Orientation #1

Like I said in my first couple entries, I wanted my blog to be about the entire exchange process, so everything in preparation before going. This last Saturday my Rotary club had our first of three training sessions (January 25th.) It was from about 8:00am to 3:30pm. For the most part it was power points, people talking, and presentations. Not the most exciting of stuff but it was all very important to know. They talked about things like funding the trip, and how much money to expect to spend, and the trip opportunities (depending on the country, some have them some don't.) They also had different presentations from Rotex (people who have gone on the exchange themselves; most of them are college students.) There was also a person who studies languages and she did a presentation with a Spanish teacher and talked about all of the different methods and opportunities on how to learn your language. They said everyone needs to be doing a minimum of 10 hours a week on learning your language. Not sure how close I am going to get to that, but I'll try. Then the parents stayed in the auditorium while all of the students went into another room with all of the Rotex and we had like a Q and A chill session with them. We played a few ice breaker games so all of the students got to know one another. We asked them questions, they gave us advice about random things, they talked about some learning experiences they had. It was nice to hear from people who had actually went on the exchange themselves.  Around 12:00 we had lunch, then we went to classrooms (we were in a middle school) and broke off by our specific country. So I was in a room with the 7 other kids going to Brazil. We talked about the basic knowledge of the country, the geography of it etc. It was super cool to meet and get to know the people I'm going to Brazil with, we friend-ed each other on Facebook and talked about our plans to learn Portuguese. We also got a little "homework" for the next meeting, we have to do a write up about our country; basic information about it. Also we need to email our country advisers with our plan on how to learn the language. So that's about it... I have the next training coming up in a few weeks, I'm really excited. It was fun to meet everyone who got accepted. During the interviews I didn't talk to anyone. I felt like it was the Hunger Games, the other students were my competition haha. But now we all were accepted so everyone was really friendly and outgoing. Until the next training weekend!

Thanks for reading guys,

Noah Estabrooks