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Going to America |
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Well, now... i decided to become an exchange student. I don't even know why.
Now, that I'm older and hopefully wiser I can say that this was probably the
best decision I've ever made. It was not quite easy, beginnig with the
questionaire that was asking about my motives. There were none, I don't even
remember what i wrote in there.
Well, I don't want to bore you with the long and nervous time I spend in
Germany waiting for this year to begin. The magic date was the 10th of
August. All my thoughts were fixed on this date. It drew closer and closer,
and with it, the uncertainty where I would spent this year. As it was almost
unbearable, YFU sent me an information letter about the region they were
going to place me in. It was already June and because three other students
from my school had received their host families, a friend of mine and me had
developed some theories about the placement process. The three students were
going to live in Minnesota and Michigan, which lead us to the North- South
and also the Middle- Outside (coast) theory. As it will show later, they
worked out in my case, but not in the others.
Well, back to the information letter. It told me, that YFU is looking for my
hostfamily in area 80. This information was very nice to get, but also dove
almost insane, because they forgot to include the description of area 80. so
I still had no clue. Some phonecalls later I was told that the area
incluldes the states Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada. After the first
surprise and happiness, it struck me, that it is unbearable hot in those
states, they have all kinds of snakes, and AZ and NV are not very populated
and the idea to spend a whole year on an island didn't really fancy me either.
Well, I think it is almost unnecessary to say, that the location doesn't
count, and it just depends on yourself and what you can get out of it. You
can be happy everywhere when you just put some effort in it.
I didn't even had time time to be wondering in which of those states I was
going to live, because the next day my hostfamilies adress arrived. It is
hard to describe the feeling you have, when you open that letter. It
consists of nosiness, nervous excitement and alsosomething like indefinety,
that brings to mind that this is real and happening. The letter itself just
says that YFU is happy to present you your hostfamily and that you should try
to contact them as soon as possible. Then your hostfamiles adress is listed
with names and ages of brothers and sisters and the occupation of the
hostparents.
So, now I knew that I was going to live with a farmers family and three
hostsisters in Tulare, California. Of course was I eager to find out where
Tulare would be located, but it wasn't in the index of our world atlas. Very
fortunate was that we had a California road map at home. It showed me, that
Tulare is in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley and in about equal distance
to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Now I wanted to write a letter to them. But it was very hard, they allready
had the letter I had to write to YFU and the questionaire about me, and I
knew nothing of them. A week later I got an e-mail from Tracy, my 17 year
old host sister. I was so excited about that, but it also gave me another
worry, even though I have a sister in Germany, she is so much older, that I
can not rememver her living with "us". So I was afraid of resulting
problems, but now I can say it worked out really well.
We wrote mails on a daily basis, and it was very interesting. My parents
urged me to a phone call. I don't know if I've ever been that nervous to
pick up the phone. To my surprise it was easy to talk to them.
Still the date drew closer and it still didn't occur to me, how long a year
would be.
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