And So the Journey Continues

It is kind of obvious that I have been spending way to much time watching hero-epic movies!

Not much of interest has occured in my life from January to May, thus the absence of my bloggings, but since no one besides myself is aware of my life on Blogger, I do not feel the immediate need to update often. This will all change when I go to Germany however, because I am confident in the fact that my mother will strangle me if I fail to do so.

I do have some noteworthy news, otherwise I would not be writing here! This past weekend (May 13-15) I was up in Estes Park at the Outbound Orientation, and it was a big experience. I have to say that it was honestly pretty boring, but there were some highlights between the massive influx of information.

On Friday my parents picked me up from school so that we would be early to our cabin at the YMCA center. We got there in no time, so there was time to eat and settle in before we were expected to arrive at the logde. As always we were significantly early, so I just spent my time catching up with Demaree (she is going to Sweden) because she was already there too. Once everyone had arrived it became a big social gathering and people were catching up for we had not seen each other since that first weekend in December! It was time to get our blazers fitted (obviously the reason I am going on exchange) and then we were to begin the presentations that we were assigned. Of course I was the lucky one who got to go first, but it definetly was not as bad as I thought it would be. My German is lacking, but I did well otherwise. The night ended quite late, and so I just went back to the cabin and passed out.

We all had to rise quite early on Saturday because the announcements were to being at 8:00 am. Nothing really exciting happened throughout the day, we just received a lot of information regarding travel, finances, and home-sickness. We also broke out into gender specific groups so that we could tackle the questions that were too awkward to address in front of both sexes. After we had concluded our day, a few friends and I went to the swimming pool. I didn't swim, but Monica (going to Finland) had some nice conversations. When everyone was done swimming we traveled back to the lodge to entertain ourselves there. Monica, Jose (going to Spain), Nick (going to Turkey), and Teo (from Sweden) walked back together and just spoke more about the upcoming year. When we got back all of played some card games that included some dares. Having only lost once, I only had to do one dare - thank goodness! The people I spent the most time with were Elle (going to Switzerland), Christina (going to Finland), Breanna (going to Austria), Annika (going to Hungary), Jose, Nick, Teo, and Demaree. It was very entertaining and I didn't arrive home until late.

On Sunday everyone was fatigued extremely! We were all interviewed for a final time and I expressed some of my fears and my excitement as well. Not suprisingly, my mother began to cry because she will miss me greatly. I was so tired that I didn't do much of anything and slept on the entire way home.

I really hope that I will be reunited with the people in RYE 5450 before and after I go to Germany! I haven't ever met a group of people that I liked as much as I enjoy these peoples company!

Well I expect that I will contact you (the reader) when I find out my exact location in Germany, and then once again before I leave... so I would not expect anything soon if I were you.