16 Days

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of excitement in the youth exchange world.


I finally received my visa from the Italian consulate, and immediately began to figure out a departure date. Most RYE students going to Italy leave sometime in the first two weeks of September. I knew that I wanted to get to Italy as soon as possible so that I would have time to settle in before school starts, and I got lucky. I will be departing from the San Francisco International Airport bright and early at 7:00 AM on September 2. This means that my family and I will drive to San Francisco on September 1st and spend the night as it is a 5-6 hour drive. I will arrive in Trieste, Italy on September 3 at around 4:00 in the afternoon. The travel time isn't quite as long as it seems since I will be ending up in a time zone which is 9 hours ahead of California, but it will still be a full 24 hours+ of traveling, not to mention the traveling just to get to the airport ;).

And so there we have it. 16 days. I expected to be freaking out at this point, and I wasn't wrong, but what I didn't expect is that I am actually more happy excited than I am terrified excited. Now before you go questioning whether I should actually be going on exchange based on that last statement, please do remember that I am going to a country where I will have a very limited ability to communicate verbally and I don't know the people or culture. I think that I am allowed to be a little bit terrified at some points---but for now it is great to be riding a high of excitement.


In other RYE news, my rotary club's 2015-2016 inbound Sophia from Sweden arrived several days ago. Sophia and I had met over Facebook and Skype, and it was so much fun to meet her in person at the airport at midnight. The excitement of getting to know her and anticipating her arrival was a great distraction from the lengthy period of time waiting for my visa and departure date. While meeting Sophia at the airport, I also got to meet another inbound who is now staying in Eureka, Mia from Denmark.

A wonderful airport welcome for Sophia! Mia is the first person on the left in a pin-adorned blazer. Next to her is Sophia(also in her blazer), and next to Sophia is me being a terrible representative of youth exchange without my blazer...haha.

Hopefully there will be a few more updates before I depart, as the last few weeks will be filled with exchange related events and many, many bittersweet goodbyes.

On that note, Arrivederci, e a presto!