I turned in my foreign exchange forms the last friday of October. The deadline was the 31st, so that's ok. Now all there is to do is wait. After a month of rushing to get the papers done, that will be hard. Plus, I keep worrying about if the people who decide who gets in will like my essays, or if there will be something wrong with my papers that will keep me out, even though I'm pretty sure everything is ok. I think I'm a born worrier though!
On one hand, if I do get accepted, I will miss my family so much. And I'm afraid my four year old brother will forget me after a year! We are not even allowed to make too many phone calls, and family is not supposed to visit us...and that's fine, except Matteo is so young that I worry he will forget me altogether after I spend all that time away. That's really my main concern about the trip. But on the other hand, I am really excited about the whole adventure of it. It will be such a great experience, and so much fun, even though I know it will be hard too. I've wanted to go on foreign exchange since I was a kid, and now I finally am getting a chance to try for it! I know it will be great, no matter what obstacles are waiting for me. So now I just have to try to make it into the program...
I am driving Ms.Kling and Ms. Smith at my school crazy with questions about the program, and questions about when we will hear back and just questions about everything! I am almost surprised they don't run when they see me coming with more questions now. But they are being really good about this.
So anyway, I just have to wait for interviews. They should be sometime in the next month (late November, early December). I hope that they like me there! Everyone wish me luck!
November 30, 1999
I'm going crazy with waiting. We still haven't been called in for interviews, and it's slowly driving us(the other exchange students to be and I) insane. I'm trying to get a job now! I had my birthday last week, and now I'm out pounding the pavement, trying to get a job that will help pay for this trip. I could work at Burger King or something, but I really don't want to. Other than that, nothing is going on.
February 23, 2000
Rereading my last logbook entry, I see that I put I did not want to work somewhere like Burger King. Well, guess where I'm working now. Lol. They pay 6.00 an hour though, more than minimum wage, and you have to start somewhere. I found out in December, at the Christmas party, that I was accepted. Now I just have to find out where. Today is Wednesday. Friday the rotary camping trip starts (it ends Sunday) and sometime during the trip, probably Saturday, we will find out where they are sending us. I hope I get France, and if not, Austria. I really want France though. We'll see. In the meantime, I have started a savings accound for my exchange trip, and though it's pitifully small now, it will grow. I can't believe I'm actually doing this...at the beginning, last year, I thought that this was such a great thing but that it would never really happen. It would just be something I talked about, and it didn't really seem real. I thought interest would fade out, my parents wouldn't let me, something would go wrong while planning it. Now, I know I'm going, though it still feels like a dream sometimes. A good dream, though. I wonder if other exchange students ever felt like that.
March 20
The savings account is growing, but so slowly...I still don't have enough for even the ticket. I have about four months though, and in the summer I will be working a lot more, so I hope to get to my goal of 3000 dollars, though I don't think I'll make quite that much. School is really hard now. I have one tough teacher, and I'm failing her class. The thing is, I know the material really well, and I'm always raising my hand in class and stuff. But since I forgot my bibliography on one paper, and it wasn't accepted, and didn't hear her call for homework in time to give mine in once, I am failing. I'm really worried about that, since one guy had to leave the exchange program because of his grades. I feel really badly about it, because he was more excited about this than anybody, and he was kind of the leader of the exchange kids, who always had the information. I don't think they gave him a chance to pull his grades back up. And they told him by e-mail, not even to his face. I don't know...I love Rotary, and I think it's a wonderful organization to be a part of, but I don't agree with what they did this time at all. I hope they will reconsider. I'm not holding my breath though. And seeing how quick they were to kick him out, it makes me worried about school even more, though I have a 'b' average which is enough for them (but which I hate. I need to get it up). Anyway, I found out where I am to go. It's Austria. That was my second choice. And the campout was great! It was so much fun. Everyone was really nice, and I made some new friends there. I need to e-mail them more and try to keep in touch, but I think I'm kind of bad about that. When they told us, I had a quick flash of disapointment that it wasn't France, since I really wanted that, but then I got over it, and even though I still want to go on exchange to France one day, maybe in collage, I'm getting more and more excited about Austria. My dad bought me a computer program to try to learn German, and I have like a ton of books about the place, either checked out from the library or bought. I will be the most prepared exchangee ever :-). I'll write more when I have more news!
June 27, 1999
It's only a month and a half until I leave. I am very excited, yet calmer right now than I was when waiting to find out where I was going. I still have my job, and am steadily (but oh so slowly) saving up money for my trip. I bought luggage already, and I have about five or six heavy winter sweaters. I still need to buy gifts for my host family, and pins (exchangees trade pins w/ each other in rotary), as well as winter pants (what pants do you wear in winter? Just jeans?) and a winter jacket, but I am almost ready to go. My grades are better this semester than last, since I brought up my D to an A and I think I have straight A's. I won't know for sure till my report card arrives. My GPA will be frozen my year abroad, so it is important to do well now. Nothing much else is going on now. I just need to finish off the last few detail, and then I'll be ready to go. I hope the time passes fast!
