Hurricane Irma!

I live in Miami, where the hurricane caused severe damage and was predicted to be even stronger. Irma is the biggest Atlantic Hurricane ever recorded. The Bahamas and the keys are devastated, as well as Haiti and parts of Cuba. When it got official that schools would close for the rest of the week, and people were asked to evacuate as fast as possible,  my parents and I started to search for ways for me to escape the horrible storm approaching. 

But there were none: all the flights were sold, you were not able to fly out of Miami, not to Atlanta, not to New York. We have friends in Atlanta whom I could have stayed with, but there was no way out. 

The options were extremely limited, but with the bad predictions, like floodings, no electricity and no service I had to get out. It was hard for me to leave, as I finally started to built up a life that I now had to leave after just a month there. Even just for such a small amount of time, it felt wrong. 

So what can you do when there is no way out alone?

 Right, somebody needs to get in and take you somewhere safe. So that's what we did: my mum flew from Vienna to Miami on the next day! We booked her ticket at 8 pm Miami-time and she arrived here at 3 pm the next day! She rented a rental-car and picked me up after school. 

I packed all my belongings into my bag and we drove off. My host family really supported me, and totally understood my problem. My illness makes everything more difficult, but also more dangerous! 

If the area floods: for everyone that's just a little bit of annoying water, but for me it's the worst bacteria cocktail ever! 

If there's no electricity: for everyone that means that it's hot and there's no way to charge the phones, but for me that means not being able to do my treatments and therefore not being able to breathe...

I am just not able to stay in such an unsure situation, and being aware of that helped me a lot coming to terms with the new situation.

The first day we drove for about 5 hours, and slept in a hotel next to the highway. We continued driving on the next day at about 9 a.m. but the traffic was really bad, so we arrived in Orlando around 4 pm. We stopped to eat and tried to book a hotel room, which we kind of did. The big question was: do we stay in Orlando for the hurricane or do we drive to Atlanta and stay with our friends? At first we booked the hotel room for 5 nights, so until the hurricane was gone again, but after talking to the friends and them encouraging us to just keep driving because "you never know" we changed our mind. We drove there with the intention of declining the hotel room, and rather just stay one night. When we arrived at the hotel, it already looked full: people with several Suitcases, BBQs and even Wheelchairs on the roof of their cars. But we booked a room, so we were positive that it would work out. When we went inside we were both so exhausted that we thought about sleeping there until Midnight and then getting up and driven during the night because maybe the traffic wouldn't be as bad. So we talked to the receptionist, but she told us that she couldn't find any reservations under our name, and when we said that we booked the room today she just laughed because the hotel had been sold out for a week. 

So we decided to continue driving and look for another hotel room, or in the worst case sleep in the car. 

We drove until around 11:30 pm, the traffic was not better so we tried driving around the traffic jam, over country road and trough woods. I really missed woods, but apart from that driving in the dark was just exhausting. So we decided to go back to the highway and exit at the next hotel. 

When I got out of the car, asking for a hotel room: I stood in line with a pregnant lady in front of me and an elderly women, who carried a bird in a cage, behind me. None of us got a room... so the worst case scenario took place: we parked the car in the parking lot, and slept there. We were two of many people who slept in the car that night, which made it less scary. That night was actually the first night I dreamt in english! It took a month for me to finally dream in English!

The funny thing was just that the dream was supposedly so funny (I don't remember it anymore) that I woke up laughing?

I laughed so hard that I actually woke my mum up too!

 So as we were both up we decided to start driving again, and it really went good, until I fell asleep in the car because we only slept for an hour. My mom stopped for breakfast, but she stayed in the car for about an hour longer so I could sleep. After that, she woke me up and we went inside to eat.

Everyone was nearly asleep over their meals, and the waitresses seemed to be as well, as the restaurant was open 24 hours due to the hurricane. After that we continued driving. It took 26 hours, straight driving to come from Miami to Atlanta. When we finally arrived at the house of our friends I was exhausted. It was so nice that they let us stay with them, and I think I was never as happy to finally be able to shower and lay in a bed. 

In the following days we did lots of activities because Irma was nowhere to be seen yet.

We went shopping, visited the Georgia Aquarium, ate Chinese (first time after a month)  at Ponce Market and ate at the Cheesecake Factory. It was a very fun Weekend, even tough I was constantly streaming "The Weather channel" and waiting for videos from friends who stayed in Miami. We did eventually loose power for about 8 hours. It was a weird story because coming from Austria, I am used to huge storms. Without school getting cancelled, and malls closing. The storm in Atlanta was enough to let all the malls close at 4 pm. When we went to Target after the mall closed, the electricity went out and we shopped in the dark with flashlights on.

