I know it’s dumb to start an essay or paper with a question but I can’t help but ask, have you ever had a moment in your life where everything boiled down to one decision? Now that’s kind of confusing. Let me expand for understanding. Imagine yourself at a crossroad one path leads to a COMPLETELY different path than the other. You know that in the end of your journey you want to end up at Candy Mountain and both paths will lead you there but the scenery, people, and experience will be different. That’s where I’ve been the past few months I’ve been at the cross roads. Actually it’s more like lived at the cross roads, waiting for someone else to tell me what road I’m to travel down. Thank goodness the wait is over!
My country that I will be spending the 2015-2016 school year in is, pause for effect, PERU! So existed! Both my parents and my past exchange student cousin attended a weekend long conference with me where outbounds (students that are going to be going OUT on their exchange this year) learned where they are going and talked through rules and regulations. Basically anything boring that would appear on paper. We also talked with rebounds (people that have gone on their exchange and are back now) and inbounds (exchange students that are in America for their exchange) about their year away and got a lot of good advice from them.
The way that the coordinators announced what country we were assigned was very creative. First they passed out rotary youth exchange t-shirts to students and parents then they made all the outbound put them on. Now, me being Carmen I didn’t suspect anything odd about someone demanding me to put on a t-shirt over my clothes so I did it happily. Then they had all the outbounds line up facing our parents and other rotary members while the inbounds and rebounds taped “something” to our backs. Then the inbounds went and sat down and mike (outbound coordinator) told us that we had the flags of the countries we were assigned taped to our backs. Then we turned around for parents to see they all clapped then we sat down, still not knowing what country we had been assigned, I might add! After we were seated Mike said we could tell each other so I tolled Bianca that she had Brazil and Willow told me that I had Peru! I screamed. And may have cried. Only the people that were there will ever know.
My country that I will be spending the 2015-2016 school year in is, pause for effect, PERU! So existed! Both my parents and my past exchange student cousin attended a weekend long conference with me where outbounds (students that are going to be going OUT on their exchange this year) learned where they are going and talked through rules and regulations. Basically anything boring that would appear on paper. We also talked with rebounds (people that have gone on their exchange and are back now) and inbounds (exchange students that are in America for their exchange) about their year away and got a lot of good advice from them.
The way that the coordinators announced what country we were assigned was very creative. First they passed out rotary youth exchange t-shirts to students and parents then they made all the outbound put them on. Now, me being Carmen I didn’t suspect anything odd about someone demanding me to put on a t-shirt over my clothes so I did it happily. Then they had all the outbounds line up facing our parents and other rotary members while the inbounds and rebounds taped “something” to our backs. Then the inbounds went and sat down and mike (outbound coordinator) told us that we had the flags of the countries we were assigned taped to our backs. Then we turned around for parents to see they all clapped then we sat down, still not knowing what country we had been assigned, I might add! After we were seated Mike said we could tell each other so I tolled Bianca that she had Brazil and Willow told me that I had Peru! I screamed. And may have cried. Only the people that were there will ever know.