I would have totally loved that since I didn't feel very good. I had an upset stomach and felt like I had to throw up the whole day (I didn't) and I was veeeery tired even though I went to bed at 9pm on Thursday, so I had 10 hours of sleep!!!
I usually would have just stayed home but I had a sketch test in Anatomy & Physiology and I have a test on Monday in Psychology so I didn't want to miss the last lesson before I have to take that. Mitch brought the two daycare kids (who go to school) and me over there so that we don't have to wait for the bus when it's so cold out. I asked him if somebody could pick me up after I was done with Anatomy and Psych (I was lucky that I have them in my first two periods) and he said that Steph could pick me up on the way home from her doctor's appointment. So I had Anatomy & Physiology, Psychology, Math, Lunch and half of my Theater class. That was just perfect because we had another test in Math that our teacher didn't told us about before so I didn't miss it. I also would have had open in Choir and Band because we had sectionals so it didn't really matter :)
When I came home I lay down on the couch and fell asleep :D I think after about an hour I woke up and went downstairs to lay down in my bed. I was so glad that I packed my stuff on Thursday so that I could just rest till Mitch, Micah and I left for the YFU Midyear Orientation at 5pm. We went to Sam's Club first and got some milk, lemonade, pancake mixture, and some other stuff that I don't remember. I still didn't feel very good so that it wasn't the best environment with all the food around me. Can you imagine that I saw chocolate brownies and felt very sick? Now it seems kind of strange :P
As soon as we were done shopping we drove to Calvary where we had the Orientation in our Youth Room. I went straight to the next couch after I brought in some stuff :)
The first students arrived at about 6pm and we started at around 7.30pm. Now I don't remember what we discussed when and the whole program like I listed it for Blizzard but here are just some things we did:
- Making a pyramid with cups, stacking them back, making a pyramid, stack them, making a pyramid, stack them (as fast as you can)
- Puzzle a cereal box together (just the front side) which was cut into I think 12 pieces
- Contact to family and friends in your home country
- Talking in English rather than using your native language (also when you talk to people from your home country in order to improve your English skills
- What do you think are you most proud of about your exchange when you are back in your home country
- Church attendance
- Spending time with your family
- Phone calls and internet use
- What were the best moments in your exchange year so far
- How to solve problems with your (host) family
- Being homesick
- ... and lots of other things :)
We watched several videos:
And also the video for the song that I picked for this blog post :)
We also talked about how important it is to find new host families and exchange students.
We asked around when we (exchange students) got the information about our family. I think there were about 5 or more (out of ~ 25) students who were called just a couple days before they flew over here or who even went on the airplane without knowing where they would go! I think that must have been very hard, waiting for so long. I got my letter with the names of my host parents, their address, age, profession, my host siblings' names, the email address of one of your host parents, the telephone number and the name of my school on March 5th, 2010, so I didn't even have to wait for three months after I was accepted by my exchange organization.
|Reading the questions|
|Junior (from Thailand)|
|Pippu (Finland) and Nina (Switzerland)|
If you are interested in hosting a student this year or if you would like to be an exchange student visit YFU, read my host mom's blog to get an idea what it's like to be a host family or contact Marilyn Hostetler. She is the Field Director for this area from YFU and I think she would be more than glad to tell you more about YFU :)
And of course you can also ask me tons of questions (or more).