On Thursday (so after staying in Atlanta for 5 days) we finally got a flight back to Miami.

Trees fell, and the electricity was out for about 24 hours, but all in all everyone is alright. Some parts of my area are still without electricity, and we don't have service or Wifi at home. So now I am sitting in McDonalds in Little Havana trying to upload this post.

I apologize for the inconvenience, and as soon as I have service again, I will update this post and (finally) upload the post about my flight and my first week... 

please share this and excuse the lack of posts in general. Today is Thursday and school starts again on Monday. I hope I will have service until then.

Thank you for spending your time with me,

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Leonie Pohl

09.14.'17

Last days in Austria & packing my bags!

The last few days at home are a mixture of all different kinds of feelings:
Being exited, because you will finally be able to live your dream.
Being  thankful, because you get to really see what you are going to miss.
Being sorry, for leaving all these people even though you have the best life at home.
Being sad, because you realize how incredible much you will miss your perfect life there.
Being scared, because you leave everything and everyone you know behind.
Being proud, because you are really going to do this.
Being happy, because you can't wait to finally do your thing.
Being angry, because you just can't close this huge Suitcase.
Being curious, because you don't know what your year will bring you.
Being hopeful, because you fought so hard to be able to do this and you just hope it was worth it.
Being confident, because you feel like everything is possible.
But being so incredible in love with everything.
If it's your Room or your village, or the city or your friends, you love all of it even more now that you have to say goodbye to them.
You try to memorize everything so that you really don't forget it.
You meet everyone for the last time, and even though you feel like crying every time another person has to say their final goodbye to you, you just can't seem to let the tears flow, because otherwise you absolutely couldn't stop them, which wouldn't be the prettiest memory.
So you just smile and pretend to think that the time you are away is not as long as it appears to be.
My leading sentence was "I'm going to be back faster than you can blink". That is very untrue because an average Human will blink 4.250.000 times while I'm away. That's not a blink and it won't feel like one. ( In case you have the pleasure to meet the weeping angles, you should minimize that number for your own health :)

I tried to explain my feelings in the days before my flight a bit (and I pray someone actually understands my Dr.Who reference)
So the last days are such a huge mess of feelings and people, but there's also one big Problem everyone has:

 Packing a suitcase for such a long time! In my particular case it was even harder because I had to pack all my medication for 1 year! So I had one suitcase with medication and one with all things like clothes and shoes and make-up etc.
I also promised to let you know if the suitcase with medication
is free or if I had to pay for a second suitcase: if you send an
email 48 hours before the flight departures it is free, but I wrote
  30 hours before (so more than one day) and I had to pay 80$
 for a spare suitcase...
The suitcase weight about 19kg and was pretty big.

 These are just some of the things I took with me. In the end I had 2 huge sacks (originally bags for shoes) and 2 smaller ones, with medication.  Obviously I also had to bring the devices for my medication. And at this point I have a big tip for you: check the watt your machines need, and also batterychargers.
I didn't think of that & I had to buy all of the things new with  lower watts needed. So just check before you bring them and trow them away after wards..
Another tip is to write note with everything you put aside the suitcase, because I had to unpack everything again because of the email I had to write to the airline. So write everything down and send the email with enough time before the flight!

With clothes I actually did great as far as I know. In the pictures you see "Vacuum Bags" which are plastic bags. You close them but open the shutter on the top and then connect the vacuum to it.
When you turn it on, the vacuum draws the air from it. As you can see the bag is really full, with 3 sweaters and jogging pants, and after the air is gone its really flat! So that's a really good idea for packing without taking up too much space.
I will do an update on what I packed was unnecessary and what was good.


So this is my last blog from Austria, the next Blog will be about my horror-flight and my first week in Miami!!
Thank you so much for spending your time with me! Please share this so as many people as possible can read how it is to fly away and pack the suitcases for such a long time with an illness.
You can enter your email address in the bar on the right side so you never miss a post, or follow me on social-media which is linked under the tag "Social Media" on the top bar.
Have a great time and see you next week!

