Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The Experience Till Now

        Now who would have thought that I would be going to ROMANIA! Exciting isn't it? I'm going through Rotary Youth Exchange and leave in about 11 weeks. Now some people fail to understand is that 11 weeks is long enough to the point where you can't worry about it, but close enough that in the back of your mind you're starting to imagine. I still have no exact leave, no district, no town, and no family! Scary isn't it? Now for the experience until now...
        First, the interview. Probably the most worrying thing on the planet. Trying to be perfect every single second. In my district there were 42 candidates at first, and only 27 spots! Though it seemed nerve racking it was actually quite fun. During the interview we had a "world fair." That is where all the inbound exchange students tried to "sell" us on their country, and may I just say Poland has AMAZING CAKE. We all had two interviews, and may I say the questions were...strange. One asked what my favorite superhero was! I said batman! Now after these interviews, we all went our different ways.
         The Letter! Now this was probably the most nerve racking part. There is a certain town in a district that got them two weeks after the interview. The rest of us on the other hand had to wait a month, yeah twice as long. The day that our letter came, we all knew it was so me and my sister followed the mail lady and watched her put it into the mail box. Creepy, we know. That is when I found out I was going to Romania, and my reaction was screaming at the top of my lungs. Sadly, enough though it was during winter break so by the time that we got to school and everybody was asking about it, the excitement had worn off and the impatience settled in.
Japan, Romania, Thailand, Australia, Sweden
         Orientation, now I was excited to see all of the outbounders again! The way to describe orientation was, them giving us information at lightning speed and us writing it down at lightning speed. For this blogs purpose, I'm going to refer to my fellow outbounders by their country, and if there are two...oh well they can deal with it! Italy was sitting right next to me and we would split up stuff so we could just copy the notes later. A lot of writing and not a lot of socializing. I had ten pages worth of notes and blisters on my right hand! We also got inaugurated into rotary, a ceremony in which we get our blazers! All the blazers are way to LARGE!
        Now, school is over and summer is in. In the town I live in getting a job is as hard as getting a pig to sing, and I have nothing to do! I do have a "job" for the month of July but thats in awhile, so I've been studying romanian. It's a very hard language, and there are very few tools to learn it. My brain hurts, so far I've been using three tools: live mocha, translating online articles, and quizlet. If you are interested in learning a language, but have no way I would suggest live mocha. It isn't perfect, but it gives basic lessons! It is free, but only if you do so many reviews on others.
        Thank you for reading, I know I'm not very eloquent but I feel like I should put my thoughts into something while there! Thank you and La Revedere!

La Revedere = Goodbye in romanian

2 comments:

  1. Don't be scared about all those things. It depends a lot if your host lives at the countryside or in a big city, that's true. But 80% of the Romanian youth speaks English and Romanians are very hospital, this is how they are known all over the Europe.
    I tell you all that, because I am a Romanian, also! :D
    In what city of my country will you live?

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  2. it's so weird to see you write all of this and say how i completely understand what u were going through. i also had a blog for the time i was in the US but sadly it;s in romanian :P maybe you will be able to understand what i wrote by the time ur exchange is over. i remember the meeting when we got to meet with all the students who were going through their interviews and stuff! and the "world fair". such great memories. i remember that i convinced mostly everyone to go to Romania but only a few of them had the chance to go. super lucky!!! cant wait to meet u and have u over!

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