You've got a blog? We've got spray for that.

Above is my aunt's response when I asked her to read my blog.

Grrrrr!!!!

Above is my response whenever I check my email.


Yes, as you can infer from this post, I have: asked my aunt to read my blog, and checked my email a lot. As is to be expected from a blogging RYES who hasn't yet been contacted by her host family.

All is well, though. Wonderful time with my aunt, uncle, aunt, uncle, and cousin on this *ridiculously* hot Memorial Day weekend. I'm really looking forward to the more mild climate of Distrikt 1940, with its average low of 26ºF and average high of 78ºF. What a wonderful range for a person like me who hates both shiversome temperatures of my home region and the sweltering (to me, at any rate) heat of the (not much) farther south.

I must admit, though. Coughing up a lung is not a good way to spend a holiday weekend. Slight exaggeration, though, I haven't actually coughed up a lung. It just feels like I have. Eh, I'm getting better.

I'm really quite excited. I have less than ten days left of school, less than seventy days until I leave for Germany, much less patience than I require....it's all good. :)

Deutschland....ich liebe du. :)

Desperate much?

I just woke up. Literally, ten minutes ago. I'm posting because I had a dream that my host family called my home phone and left a message on the answering machine. They were in an airport. And they sent me this weird....like, mini-catalogue or something and put some of their info in it, but they didn't tell me where they lived. I was still jumping up and down with insane amounts of excitement, though. If only it would come true....

So as you can guess, I've reached the point of placement-desperation. I joined this group on facebook for outbounds (now) who will be inbounds (soon) in Germany. Pretty much every one of them has gotten contacted by their host family or host club. There are about three of us who haven't yet. And it's driving me batty. I literally can't think about school during school. I had to fill out a scholarship the other day, and I waited until I was going to go to bed before I realized I hadn't done it yet. So I put off sleeping (a really, really bad idea, might I add) to do it. Now if only I can put off school until it's too late do do anything about it. Unfortunately, I can't. I have to suffer through about ten more days before I don't have to go in for actual class, just exams...it's a really good thing I only have one Regents exam (for all of you non-New-Yorkers, Regents are the big nasty state-wide exams that cause high-schoolers much grief and angst). Hopefully any finals I have aren't really that big a deal, because there is no way I'm going to study for them when I could be checking my email every thirty seconds. 

I get home, plunk my backpack down, run into my room and get my laptop out to check my email when I get home. I wake up in the morning, rub the sleep out of my eyes and check my email. When I'm on the computer, if I feel as though I'm being idle, I go check my email. When I'm doing homework, I write two words and check my email. I think it's a symptom of the RotaryVirus. 

I'm also still browsing towns/cities for schools and then reading their translated website whenever I have fifteen free minutes. I think I've gone through about a quarter or so of the towns in my distrikt that have clubs. There are some really crazy awesome ones. There are a couple towns, though, where the only gymnasium I can find is a sportsgymnasium. I'm really, really hoping that if I'm in that town, there's another school, or that I'm just not in that town. I'm not exactly an athlete....

Oh!! And I found (thanks to a friend, muchas gracias, Tom!!) a German hip-hop/generally awesome artist. Here's my favorite of his songs. You can't just listen, though. You MUST see the dancing snare drummers. Who are awesome. 

So yeah. There's my early-morning-thanks-to-crazy-RYES-dream post. Enjoy it, all. Hopefully it won't happen again until I get an email from my host family in the early morning. :) And if I don't get back here before, Happy Memorial Day to all you Americans. :)

Rotary is so epic, though....

Yes. It is. For all the drama, rotary is epic. I love rotary. So much.

I'm talking to a friend from my district as I write this. We're just going on and on and on about how amazing and epic and wonderful and irritating Rotary Exchange is.

"

7:33pm

Yeah....rotary is....

like a virus.

It eats away at you until there's nothing left.

Define?

I agree

It seems like it is my life now, I can't avoid it

can't think about anything else.

can't do anything that will have any bearing on anything else.

Rotary is life.

I both love it and hate it at the same time

"

I already have described the Rotaryvirus. But...that's really what it is. It's a wonderful virus, one that every RYES (Rotary Youth Exchange Student) loves, and really doesn't want to get rid of, but..it's a virus nonetheless.  I can't think about school during school anymore. I can't see anything the same way. 

Proof? This morning, I came out of my room wearing a skirt and a blouse (dressed up for a Rotary luncheon. I love you Westfield-Mayvillers!!), with my backpack on, my laptop bag on, and a bag with jeans and my boots so I could shoot at trap tonight. As I was walking out, I thought to myself, "Hmmm...I feel like a RYES. This time next year, I'll be dressed up for a Rotary meeting after school, thus the backpack and laptop, going to hang out with friends after the meeting, thus the jeans, and...whoah. I just feel like a RYES." I've been having thoughts like that a lot lately. It seems like everything is putting me in a mindset for next year. 

This virus gets to ALL of us. Outbounds, I know you've got it. Inbounds, you obviously have it, I mean...you're on exchange. Rotex, I'm so sorry that you can't be in my position right now, because I know you miss it. For everything that scares me half to death, for everything that irritates me about where I am in my exchange right now, it's the best feeling in the world. The feeling of the knowledge that in less than 80 days, I'll be in a foreign country, learning a different language, being part of a rich and awesome culture....just blows my mind. Even when I let myself think about the things that could go wrong, the things that could make the experience even the slightest bit less than amazing, I can't not be excited, because after about thirty seconds of thinking about the bad things, the good things come flooding in. 

