So wayyy back in January, a few days after my last post, I had the District Interviews for my exchange. I think they went pretty well! I got there and was greeted by Juliette from France (who is one of the inbounds from my club) who then took me to the first interview room. There were four people on the other side shooting questions at me like "what would do about home sickness" "why do you want to go on exchange" "what is your best/worst quality" "what is one thing you have had to overcome". It went reallly well, and all of the Rotarians were super nice and friendly. Don't be afraid of Rotarians, they are awesome people! That lasted like 30-45 minutes if I can remember correctly. Then I waited a long time until the next room. This one was a little more challenging. It was all of the district heads and was very intimidating at the time. They just asked me why I wanted to go to the countries that I chose, and made sure I had no problems that would stop me from going on exchange. and that was that.
Moving on to the fun stuff. So in February was the Algonquin trip!!! IT WAS AMAZING!!! We were divided into 2 trips, I was on the second trip. They mix up inbounds and outbounds. I left on Saturday morning and came back Tuesday night. It was the most amazing trip I have ever been on. It was so cool to be hanging out with such a diverse group of people and seeing how you can just shove a bunch of teens on a bus and they can be friends in an instant. the bus ride was super fun and very loud. Exchange students are very loud and very fun. Once we got to Algonquin we walked a km across a frozen lake to our destination. We all slept in one big house, the boys in a big room on the bottom floor, girls on the top floor. The first night was one of the most memorable ones of the trip. We all sat on the floor, and the lights were turned off, and Greg, the trip leader (and one of the coolest people I have ever had the chance to meet) had each inbound sing their national anthem. It was such an emotional and powerful moment. 15 different cultures were represented in one room. All accepting of each other. Then we went to bed.
On our way across the Lake!
The Spider Web game that we played that night, We had to fit every person through a different hole in the web by lifting them up and the other team catching them on the other side.
The next day we were woken up bright and early by Greg's gorgeous (sarcasm) singing voice. This day is one proud one for me. I have always been extremely afraid of heights so when I was told that we would be doing a trust fall I was pretty much scared out of my mind. This isn't a normal trust fall where someone stands behind you and you fall gracefully into their waiting arms, this is a 90 degree drop off a 1.5 meter deck in to the waiting arms of about 18 people. I was the first to go. Unfortunately I have no idea if anyone got a picture of it, but I do have pictures of some of the others so you can see what I am talking about here. It was so scary but I am so glad I did it and am frankly very proud of myself for forcing myself to do it. I know it sounds corny but it made me feel like I could do anything after that moment.
Juliette's Trust Fall
That afternoon, we went on a snowshoeing expedition. We were divided into groups, the leaders, navigators, planners, safety, and fire builders. We each had a skill that we shared with the group. I was a planner. That means that my group organized everything we needed to bring and who would bring what. This expedition required we made it to a certain location in the woods and then made hot chocolate. The way you navigate is to find orange markers tied around trees. Yes, they trust a bunch of teenagers and foreigners to navigate through a forest on snowshoes in the winter. You can probably imagine how funny it was. It was a long afternoon of snowshoeing but was made hilarious and fun that I didn't even think about the tiredness that I was feeling.
Starting a fire for the hot chocolate.
We were divided into two teams for the first expedition, I was on team Jelly! The others were team Peanut Butter. We all made flags the night after the first expedition.
The second day was the BIG expedition. This was a day long one, where we all had our original groups but we had to cook a full lunch of grilled cheese and soup. This was the most hilarious thing ever. We got just a tad...'lost' on the way. Actually we managed to miss 3 markers, walk around a pond to get the next one when we were about 8 feet from it and then had to go back to get the other three at the end, and cut off the last ones because we didn't have enough time. I'm glad that not very many people got frustrated by it though. The navigators tried their best. Greg and the other leaders had to come find us half way through to point us in the right direction. We didn't want them to find out that we were lost so a bunch of times we pretended that they were 'breaking up' on the walkie talkie, very funny. It was such a tiring day...6 hours of snowshoeing! But again, it was totally worth it. We all came together as a team and always helped each other out.
Snowshoeing away!
After the expedition we ate dinner, and then had a solo at night. This is where we went into the forest and for an hour, in the cold and snow, wrote a letter to ourselves that will be sent to us in one year. I cried. Yep, I cried by myself in the dark in a forest by candlelight. It was really emotional to think about how much I changed in 4 days. Its totally crazy to think about, and most people probably won't understand. No one but those that were there will understand what an experience it was.
All of us together!! I miss you all so much! This was one of the best memories I have ever made.
