Hello guys!
Apparently I managed not to mess up my selection last weekend, which is quite a relief after all. I spent the last 2 weeks panicking about those two days, and I'm so happy that instead of two days of my worst nightmares, it turned out to be super fun! :)
First of all, I hadn't had the opportunity to take photos, so this post will only have very few images. I could get some from their homepage or from google, but I don't want to use any pictures since I didn't ask for permission and so. If you are interested in AFS thought, you should check out their website or Facebook page, I will give you both links at the bottom! ^^

Let's talk about the AFS program itself a little bit too. The program I'm planing to go with, is a high school year in Japan from 2017 August to 2018 July. The bad thing is, this year they can only send one student with this program... That's the main reason why I was scared as hell not so earlier, and I still am... >< Of course, usually it's more than one student, it depends on the host country and on how flexible they are.
If you want to participate, you have to send in an application with many things, like health check, details from your school, your grades and a few letters of recommendations. Of course, that's just a part of the many things you need to get them, so pretty please, don't make the mistake I did, and start it in time!! I didn't realized there were so many things to get done, just one week before the deadline... It was very stressful to say the least.
Also, keep it in mind: you really should do tons of research before settling with one program. Everyone has different requests, and you are the one who should decide, where and for how long you want to go.

Okay, so let's get on with the real thing. I applied for the first selection out of 3. I recommend to do this if you can, since at the second or third you have much lower chance to have places left in the country you looked out. (Also, it is not a requirement to now which country you want to spent your time in, If you just want to travel, they will help you out with the perfect country for ya'!) The selection started on the 19th of November, which was a Saturday, and lasted for Sundays early afternoon.

Since I always had a very bad luck with traffic and getting somewhere in time, I left from home as early as I was able to get up at the weekend... ^^" All participants were supposed to get there between 9:45 and 10:15 AM. I arrived at 9:30... like I said, for me it was early as heck. :/ I was the 3rd one to get there, and a few volunteers greeted us after we checked in. All of us got a name-tag with our name, district and group letter on it. While waiting, we played team builder and introduction games to loosen up a bit and have a less tense mood. Although a lot of the other participants looked like they were really nervous, after a few minutes I didn't feel the same at all. It was really fun and nice to meet people with similar open-minded personality as mine!

After everybody got there, we set down and all the volunteers introduced themselves. There were about 35 volunteers, and 72 participants. Usually there weren't so many people, but the leaders were quite happy about this. :)

As I said before, all of us got sorted into 5 groups, A, B, C, D and E. I got in group E which was quite troublesome for me, because it meant I was one of the last people to get my interview done.
There were 5 stations, and then we went in a circle, like group A started with their interview, and then group B and so on. My team started with a station called 'Eurorail'.

We set down at a table and got a paper with several descriptions on it about people from different nationalities and religion. The story was about imagining a train rail, which goes through whole Europe. We had to choose 3 people who we would sit in the same cabinet with and 3 who we wouldn't. There were choices like "a 13 year old German emo boy/girl who listens to Tokyo Hotel very loudly", "a very talkative Sweden skinhead man visibly being drunk" or "an Ukrain plutonium-seller with lead west".We decided our choices alone first, then in small groups and finally the whole team chose 3-3 people to sit or not to sit with. It was really interesting to see others oppinion, and also how easily we settled with our team choices as well. The volunteers there said we were surprisingly fast and that we did well by making compromises. :3

The next station was the so called 'AFS info'. We went to a small room with one of the adult volunteers, who told us stories from other exchange students who came back already. He never was an exchange student, but he had host 4 former students, and all 4 children of his went abroad as well. He told us that AFS is the organization with the second most volunteers in Hungary (the first is 'Red Cross' which is like an auxiliary organization for disadvantaged people). It was interesting and we laughed nonstop. I really liked the performing style of the volunteer with us! :D

After this we went back to a room right next to the one with the Eurorail in it. This station was called 'Vitakör', which means something like a debating society. We discussed several statements, like people should make marijuana legal in Hungary, the self-driver cars are safe and alcoholism people are responsible for getting in that state. We had to decide whether we think the statements are true or not and try to convince the other half about our right. Maybe this was the most interesting one out of the 5 stations, but I didn't get the chance to speak as much as I wanted to.

By this point, we were very nervous, because the last two stations for us were the literacy test and the interview... About the test.... Let's just say, all participants failed miserably. >< They asked so simple questions, like who invented vitamin C and such, which I knew but couldn't remember. It was SO frustrating!! D:
Later they read out few hilarious wrong answers, and I just felt so embarrassed even when my answer was right.... I hope it doesn't count that much in our selection results... ^^"

The final station for group E was the interview. It was an hour long thing with two volunteers. Before anything else, for all of you, future AFS students, you should not be afraid of the interview, it was like a friendly talk, I enjoyed it very very much! Here, in Hungary, we have our interviews in our mother language, even tho I had mine in English because of a foreign volunteer from Thailand. Don't worry, they never force you into anything, I had the option to do this in Engilsh, and obviously, I took it. :D

I hope you liked this little report, I will continue to write about my adventures (is it just me, or does this sound super cheesy?) if I got selected!
Thanks for reading! :)

Link to the Hungarian website: http://www.afs.hu/
Link to the Hungarian facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/afshun/?fref=ts