Rotary Youth Exchange 2014-15

Hello, all! I have some very exciting news that I’ve wanted to share with you all for quite some time now! But please, pretty please, don’t think I’m trying to brag. That’s not my intention at all! I don’t want to seem like I’m showing off, I’m just super-duper excited to finally get to tell you!

For my senior year of high school, 2014-15, I’m going to be spending it in Denmark!!! 

☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

So originally, I was going to write about how I found out about Rotary, how the process went, yadda yadda. But it got too long (like 1300 words too long), so I decided to start over and make it as simple as possible while still explaining it all to the best of my abilities.

I found out about Rotary in October this past year, because of a flyer in my Spanish room. It was for a meeting to learn more about the organization and about studying abroad, and my mom ended up going (without me, but I can’t for the life of me remember why I didn’t go. I think I might have had dance… anyway, not the point). I initially only wanted to do a summer exchange, but we learned that in order to do that you had to host an inbound while you were in another country. And neither of my parents really have the time to be showing someone else around for a summer. So the other option was a full year trip. And by full year I mean full school year, but that’s still 9-10 months, which is still a hellofa long time! So after a while of trying to convince my mom that I was up for it (she was worrying about me being in another country without her there to help with my anxiety/stress), I was allowed to send in my application! From there it was waiting until I got confirmation that I would have an interview to get to the next step. The interview is kind of boring to talk about, but simply; I had three interviews where I cried from nerves in all of them, but was told I had an infectious smile, and got to meet a lot of other kids, inbound and other outbound students. After the interview I waited for over a month before I heard back from Rotary. When I did finally hear something it was for a mandatory ‘meeting’ the first weekend of January. That day I learned that I was going to Denmark! 

To be honest with you, when I first found out it was Denmark I was really, really, really upset. Denmark was my third choice; Italy being my first and South Korea being my second. I knew SK was out immediately because of the whole ‘sea of fire’ threats from North Korea, so I was solely riding on going to Italy. I mean, I basically put everything on me going to Italy. I couldn’t see myself going anywhere else, and that ended up being a somewhat major problem. I was devastated that I wasn’t going to Italy. I wasn’t upset with Denmark, just that fact that I didn’t get Italy. I went to the bathroom after all the kids got their countries and basically cried my eyes out to my mom for five minutes saying that I wanted to drop out of Rotary and that I couldn’t see myself going to Denmark. But once I got back to the main room, after trying to compose myself, I talked to a few kids that I knew, the mom of the boy who’s also going to Denmark and one of the ladies who was in charge of us. I learned that I had the option, if I was really upset with the country that I got, that I could change it. She said that they didn’t want to send someone somewhere they didn’t want to go, because then they wouldn’t have a good experience. But I didn’t want to jump to change my country, so I told her I had to sleep on it. 

And to make the rest of this story shorter; I stuck with Denmark over Italy. It was hard at first because I was like, “if I go to Denmark I’ll only be thinking of Italy, but if I go to Italy I’ll constantly be thinking of Denmark!” It was a conundrum. But after talking with my friends and really thinking about it, I decided that Denmark wasn’t bad, and that no matter where I’d go I’d have a good time, so Demark it is!

I still don't know where in Denmark I’m going to be staying. Or who my host family(s) will be, but I’ll be learning that as the year progresses. And when I know, you’ll know! I’m not going to make any promises of be blogging while I’m there (I mean I’ll try obviously), but I really want to fully immerse myself to get the most out of this opportunity, so blogging is going to end up on the back burner of things to- do. That being said, when I do try and make posts, they’ll most likely be photo posts of my week/month. I’ll try to do beauty related posts, BUT I’M KEEPING NO PROMISES! I will make posts before I go as queue, and also on what to pack and stuff like that. So I hope you guys stick with me through this, I’d love to take you with me via the internet! <3 

I'm sorry if this was completely boring or you felt like I was trying to rub it in (which I’m not I swear!), but yes! I'm going to Denmark!!!!! 

So, have any of you guys ever wanted to study abroad? Have you already? Where would you want to go if you had the opportunity?

Lots of love~ Amanda.