Orientation #2

Hello all! Sorry it has been so long since my last post, but there hasn't been much worth posting about except the orientation from last weekend (March 23). I'm still anxiously waiting to find out my host club so I know where in Ecuador I'll be staying, which means that I'm constantly checking my email and, therefore, constantly being disappointed. But, on the bright side, I received information from my travel agent at It's Your World Travel and set up an account on the travel agency's website, which means I can now start filling out the required paperwork in order to obtain my visa. :) Also, the website said that that I'm expected to arrive in Ecuador on August 21, which means that I leave in approximately four months and 20 days! It feels like just yesterday that I found out about Rotary and was accepted into the program, so it feels surreal that I leave next season. (I know no one uses the phrase "next season," but it makes it sound really close, which it is :P) It's crazy and exciting at the same time.

Okay, now the orientation. :) It took place in Ypsilanti at the Ypsilanti Free Methodist Church and included another district, 6600. The main focus of this orientation was to get familiar with the travel agency we are working with and its procedures, so a representative from It's Your World Travel spoke for the majority of the day. Most of it was dry facts that I already knew, but he told a few funny stories and shared some country specific information which was nice.  I was told that it would be a bit more difficult to get my visa than students going to most other countries because I had a lot of specific paperwork to fill out, but that's okay because Ecuador's worth it. ;) Then, a member from my district's "committee" spoke for around an hour about cultural differences that we may notice while we are gone, and we started by comparing the differences between the two countries in my district, the USA and Canada. One of the bigger differences people noticed was definitely the dialect (Canadians say "ay" and "aboot" :P). Then, another member of the district committee gave a funny presentation about the stages that exchange students normally go through throughout their year abroad. Lunch was somewhere in between all of that, which was fun because I sat with a couple of the other outbounds that I haven't seen since the last orientation. Then, a woman from my district briefly spoke to us about the district conference, which is coming up on April 27 in Rochester, Mi. All of the inbounds and outbounds will be there, and it sounds like it will be fun. After that, there won't be anymore events or orientations until the last orientation from July 12-14 in Westerville, Ohio, which will include all of the districts in Ohio-Erie. 

Lately I've been thinking about beginning video blogs to post here and on youtube occasionally in place of  regular blog entries, because from reading other exchange blogs, I've noticed that most exchange students get too busy to blog while they are in their host countries, and I think vlogs will be a quicker alternative to blogs when I don't have much time. I'll mostly do the vlogs while I'm in Ecuador, but I'll probably do one or two while I'm here first. :)

Until next time (which will either be after the district conference or when I find out my host club!),

Stephanie