Thursday, May 30, 2013

I am to receive a general train ticket!

Literally 5 minutes after publishing my last post I received another email from Switzerland, my host club is buying me a "general train ticket" which is very nice of them. I will be able to use it to travel anywhere in Switzerland by bus or train, all year, free of charge. This sounds like it will be unimaginably useful! It seems like I have a very nice/cool host club as well.

Outbound Orientation.

Bonjour,

I haven't updated this in awhile, because I didn't think that anything interesting happened, but now that I'm writing this I've begun to realize that lots of interesting things have happened. Going in chronological order, I was contacted by my host country, I attended outbound orientation, and I found out which District I'm going to (I'm still awaiting the exact city and my host family).

Now seems like a good time to explain some of the structure of The Rotary International Youth Exchange Program. In each country there is a hierarchy of officers, and there is an outbound and inbound version of each officer, for example there is an outbound chair (who is at the top of the people who handle the kids going to other countries) and an inbound chair (who is in charge of people overseeing students coming here from other countries).

So, one day, my country contact (who is based here in the US and helps me communicate with my country) forwards me an e-mail from an inbound officer in Switzerland saying essentially "reply to this so we can start to move things along." So I replied it. Or so I thought. As it turns out I only replied to the forward, so the reply only went to my country contact, and not to the people who actually needed it. I was not aware of this until about a month later when I received an annoyed email. I apologized and quickly cleared everything up and it all worked out fine.

The next month I attended outbound orientation, in which I was scolded for making one too many snarky comments.--

(Honestly though, it was funny. "Now students, there's something I want you to remember to put on first thing every morning, and if you do, it will make your exchange so much better." *silence!!* No one  had any idea what he was talking about of course, and I, not having any sort of filter, because I had just woken up, blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "Pants?" I ask timidly. I get laughter from everyone but the person who asked the question, who narrowed his eyes at me. The answer he was looking for was a smile.)

--The orientation was exactly what it sounds like it would be: more in depth information on things like insurance and travel arrangements. They also had a final round of interviews to make sure that no one had developed cold feet.

About a month later I heard from Switzerland, they informed me as to what club I would be going to, but I am still waiting to hear from my host club itself and my host family.