When I think about how I spent two months researching Distrikt 1860 and then found out that I'm going to Distrikt 1940 and how...sad I felt, I think about the fact that I had Ben Mau's amazing blog ( go read it.) to tell me all about my new distrikt. Now I know that I'll be going to Paris (!!!!) and that there's an orientation in Neureppin. So even if I'm sad that I spent two months on 1860 and then had to switch, I think about the fact that even without the research, I know something about 1940. I think about Berlin (!!!!) and how even if I'm not in Berlin, I'll be able to go to Berlin. I think about the fact that I'm not as close to Geneva and the CERN Large Hadron Collider as 1860, I'm still about twenty hours closer to it in 1940 than I am now. There's plenty about this virus to love. 

I love this RotaryVirus. Thank you so much, Rotary, for giving it to me.

Orange, anyone?

As in...I'm going to peel. I have a sunburn. An irritating one that will probably be aggravated tomorrow when I'm at Darien Lake for the entire day. Ah well.

Nothing new to report about where I'm going in 79 days. Between 79 and 86 days from now, I will be getting on a plane and going....somewhere in distrikt 1940. I just wish I knew where.


Don't we all just want to know? Know where, when, how, who, why? It's a philosophical thing, I'm sure. The desire to know. To..know.

So, go in search of knowledge. Go in search of explanations, of undeniable fact. Go in search of happiness and contentment, in search of your future and your destiny, go in search of your tomorrow.

Blerg

Nothing new. Except for these cupcakes that my best friend just sent me a picture of.

Noms

I really want them, but I realize that I wouldn't be able to eat them, they're so darn adorable.

Plodding Along....

Amazing weekend with my favorite peeps from all over the state. I love History Club Conventions. :) I noticed that the local Rotary clubs met in the hotel we had our convention in, so I left one of my business cards with the front desk. :) Welcome to my blog, Owego Rotary Club[s]!!!

But now the thing I was really looking forward to is over, and I have a month left of school before the Bike Trek, and I have no more news about where I'll be getting off a plane in less than three months.

Rotary makes it really hard to think about anything but Rotary. It's like....a...virus. A really wonderful virus that makes its way into one's system and...will not, for anything, get out. On the way home today, I thought about having my computer again and being able to go online and check my email. The reason I wanted to check my email? So I could see if I'd gotten anything from Friedrich. I hadn't. :( I haven't. :(

All you outbounds out there....keep strong. All you inbounds....stop laughing at me. :P

Change of Plans.

Well. Just had an absolutely amazing weekend with all the inbounds and outbounds from District 7090 at the Jamestown weekend. Loads of fun meeting kids from the other Temagami weekend. It was fantastic. I knew where I was going, I had lots of friends, I met lots of new people. Told good stories, heard good stories, got my business cards (my picture is fantastic.), exchanged business cards. All was well.

And then I got home and checked my email.

Friedrich,

Are you able at this time to provide us with Sarah’s first host family contact info? 

Dave,

Sarah will go to District 1940 which is Berlin and the larger surrounding. I will check with the District if they already have the host family appointed.

Friedrich

Yep. There it is.

I could be going to Berlin. Me. In Berlin. With three million other people. Yeah. Three million. Me. From little old cowtown. Kinda...scary. 

But the distrikt is HUGE. Like...huge. I'm talking 360 kilometers north-south, 250 kilometers east-west. I could be on the Baltic Sea, for Pete's sake. 

I guess...the biggest thing is how I'm feeling right now. I'm utterly wiped out from this weekend. And it's getting to me, because I was tired when I got home and now I have all this...insanity, overwhelming crazy going down and it's...exhausting. The thought of me in Berlin is...exciting. Scary, but exciting. I called my cousin and had a little freak-out session. The Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate, seeing the Magic Flute in Berlin, hearing Wagner in Berlin...soooooo much that could be. 

But then there's also the fact that I could be in a small town, too.

In any case..I feel sort of...homeless. I did all of that research for distrikt 1860 and now everything's changed. I don't know nearly enough about my new Distrikt. It's so much bigger. I was thinking I was going to be in the Southwestern part of the country, now I'm going to the Northeastern part. My biggest city was going to be Mannheim, but my new biggest city is 11.7 times that size. There's just a slight difference there. 

And there's a little bit of a sense of loss, too. I found the other day that the Sabres are playing Mannheim in Mannheim in October. How cool would it have been, if I were living in Mannheim and went to see my homehome hockey team play my hosthome's hockey team? I could have been in the city where Gutenberg invented the printing press. I wanted to go to Idar-Oberstein. Of course, I could still do all of these things, but it's not as likely as it was. Idar is 930 kilometers from my eastern-most club in distrikt 1940. 

Loss and homelessness....it's scary. I know I'm not really homeless, but...going from knowing everything I could find about my distrikt to knowing pretty much nothing is...the equivalent of homelessness in this waiting game. Right now, that's what it is. A waiting game. And I don't have much patience. It's...not cool.

Until later, amigos.