Your Mountain is Waiting...So get on your way!

I am the type of person who always has a countdown for something, whether it is the weekend, summer, the Fourth of July, information from the host family, or even an anticipated movie, I like having something to look forward to. It keeps me excited for the future and maintaining a positive outlook. Today my only countdown is 11, and that is how many days I have until I fly to Denmark.

Wow, so much has happened in the last two months. So many things ended, and there were a lot of bittersweet goodbyes. I am a very involved dancer in my town of Crested Butte, I help to teach little kid dance classes and I take six dance classes myself. Every year in May there is a big dance show that is usually the highlight of my year. This year, because I was leaving, at the beginning of the show the directors brought me and another girl who is going to college out in front of the audience to say goodbye and give us flowers. On the last night some of my dear dance friends were crying and it took everything I had not to cry myself. During the bows in the last show I definitely let more then a few tears go. I was sad that I would be missing my dance school that I know and love, but happy that I would be living in Europe. That was one of those defining moments when living in Denmark became a real idea, and I did not know what to do with my feelings except cry. 

School ended after that, and it really hit me that I would be an exchange student. I would not go back into my high school until I was a senior. With the stress of school out of my way, I could really start focusing on Danish and preparing for my exchange, and that is what I did.

Some exciting information FINALLY came my way during these last two months. The first email I got was in school, my district governor of rotary club in Denmark emailed me in the middle of video productions class and told me I would be somewhere in district 1480. This is the island of Zealand and parts of the southern islands and Fyn. I was so excited, my host country had not forgotten about me. Sometime that same week I also got an email from my counselor in my hosting rotary club of Sorø, Denmark. He emailed me and told me I would be living in Sorø, a small town of 7000 people on the Island of Zealand, about a half hour away from Copenhagen by train. Then in broken English he wrote: “I have enrolled you in Sorø Akademi Skole, google it” . And that is exactly what I did, and almost had a heart attack. The school looks like a castle, is on a lake, and was founded in the 1500’s. I ended my last year of American school until senior year still not having heard from my host family, and all I did was stalk my adorable little town on google earth.

Then I heard from Hanne Nobel, my first host mom. The email was titled “Hi from your host family in Denmark”, and I swear, an email has never taken longer to load in my entire life. My first host family (I will have 3-4 during my year abroad) has two boys, age 11 and 14, two dogs, and are pig farmers who live less than two miles away from Sorø Akademi out in the gorgeous Danish countryside. I have been exchanging emails with her for the past month and she told me that the dance school in Sorø just won a contest, but she does not know the details. I honestly cannot thank Rotary enough for putting me in a town with dance. They take the interests of the students into consideration when finding a host city, and I know that the 8000 2011/2012 RYE students appreciate it. After that I got my guarantee form, which is like my official acceptance into Denmark, and then my visa. There was no other paperwork to wait for, and no reason to obsessively check my email.

                                                This is my amazing school, Sorø Akademi

                                                These are the Nobels, my first host family

This is the Nobel's house last winter. They are farmers so I am pretty sure that the entire house is not  for humans.

About a week ago, I received my itinerary via email from my travel agent. It was probably the most exciting email out of all the exciting emails over the last two months. I will be leaving on August 6^th, at 11:15am, out of DIA. I will have a thirteen hour flight, with a quick stop in Houston, arriving at 8:30am in Amsterdam. I will then catch a 10:15am flight to Copenhagen, and will finally be in my new home country.

I have no other information to wait for. I have no other countdown besides the big scary one that I’ve been counting since Christmas Eve. The reality of me leaving has hit me in waves, and now that I know everything that I need to know for my departure, I don’t think I will be hit by it anymore until I actually arrive in Denmark. Now the feelings of fear, worry, and anxiety are starting to set in. This is no longer a dream that will help me get through the tough days, this is really going to be my life in 11 days. Even typing this I cannot imagine what it is going to be like. It still feels like a dream that is too incredible, so it must not be true. I think the next time you will be hearing from me I will have flown to Denmark.

