Last Saturday was the last orientation I will have before departing for Poland! Which is still four months away, but even so it was the last orientation. It started at the awful time of 9 o’clock in the morning, which is fine unless you live two and a half hours away. But it was fine. I got to talk to a bunch of the other kids going on exchange, including a friend I’ve made from a neighboring school who’s been in singing groups and such with me. Then we broke up into groups and spent about an hour talking about learning our foreign languages, dealing with conflicts, and talking about specifics of our host countries. Unfortunately, no one had exact information or anything about Poland. The country contacts have had little experience with the language, but their help was much appreciated anyway.
I tried asking about attending a Music Academy in Wroclaw, because a student from my district attended it several years ago on his exchange. The Rotarians agreed that it would not be a good idea, however, because they believe it will limit my learning experience. This disappointed me and made me slightly annoyed. But I let it go and I will do more research and see what would be most productive for me to do. I met with the other girl going to Poland from a town very close to mine, and she’s very nice. Though she’ll be across the country from me, I’m sure we will be going through similar experiences. Or maybe totally different ones! You never know.
After this meeting, we heard from a former exchange student to Finland who is currently attending a nearby college. It was the most exciting part of the day. Hearing words of encouragement and true stories from one who has experienced something that I will one day be experiencing is very helpful. Then, we ate lunch and talked to our country contacts again. After this, we broke into groups again and my group focused on communication issues. We were instructed to form a role-play about some specific communication issue. We chose to create a skit about a hypothetical situation where an exchange student refused to practice and learn the language of her host country. We discussed the problems that could arise from the situation and talked about what to do to solve them. This literally took an hour, and when we were finished, we returned to the auditorium to present our skits to the other exchange students. This part of the orientation took over two hours, as we had to present our skits, discuss them as a group, and go into detail about other, similar problems we could encounter. After this we were finished and went home!
So all in all, it was a pretty standard orientation. Next week, I will attend a two night, three day District Conference. It’s where the future outbound and present inbounds get together at a hotel for a weekend and hang out, learn, etc. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been in touch with one of the inbounds from Poland for a couple months now, and I will finally get a chance to talk with him face to face. There is also a talent show that I might take part in, I’m not sure yet.
Oh! And also, I registered with the health insurance company a little while ago, and received their tentative departure date, August 22nd. Which is great, except I’m in a professional opera which ends August 23rd! Yikes! So I’ve been in touch with a bunch of people and am trying to reschedule the date for August 24th. I’m hoping that will work out. But that’s in 4 months (which i know will sneak up on me!) so right now I’m going to concentrate on next weekend.
So until then, I won’t really have any news.
Posted by rotarygirl 