The Final Countdown Begins

Hey everyone, so this is my first blog post and I'm very new at posting stuff like this so bear with me while I get the hang of it. I'll begin by telling everyone that I got accepted on a Rotary Youth Exchange to Germany! This came as a complete shock to me, as I wasn't expecting to be accepted, but I am so happy that I was. Basically, the Rotary Exchange enables me to live for a year in a foreign country, attend school, absorb the culture, learn the language and experience things that we have never imagined. So as you can tell I am beyond excited to be able to experience all of these things.

My trip to Germany is now, 51 days away and it is starting to feel a lot more real. At the moment I have extremely mixed feelings about it. One minute I feel extremely nervous and the next I feel so excited about the whole journey. I just can't stop thinking about the fact that hopefully I will become fluent in German (I really hope so), make heaps of new friends and also be a lot richer through different experiences. I really hope that this trip will help me to take more responsibility for myself through making decisions and learning along the way. 

I suppose I should begin with what I know about Germany already:

- On 10 January 2017 I will be travelling to Auckland with Alex (also from Wakatipu High School - going to France) and Harry (from Invercargill - also having an exchange in Germany). In Auckland   we will meet the rest of the NZ Rotary Students also going on exchanges to European countries. We will then fly to Los Angeles where will stay three nights, visiting attractions such as Disneyland and Universal Studios. I am really looking forward to this part of the trip, just getting to chill out and get to know the other Rotary people better while having tonnes of fun!! While in Los Angeles we will also meet with the local Rotary Club.

- I will be living in Landau, Germany. Landau is located in the south west of Germany about one hours drive from Frankfurt and pretty close to the French border. Landau is considered a small town and has around 40,000 people living there. Landau is very famous for it's wine production, which is very similar to my home town, Queenstown! As soon as I found out I was going to be living in Landau, I hit the web and looked at photos and it looked as though I was in a dream, it is so beautiful!!

Landau's very cute city centre!!

Streets of Landau 

- On the 12th of November 2016 I had my initial contact with my first host family in Germany, and they all are really lovely. My host mum, Katja, is currently living alone but I will have contact and will catch up with the rest of her family throughout my stay. Once I got in contact with Katja we automatically clicked! We are interested in a lot of the same things which is very nice - including running, reading, cooking, tramping and hanging out with friends. Katja has two children who I have also contacted. Johannes, her son, is seventeen- the same age as me - which is awesome! He is also on a Rotary Youth Exchange this year, living in Chile. The other day we were talking about his trip and I got to see some of his photos and it looks totally amazing!! Lisa, is twenty-four has recently moved away from Landau in order to go to university in Mainz (which is only one hour away) which is pretty cool too!

Lisa (my new host sister) , Lisa's boy-friend Fabian, Dany (Katja's sister) , Werner, Gui (Katja's next Rotary student from Brazil, Katja (my new host Mum), Marvin (Eleni's boy-friend) and Eleni ( Dany's youngest daughter). My host brother Johannes is missing from the photo.

- I mentioned to Katja, that in order to complete the community service element for my Duke of Edinburgh Gold award I would need to find some community work to complete throughout the year. I mentioned that the local Landau Zoo would be an awesome place to do some volunteering, however I thought that I may have to look further as I had no idea whether this would actually work out. However, in a matter of days Katja got back to me saying that there would be potential for me to do some work in the zoo, as she knew someone who got in contact with the zoo director. This blew my mind. Things that I never thought would be possible are coming true before I have even arrived in Germany. Here's the link to the website if you want to check it out (sorry it's in German) www.zoo-landau.de. 

- I should probably also mention about learning the German language  I have been trying hard to learn Deutsch since finding out that I was going to Germany but I always found myself putting it second to the rest of my school work that I had to get done. However, now that I am nearly finished exams, I hope that I will have a lot more time to practice and learn the language to have at least the basics under control by the time I arrive on the 14th of January 2017.

That's all for now-

Jasmine x