Orientation Days 5.5-6.5.2017
Friday the 5th may 2017. That means 94 days until America. But that's also the day my orientation days startet.
I flew from Vienna to Frankfurt to attend them.
The flight departured early morning and i landed in Frankfurt one and a half hours later.
My first way was to Urban Outfitters (there's no Urban Outfitters in Vienna which is absolutely horrible) where I literally stayed the entire time until I had to leave.
At 1:15 all future exchange students had to meet up at the youth hostel which was right next to the Main, a big river in the middle of the city, which was really beautiful. The weather was amazing and everyone was really happy.
That afternoon our parents were attending the seminar with us: in a seminary room in the groundfloor with 22 future exchange students and their parents, 6 Returnees and one lecturer from my organisation.
He handed out a program with different checkpoints such as: Money, the flight or insurances during the year.
The lecturer talked about one checkpoint e.g Host Family and then he asked the retournees for their experience. It was really interesting because they all had a similar yet completely different experience with most things. The checkpoint "High school" is a good example for that. One of the retournees changed highschool during their year, one went to an Indian high school, one went to a methodistic school and one went to an catholic private high school.
The lecture knew a lot from experience, he organised many exchanges as an english teacher himself and knew stories to every question we/our parents had.
All in all it took pretty long, and they said lots of things we already knew from the application talk.
But i enjoyed hearing them again to remember each one of them:
- Area Reps - in America you will have an Area Rep whom you can contact if you have problems or questions. Your Rep has to contact you once a month. Some of the Returnees said that their Area Rep organized meetings with their exchange students every three months.
- Visum - i will write a separate post about that and tell you how it went!
- the flight - my organization has escorted flights to big Airports and single feeder flights.
- Host family - different religions, ethnical cultures and issues with some of that
- Money - the big question is if you get a prepaid card or a secondary card. I don't know what I'm going to do yet. The average amount of "pocket money" is 250-400$ per month.
- High school - I will definitely make a post about this topic when I can talk about my personal experience.
- Do's: a) be open minded
c) keep your grades up
d) do your chores
e) join clubs and activities
c) leave the states
d) sex
e) discuss politics
- Dont's: a) Drink & smoke
c) leave the states
d) sex
e) discuss politics
After that our parents left and we ate dinner, afterwards the rooms were announced. I was in a room with 3 really nice girls, one of them is Lillian: http://lilliangoesusa.blogspot.co.at
(if you speak German you should totally head over to her blog!) It was a funny evening and we talked a lot with the returnees which was really helpful.
The next morning we had to get up really early and then we spend the day speaking English, playing games in English and doing sketches in English. It was an amazing time and I am really looking forward to finally starting my exchange. The experience of the returnees increased my excitement even more.
This was my first blogpost, I will update whenever something interesting happens and in America a small update every week. If you want to follow me and my journey you can insert your email address in the bar on the right side, so you will never miss an update. Or you can follow me on my social media and tell me what you want to hear about.
Thank you for spending your time on this, it's highly appreciated.
Leonie Pohl 14th may 2017
