Hedersleben

Airplane and Travel

The trip across the Atlantic was awesome. I’ve never been in such a big plane, or such a cool one. Each seat had its own screen and you could watch really good movies. I ended up watching “The Avengers” and “Hunger Games,” which I found really exciting because those aren’t even on DVD yet. I think. The airline provided a pillow and a blanket (how kind..) but sleeping was a no-go. I tried, but it didn’t work. We (YFU students in a group) left DC at 3:00pm and about 7 hours later we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany at 5am (German time). We found our checked bags and got a stamp at customs. After walking across what I deemed to be the entire Frankfurt airport to get to the bus that would take us to the language camp in Hedersleben, I started to feel the jetlag… We had to wait for the AFS students to arrive, so we spent about 7 hours wandering around the airport. It was highly amusing trying to speak German to the workers (who knew English anyways…) to buy breakfast. During those 7 hours, I took a 2 hour nap, which helped me get through the day. Once the AFS kids arrived, we left, but ended up stopping about an hour into our trip because 2 girls had been left at the airport and their taxi needed to catch up with us. Oops. When I wasn’t nodding off, I really enjoyed the countryside. It was a little reminiscent of Kansas farmlands, with corn and other crops, but with a lot more hills, more trees, more wildflowers, more green, and some small mountains. Basically… a lot prettier. What made this beautiful landscape even cooler was that you could see these quaint, very obviously German, tiny towns in the hills. Adorable.

Hedersleben

Hedersleben is definitely among those adorable towns. I think I heard that there are about 1,000 inhabitants, and its history can date back to the 900s (I’m fairly sure…) At least the foundations of the monastery we are staying at (Kloster St. Gertrudis) date back to 939-ish. There is a lot of cobblestone, and some of the much (obviously) older buildings are brick, but generally all the houses are “stereotypical” German houses, with red roofs and light colored walls and flowers in the windows. I can’t get over how cute it all is. Our typical day is breakfast 8-9am, 3 hours of German study, lunch, an hour devoted to doing our “homework” or reading/studying/practicing German, then an hour of free time (when we are allowed to go into town), at 3pm we have 3 more hours of German class, dinner, at 7 we watch a short news segment called “Heute” (most of which goes over my head… they talk so fast!), a teacher reads to us a bit of Mark Twain’s The Awful German Language for laughs, and bedtime is 10:30. Because I have taken 4 years of German, I am in the highest level class, (with kids who have studied 4-6 years) and our teachers (Gerd und Traudel) expect us to only speak German and they only speak German to us unless we ask what they said. It is very hard, but I will definitely improve faster this way… If they annunciate well, I typically understand them, though my problem is I am not very comfortable speaking German. Ha, I’ll get over that soon enough, I suppose. In short, I’ve really enjoyed things these first few days in Germany. Especially the food. (Though I must admit, there have been a few odd foods). I have determined that I am going to end up very fat. Cake and tea/coffee time is my favorite because the cake is ridiculously delicious.

In explanation

The Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange is basically a scholarship through the US and German governments that high school students can apply for to exchange and live with a host family.

I first heard about CYBX in German class forever ago, and I immediately really, really, really wanted to do it; though, it wasn't until my senior year in high school that I finally persuaded my parents to let me apply.

The application process is long... strenuous... bordering on ridiculous... but understandable. There are about 250 students who receive the scholarship from (I'm guessing) at least a thousand applicants, so they need to do a lot of weeding out. My advice for those who are going to apply: get it done early so you don't have to rush it (there is a lot of stuff you need to put together); get a lot of feedback on the essay portions from everyone (consider what you're writing from the organization's view and what they're looking for); don't give up!

When I applied, the first application was due around the middle of December, but they pushed back the deadline so it was due in January. And thus began the waiting... waiting... waiting... Next came an email saying I am a "Formal Candidate," which required the second application and a trip to Denver during Spring Break for interviews and stuff. I was slightly devastated because I had an orchestra trip planned and paid for on the exact same days, but luckily they do phone interviews. Mine was set for February 24th. Despite this, I was certain that my chances of being accepted had just been murdered by my orchestra teacher. If you end up not being able to go to Denver (it's usually there), do not despair (like I did..). There is hope! Do as well as you can on the second application and get it in ASAP. The interview wasn't bad: the only question that threw me for a bit of a loop was "If you could only take one thing, what would it be?" because I didn't want to sound dumb or overly-attached. My general feeling of the interview was bad: I thought I did terrible, and it didn't help that I didn't answer the last question very well (pretty much not at all) because an ear infection I had randomly decided to start bleeding and I was a little distracted.

Three days later I got an email saying I was chosen as an alternate for the scholarship, which just about crushed my soul. I was convinced that it was a lost cause, and so started planning for college. Though, lo and behold, on April 5th I received an email saying I was promoted to "semi-finalist"! Woo! That meant my second application would get sent to the German side of the program and if they accepted me, I would then be a FINALIST! It took about 3 weeks to find that out :)

Since then has been all the passport-getting, German-studying, information-getting, research-doing, and people-meeting stuff. Still waiting to know about host family and such. So here I am now, feeling vaguely ridiculous writing a blog, on the verge of something huge and exciting, and with no idea what to expect.  I never anticipated getting this far :P A blog just seemed the easiest way to let people know what I've been up to and thinking, so I'll do what I can to update it as often as possible. I'm terrible at making up names, so I asked around and Seth Porter gave me the idea. Despite its nerdy reference to Lord of the Rings, I thought it was really fitting. :)