Hello and welcome to my first blog post! My name's Ellen and I am going to Norway for the 2011-12 school year through Rotary Youth Exchange. I'm 16 so I will be in Norway for my junior year of high school.
I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to say before I leave so I'm just going to give you some info about what I've had to do to prepare so far and where I'm going.
Preparation: I first heard about RYE (Rotary Youth Exchange) in late September. I applied in October. Interviewed and was accepted in November. And found out which country I was going to in December. Everything about applying was long and boring so I'm going to skip over it. From there I had three weekend orientations and plenty of assignments on my host country (Norway) and my host language (Norwegian).
The first orientation was in January at this camp-like place called Lake Yale was the other 75 outbound exchange students in Florida. This orientation focused on language learning and how to prepare to leave. The next orientation I attended was held by my Rotary District 6990 in April, and we basically went to a Conference and then had a lesson on public speaking at someone's house. The final orientation was this past weekend, again at Lake Yale with all the outbounds (students leaving to go to another country) in Florida. This one was a "cultural boot camp" where we participated in simulations to prepare us to enter a different culture. All the orientations were really fun and I loved hanging out with all my fellow outbounds. They are all really cool people and I hope everyone has a great year, whether they're going to Japan, France, Estonia, Brazil, Thailand, ect.
Where I'm Going: In the beginning of April I found out I will be living in a small city called Arendal in Norway! It's on the East Coast, about 3 hours southwest of Oslo, and 45 minutes - 1 hour from Kristiansand. Arendal is right on the coast and has a population of about 40,000.
My first family lives a few miles outside of the city, and I don't know about my others. My first family are the Weierholts, the host dad is also my Rotary host club's Youth Exchange counselor. He and his wife have three children, one girl, who is 8, and two boys, 14 and 17. The oldest boy is actually spending the year in my home district here in South Florida, very close to where I live now. I will have about 2 or 3 more host families. And I will be attending Arendal videregående skole in the middle of Arendal city. It has about 1,000 students and it's the biggest school in the county.
I probably won't post on here again until right before I leave (in 39 days) because I will be to busy. I'm going to Pratt Pre- College in New York for almost all of July, and I'll be packing and getting everything together in between!
