Hi guys! :)

It's been ages (almost one year, to be exact) since I wrote anything! It's partly because I had a major writers-block for a while, but mostly because there weren't any interesting news about me lately. Until now!

I have been accepted as an AFS exchange student to the program to Japan in 2017-2018, which I'm super happy about! So, as my trip is coming close (actually, it's the day after tomorrow), I thought I should give you all a little update.

So, all of the exchange students, including me, had a before-travel orientation on the 15th of July, which, just like the selection, was two days long. The meaning of this orientation was to prepare us for the trip ahead us, and make all the risky situations familiar to us. I don't plan to go into details, mostly because I don't remember, but also, I think this is something each and every student should experience for themselves. :)

Throughout these two days, we had many ridiculous situations to deal with. The first, and probably most annoying one was the airport simulation. The volunteers arranged the chairs in the main hall to form a line, and we had to stand in a queue, just like at a real airport. They searched us, sent back the loud ones to the end of the queue, and took some stuff from our bags, as if it hadn't met the requirements (too many liquids, pointy objects etc.). They took some completely fine objects too, like half of my slippers, my earphones, a make-up brush, and many people had to get rid of their toothbrushes or combs, too. We thought we would get our stuff back right after the simulations, but boy were we wrong. They kept our stuff until the next morning, leaving many students outraged. As for me, I was more incredulous than anything else, but it was very much fun!

We also went through all of the AFS rules, and we received a very (VERY!) detailed drug prevention lecture too.

Another thing I really liked was a thing called "ABC breakfast". On Sunday morning (the 15th being a Saturday) we went to have breakfast in the main room, but at the door everyone got a letter assigned, from A to C. There were two tables, one with many different beverages, cheese, meat and 3 kind of breads, and another one with less choices but still a decent selection of food. Now, the first table was the 'A' table, with two available seats, the second one was the 'B' for four people to sit at, and the rest of us, the 'C people' had to sit at the remaining 7 or 8 tables with a whole loaf of bread and 1,5 liter of water on it. Now many students at tables C simply refused to eat because of the poor selection, even though we were told countless times that we won't have anything else to eat until lunch, which seemed weird to me. Maybe it's just my weird way of doing things, but I've eaten bread in itself plenty of times, so I couldn't see what was such a big deal about it. It was very fresh bread, too!

The point of this was, to prepare us for living with host families, and not being able to control their financial situations. It could easily happen that we would go to a family with less fortune, but we still should be grateful for their kindness and love.

I thing this gives you a general idea what it was like, and what the meaning of this orientation was. As for my exchange year, I will try to keep you posted. It all depends on my host family and wifi access, but I will try my absolute best!

Thanks for reading, see you guys later! <3