Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Expected Introduction

I've decided to jump on the band-wagon and create a blog. I'm hoping that this will be an easier way for me to update everyone than having to individually contact each person-- that gets redundant rather quickly. So, yes, this is intended to inform all the kool kats in my life about what's going on in terms of my exchange in Belgium.

Initially, I wasn't going to start blogging until right before I left for Europe. However, I now regret not getting this thing up earlier. It would've been nice to blog throughout the entire process.

Because I'm really terrible at recapping such large amounts of stuff, I'm just going to mention the basics:

Thanks to Rotary Youth Exchange, I'll be spending this coming school year in Belgium. My first host family resides in Athus, Belgium. I've been talking to one of my host sisters, Mathilde, on and off for the past few months. She's incredibly nice, and it seems as though the whole family is too :) Unfortunately, Mathilde won't be in Belgium while I'm there, so I probably won't get to meet her. However, I'm still extremely excited to meet the rest of my family!

I haven't received any information concerning who my second host family will be, but I have no worries that they, too, will be awesome.

My third family lives in Arlon. I'll have two host sisters-- Kamie and Alice. I've been chatting with both of them via Facebook. Just like my other two families, I can't wait to meet them.

I'll be going to school at Institut Notre Dame d'Arlon. Here's the website: http://www.inda.be/1secondaire.htm Maybe it's just me, but it appears to be significantly larger than my current school, which consists of a little over 200 students. But hey, the change is totally welcome. I'm looking forward to attending a bigger school. It should be an interesting change for me.

I applied for my visa yesterday. Sending in my passport made everything seem slightly less surreal. I say "slightly" because I feel as though this experience won't be completely realistic until I'm actually in Belgium. I keep thinking to myself, "There's no way I'll actually be spending a year in another country with a different family." It's such a new concept that it's taking a long time for it to sink in.

With the visa out of the way, I feel a little more relaxed. My current mission is now to collect a sufficient amount of pins to take with me....

1 comment:

  1. This post had no comments and felt lonely...
    I hope you have fun in the land across the pond!

    ReplyDelete