November 15, 2000
I have now been in Austria just about exactly three months. I arrived August 16. A lot has happened since then. When I first arrived in Austria I went through a two week language course with all the other arriving students. I had so much fun there. It was impossible to be homesick. That place is the closest I ever got to going to boarding school, and I loved it. I think I got maybe an average of two hours of sleep a night. All the exchangees made friends really fast. We were all stranded away from everyone else we usually leaned on for support; there was really no one else. Everyone was friendly and smart and interesting. We learned German everyday, including Sunday. We took some field trips too though, like a hike, and a boat trip to the one and only toilet museum in the world. Like, seriously. It's in Gmunden, Austria, and the whole group of exchangees was brought there. Me and some friends went on our great McDonald adventure after leaving the museum. We thought there was a McDonalds really close by and we wanted to take a picture of the McBeer, which they have here. No one could really ask for directions, since none of us spoke German, but we went where people pointed. The points did not always corrospond. And the McDonalds was not close by. Several hours later we finally arrived. We finally just got on the railroad tracks and followed them. We were just climbing down the embankment from the tracks when a train whooshed past. Perfect timing. So we all stumbled into the McDonalds, and started taking pictures. I don't know what the employees must have thought of us. I took a tray cover with me as a souvenir as well. Then we started the long, long trek home.
We started out following the railroad tracks again. At one point they started rumbling, which we didn't notice at once, then as one of us jumped off, the rest of us kind of realized why they were rumbling, and we slid down the embankment and I covered my head (really more to keep my hair from flapping all over my face than anything) and the train screamed (yes, screamed. It was close, and really loud) past us. Then, we got back on the tracks, and continued to follow them.
Once we got off the tracks, we crashed through woods, walked along highways, and cut through farms on our way back home. We didn't really know where we were going, and basically depended on 'I think we are more on that side of that mountain' reasoning. I thinked we walked around that stupid mountain. Anyway, we did eventually get home, and I have like a whole roll of film devoted to that trip. Plus, a cool story :-).
Everyone was kind of nervous about leaving to go to their host family. I am in the Voralberg district, which is practically not in Austria anymore. I am very close to Switzerland and Germany, and can literally walk to Lichtenstein. I have walked back from there before. There is only one other exchange student here in Voralberg with me, and I never see her since she is in another city. My first impression of the city of Feldkirch was not the best either, since it was gray and rainy. I had a temporary host family the first week, since my family was away on vacation. They were very nice, and made me feel at home. Their english was also very good, since they had lived in America for a year. After them I went to another temporary host family for a few days. They also made me very welcome there, especially the host mom there. Between the two of them, they gave me much more trust in the permanent host family that Rotary gave me. They did such a good job with the temporary ones I didn't think they could have gone too wrong with the permanent host family.
My permanent host family has, in fact, been very nice to me. My host mom is a university professor, as well as an author and is very knowledgable about art. She is very smart too, and focused. I am a bit of a procrastinator, so it is probably good for me to learn to be a bit more focused myself. She is also an excellant cook, which I completely appreciate. My host dad is very quiet and calm, and he is also very nice. I get along with both of them pretty well, and am thankful. Some of the other exchangees have not been so lucky and did not get along with their families, even changing families in some cases. I only wish I had some host siblings, my only host sister on exchange in Florida right now.
School is boring. I don't understand much of what is going on, since my German cannot keep up with the teachers. I read a lot during class, but am trying not too, since my head teacher talked to me and said the teachers didn't feel I really participated. So now I do my best to pay full attention, but sometimes I find my eyes starting to glaze over, and some classes I have to concentrate on not falling asleep. This is not an insult to the teachers, but it is incredibly boring to have to listen attentively to a class that you don't understand. But I am getting better, and slowly am starting to understand a little more of what is going on. Not enough to really join in yet, or even enough to keep up with the lesson, but enough so that I now have an idea of what is being taught at least. I am also taking German classes twice a week, two hours each, and doing an hour a day of German. Slowly, slowly, this is helping.
The classes I like are art, gym, Italian, dancing, and english. Well, English not so much as a class, since I know english and don't learn anything therefore, but I understand and I can participate, so that's enough to make me look forward to it. Art is cool. I would enjoy this class in the U.S., but probably wouldn't have time to take it, so I will appreciate it while I can. Italian is good to brush up on my Italian, since I want to visit my relatives there this year. And gym is another participation class, which I can keep up with everyone else. We are learning a dance there, which we have to apparently perform. To an audience. Blah. But it's better than volleyball.
I have also visited Vienna three times in October. The first time was for a week with my class. We did tours, museums, art shows, plays, lectures, and basically anything else a class can do on a trip. But I loved Vienna, and loved being able to see it and travel around on the U-ban, and some of the things the school dragged us to were fun. We saw Joseph and the Technicolored Dreamcoat (I think that was the title), which I liked. On the way back, it was snowing outside the train and I put my hand out of the train and it snowed on it. Cool. Hehe. The main complaint I have with the trip is that the girls had communal showers. I hate communal showers. I don't have that kind of confidence. Otherwise, it was a fun trip. I went again with some friends the next weekend, and then again on a Rotary thing where we did the tours and plays and museums again. I really like Vienna, though, so I don't mind. The main problem is that it is a eight hour train trip and kind of expensive.
Nothing much has happened since then. I have made friends with an exchange student here with another organization, and well as starting to make some native friends. My being gone so often slowed that down. This month is my birthday! I will be seventeen. Oh, and my dad visited for a couple days, and my friend from Graz (an exchangee) also visited. And I got a cellphone. Cellphones are very popular here. I am having fun.
