on saturday, i had the rotary short term youth exchange district conference/meeting thing. it involved all the outbounds and inbounds from the two SA rotary districts, and associated counsellors, random rotary people, and parents. it was a day of lectures, listening to some quite interesting talks on things ranging from home sickness, travel itineraries, to personal safety, and "what is rotary" style things. the travel and homesickness talks were the most interesting, especially hearing things from the "rebounders" ie people who have already gone on exchange, and come back home. that was definitely the most interesting thing about that day, hearing about other people's experiences.
also, i found out where the other people were going to. a significant majority (ie 90%) were going to Europe, with only me, and two other rural girls (one to america, and one to brazil) not going to europe. out of the people going to europe, most were going to scandinavia, with the rest dotted around germany (popular) switzerland, belgium and france (only 1 or two each). I, on the other hand, am braving it in the only asian country at all! :) The other outbounds and inbounds are all really nice, and i've made fb friends with some of them already! i can't wait to spend more time with some of them, it'll be great! :)
we heard a talk from a guy called Brad who had been to Japan in 2007, where he had a great time, but also some difficulties. mum, dad and my counsellor had a talk with his mum, where she detailed some of the problems that he faced. When he first arrived, for about 5-6 months, he wasn't allowed to have a mobile phone, which i felt to be pretty weird. Apparently, the boy that was at the district before he was, was very rowdy, and as such, they think rotary was trying to clamp down on brad before he could do anything out of line, even before they realised what kind of person he was: a nice, easy going, hard studying honorary student. after a bit of cerfuffling, they eventually allowed him a phone, but there were still some other issues.
i was also told by his mum that apparently, for all of last year, Brad, and my own japanese district, have banned all exchange students from having a mobile phone at all. so, i used my facebook contacts to check out whether that was the case, and apparently, it's not anymore, which is good! haha
I also found out that i'm going on the 23rd of January, and that i'll be going into Singapore or Kuala Lumpur and then onto Nagoya airport. I was having a look this morning with mum, and we found that Malaysia doesn't go into Nagoya, but Singapore does, so it looks like I'll be going Adelaide>singapore>nagoya on the saturday, 23rd of january, which is only 138 days and 10 hours away! ahh!! i'm really excited!
anyway, this is a really long post, so i better get to bed!
night/morning! :)
ps music wise: i've got 4 and a half hours of music, after raiding my radiohead collection, which added quite significantly to my playlist! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment