Two Weeks Before Exchange

The day I have been looking forward to for a long time now, is only less than two weeks away! On September 2nd, 2017 I will be leaving Fort Collins, Colorado to go to Crema, Italy for an entire year through Rotary International. Being that it is only two weeks away, I'm still not in the mindset of leaving yet, as I am currently more focused on worrying about taking the SAT before I leave and learning Italian through Rosetta Stone. On my year abroad, I will be staying with three different host families and attending an Italian language high school (Liceo Linguistico) where I will have to come out of my comfort zone and make new friends. For the past few weeks now, I have been in contact with some of the other exchange students going to Italy via Whatsapp and Snapchat. All of us are bonding over what we are most apprehensive about in regards to spending a whole year in Italy. Here's what we are all mostly nervous about...
  • Speaking Italian, and only Italian
  • Leaving our friends and family behind
  • Meeting our host families
  • Making new friends
  • Going to an Italian high school
  • Homesickness
  • And my favorite, eating too much lovely Italian food and gaining too much weight  
Although we are all very nervous about all these things, I am also looking forward to experiencing them as well (except for the last one.) With only two weeks left, I have so much to look forward to, like...
  • Living in a whole new country with a whole new life
  • Seeing how I mature over the next ten months
  • Trying Italian food, just not too much of it 😂
  • Being done with American high school
  • Becoming fluent in Italian by the time I come back from exchange
  • Living with my host families
  • Seeing how different the Italian lifestyle is 
  • Traveling around Europe at the end of my trip


Image result for crema italy
Crema, Italy

Here's Crema on a map

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Day of My New Life

Image
On September 4th, I arrived in Italy at the Bergamo Orio al Serio Aiport, after a long lay over in Munich. I was originally scheduled for a seven hour layover, but six hours into my layover, I decided to check my flight status,  only to see that it said "Flight Canceled!" I went up to the Lufthansa service desk and was given a flight the morning after and a hotel nearby. The next day, I had the most amazing flight ever from Munich to Bergamo. The flight was at 6:30 in the morning, so I got to watch the sunrise on the airplane on a foggy morning over the Alps. If it wasn't for my flight being cancelled, I never would have had the wonderful experience arriving in my host country with such a lovely welcoming! When I landed in Italy, we flew past Lake Iseo (One of the lakes in the Italian Lake District) and the Italian Alps. I got off the plane, gathered my bags, and confidently walked out the doors to be greeted by my host family. They were speaking very fast Italian to me,
Read more

About Me

Ciao! My name is Austen Brodeen, I am 17 years old, and I'm currently a Rotary Youth Exchange student from Fort Collins, Colorado, outbound to Crema, Italy! Coming from a German family and having the amazing opportunities to experience Germany and German culture, I wanted to expand my horizons and immerse myself into another culture, one completely different than Germany, so I decided to go to Italy on a month long exchange program to Italy back in 2015. It was in just that month alone when I absolutely fell in love with Italy and grew a long lasting fascination with the culture. After my short term exchange, I eventually convinced my parents to allow me to apply for a year long high school exchange program to Italy, which took a while to do, but it was eventually a success! Back in December 2016, I had my Rotary Youth Exchange District interview in Cheyenne, WY, where I was officially accepted onto the program! Going to Italy for my senior year meant that I had to graduate a whole
Read more