all of the 2016-2017 blogs that I can find to try and get to know the other exchange students.
Well, this is just an update post, but I am getting more and more excited every day, If I could leave tomorrow I would, but I am also glad to have the little time that I have left (73 days!) to prepare myself, do some fun things, and spend time with my friends. Either way, I can't wait! :)