Visa

Applying for and finally getting the visa is the last big step before the final start of the exchange year.
This step isn't always easy, and it definitely wasn't easy for me.
My Visa application package arrived just 30 days before my departure date. I was on holidays at that time so i had to wait for 2 days until i arrived home and could open my documents.
I read them two times, until i was 100% sure i understood everything, and then i drove to my hometown in Germany (Random fact: I'm half German and half Austrian).
When you start applying for your visa, you have to create an account on the website, and as i was in Germany at the time  I created that account, the system thought i wanted to make a German account, which was obviously not what i wanted. At first i didn't notice, but when i had to select a consulate, only 3 German consulates were available. The consulate in Vienna is 20 minutes away from my hometown and reaching the consulates in Germany would  take min. 7 hours to reach + one overnight stay. We tried changing everything: logging out, changing the country, changing the language and so on, but nothing worked. So I had to wait until i got back home to try it again. I tried it right after i arrived home, but it still didn't work. I tried calling the hotline over 100 times, but no one ever answered. After trying several times I was able to create a new account with the help of my parents.   I filled everything in, which is a lot of work, and got a meeting at the consulate in Vienna just one day after.
 I arrived very early and waited  a long time before going inside. Then I got called to a window, and I handed in my I-20 formula and my passport.
After that I had to wait for a long time again. When they called my name I got up and went to the window again, but this time, the guy behind the window asked me questions. I was really nervous because I wasn't sure if I would be able to understand everything. But luckily I understood everything  except a joke he made, I still have no idea what he said. I talked to him for about 5 min and he asked me questions like "What does your mother work as" or "Whats the name of your school in America". And after the questions (and the award joke that I didn't catch) he told me that I am visa approved and that they would send me my passport within 3 days.
So i was actually nervous for nothing, it was all easy and no problem at all. Even though I didn't understand the joke, I don't think he noticed, because I just laughed politely and I feel like that was alright. Now I just need to pack my suitcase, which is also what the next blogpost will be about.

Please share this blog and enter your email address in the bar on the right side so you never miss a post! My social media is linked on my blog so please follow me there as well, so you can stay updated! Thank you for spending your time with me!

Leonie Pohl

My exchange year with Cystic Fibrosis

This Blogpost is a particularly important one to me and I hope many people who are fighting similarly battles will worship this. Because in this Blogpost I am going to talk about my chronic illness called "Cystic Fibrosis" and the struggles it  brings along. Travelling with my illness isn't that easy and I with this blog I want to help everyone who dreams about travelling with an illness. 

Cystic Fibrosis is a chronic illness, which you get born with. It causes thick mucus to built up everywhere in the body and damage many different organs. 

The lung, the pancreas and the digestive system are highly affected. The life expectancy improved massively over the past years. Nowadays people suffering from Cf can reach adulthood and can live up to an average age of 40, and that's pretty long compared to not growing older that preschool age! 

So that basically means that I have this thick mucus everywhere and bacteria is expanding there very quickly. 

I get a lot of lung infections and I have problems with breathing. That also means that I get lots of colds even in summer.

In the pancreas, insulin and a enzyme for digestion are produced. The enzyme called "Lipase" is responsible for digesting, but as the production is not working you can't digest the food you eat. 

I have to take meds to every meal I eat to help me digest, but I still have massive problems with that which involves pain, cramps and I pretty much feel nauseous all the time. On some days I can't even get up because of my stomach ache.

I also have to take about 15-20 pills everyday like Vitamins and digestion pills. 

But the most time consuming thing are my treatments: 3 hours treatments and another hour breathing exercises every day. 

Every two months I have to get a checkup in the hospital, and if there's a problem, I have to stay there for two weeks. 

All of that is hard work, with the pain and the treatments and doing all of that in a different country is going to be a whole new challenge. 

My personal story with Cf is a very positive one, as the condition of my lungs is not bad at all. Of course, I have to work very hard for that, but I am very proud how far I have come. 

My pancreas is the most affected organ in my body, and digesting is not entirely possible even with all the medications I take. That bears lots of dieting plans (not for loosing weight but to spare my organs) and calculating my calorie income because I need to eat more than an adult.

But the real problems that my illness causes regarding to my exchange year, besides the treatments and absences, is the insurance during my exchange. 

The normal health insurance that most programs offer don't cover "preexisting illnesses". So if I break my leg they would pay, but if I get a lung infection I would have to pay that myself and that would be immensely expensive. 
But that is basically what is going to happen: my insurance from Austria would pay the price a treatment or a hospital room would cost in Austria, but my parents would have to pay  for the rest. That's a massive risk and all I can do is hope that I won't be needing any expensive treatments. 

I will have to visit a responsible hospital once and get a big checkup, and we will have to pay for that myself. 

Most of the medication I will be needing doesn't need to be cooled, so I can take as many tablets as possible with me when I fly to America. Maybe I can add a free excess luggage for meds, I will give you an update if that is possible or not. 

Today I have 70 days until my flight departs and my journey will start. If you want to stay updated you can submit your email address in the bar on the right. If you ave any questions, feel free to ask. 
Thank you for spending your time on me,
Leonie

Orientation Days 5.5-6.5.2017

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

                                 b) clear your profile

                                 c) keep your grades up

                                 d) do your chores

             

                                 e) join clubs and activities 

• Dont's:             a) Drink & smoke

                                 b) drive
                                   
                                 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