Hey, I'm Stephanie! I live in Michigan, I'm a sophmore in high school, and I was recently accepted to be a foreign exchange student next year through Rotary. :)
I decided to start blogging during the year leading up to my exchange, so I can post about the process of being an exchange student with Rotary, everywhere from sponsor clubs and interviews to orientations and country placements, as well as everything in between.
It all started for me in the beginning of my eighth grade year, when I saw an advertisement for ActionQuest summer programs on youtube. I spent forever on their website in awe thinking that their summer programs were the coolest thing in the world, only for my dreams to come crashing down when I realized that they would cost a teeny bit more than I got in my allowance. I spent awhile longer online looking for a cheaper alternative, and...voila! I found out that there were actually really neat year long programs for high school students to live with another family and attend school in another country, and I was sold. I've always been extremely excited to learn and help around the world, and this experience would give me the opportunity to do both.
It wasn't exactly easy to find a great program at first, but after alot of online searching, I found Rotary, and I knew that it was by far the best program. After getting my dad on board and sending out dozens of e-mails to a bunch different potential sponsor clubs in my area (since my city doesn't have a Rotary Club), I got a response from my now sponsor club, and my club interview happened that weekend. It was very relaxed. My dad and I met with my sponsor club's President and YEO, and we had lunch at a nearby National Coney Island. They were extremely nice, and I definitely shouldn't have been as nervous as I was. I then spent forever filling out the extensive Rotary application, which required four copies, and had the district interviews on November 10th.
The interviews weren't as relaxed this time, but, again, I shouldn't have been as worried as I was. There were around fifteen other applicants, and we each had to give a two minute speech about our families, ourselves, our communities, our sponsor clubs, and why we want to be exchange students, and then we waited for a few hours until our scheduled interview times. The committee interviewed both me and my parents, and I was interviewed first. I was taken into a small room with five interviewers sitting at a table (one was a past exchanger), and they went around the table three times taking turns asking me questions. I had prepared for all of the questions beforehand, except one, so the questions were pretty easy. The interview is honestly a bit of blur for me because I was so nervous, but I was mostly asked questions about situations in my host country, such as "How would you go about making friends in your host country?" or "What would you do if your host sibling hated you because you were taking away their friends and their attention from their parents?" They also asked questions about what I hoped to gain from my exchange, my reactions to challenges the inbound students are facing after speaking with them, and the question I had absolutely NO idea how to answer, "How would you feel if you were placed in a country where women were treated as inferior to men?" I sort of mumbled my way through that one, and ended somewhere along the lines of "That's a good question, I don't know." I walked away feeling fairly confident, though, because I met a rebound who said that our district usually accepts a lot of people, which is something that I didn't know beforehand. I then got my acceptance call two days later on Monday, and it felt like all of my hard work had finally paid off and a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. :)
I should be finding out my country around mid-January! The district that I'm in had us submit our top ten choices, and mine were: Spain, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria. I can't wait to find out my country, and I would love to go pretty much anywhere. I would have the same amount of excitement to get my last choice as I would to get my first choice.
My next post should be around the time that I find out my country placement. Two more months, woo!
Until next time,
Stephanie