You’re off to Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting,

So…get on your way.
-Dr. Suess 

Step One, Two, and Three

Hi!
So I don't know if anybody actually reads these, but I'd figure that this is something worth being put on the Internet. My name is Sarah Harper-Johnston, I was born in Los Angeles and then raised in Boston and I live in Crested Butte, a VERY small ski town in the middle of the Rocky Mountains in gorgeous Colorado. I am sixteen years old and a Sophomore in a High School with only 120 kids. In October 2010 I decided to make the most difficult decision of my life and apply to be a Rotary Exchange Student. A lot of kids on the exchange write a blog, so this is where I will explain everything that I am going through while abroad. This first super long post is all about how somebody becomes an exchange student and everything that I am thinking now, getting ready to leave.

Rotary Club is a worldwide organization that has the largest and best exchange program. The process to being accepted is long, hard, stressful, but really satisfying (if you get in..) in the long run. Because of me living in such a small town, I only had to pick up an application and start filling it out. Most kids have to meet with their Rotary Club before they even get the application. The application is about ten pages long and you have to get medical records, dental records, school transcripts, teacher recommendations, parents recommendations, take a few pictures of your life, write an essay, and sign everything in BLUE ink. Me being a stress case, I was so overwhelmed I almost didn't apply. But I decided to just suck it up and do it, because if I don't, I will regret it for the rest of my life. It was definitely worth it in the long run.

After filling out the application, all of the candidates (people who are applying for the exchange) must go on an interview weekend. There were 38 of us applying and only 28 got accepted, so you could feel the tension. We all had to impress the inbounders (these are foreign kids who are exchange students in Colorado) because they helped to make the decision weather we could handle living in their country or not. The inbounders were some of the funnest people I had ever met, so I made instant friends. All of the candidates clicked because we all had the desire to be in this program, and I knew driving home that I had just made some lifelong friends. All the candidates had to be interviewed twice, our parents interviewed once, and give an impromptu speech. We learned about the twenty countries we could go to from kids who had went there and were from there. The last night we filled out a "passport". We would put the top four countries we wanted to go to the two we did not want to go to. My mom told me I could only go to Europe for safety reasons, so she and I sat down at a Chile's and made the hardest decision of my life. In the end I came up with France, Spain, Italy, and then Denmark. The weekend came to an end and I just had a feeling that I had been accepted and knew that if I was not, I would be devastated. Here is a picture of some of the candidates, inbounds, and rebounds.  

We were supposed to get our acceptance letter at the end of the week before Christmas break, so the countdown started. Naturally, being the modern day teens that we are, we all turned to facebook and texting and talked to each other constantly. We counted down the days, even the hours until the letter that will change our life forever would come in the mail. None of our friends from our hometown really understood what we were waiting on or how incredible this program is so that is why I think we all became such good friends. The letters came a week late around Christmas Eve. It was the longest three weeks of my life. I was at my Dad's house in California when my Mom called the house and said that my letter had finally come in the mail. She told me that I was going to Denmark next year and I was in shock. I didn't scream or cry, I just kinda sat down on the couch and picked up my phone. I called all my close friends from the exchange, then called an inbound from Denmark and told him I was going to his country, I posted it on facbeook, and called my cousins and friends. I smiled for three days straight. At interviews, the Rotarians always told us that the most important part of the program was learning the language, so I went out and bought Rosetta Stone and started the impossible task of learning Danish, which sounds like aliens arguing. I don't think it really started to sink in that I was going to be gone for a year until a few weeks after I got the news, and then I immediately got scared, but was still very excited. I started to count down the days until orientation, and then days until I would leave.

The next step in this whole process was Orientation Weekend. The candidates had now become outbounders and it was time for us to get the symbolic Rotary Youth Exchange Blazers and officially become exchange students. We all arrived on Friday in March and it was great to see these kids again. After a short presentation from the Rotarians about culture shock, all 28 of us went to Denny's and annoyed a waitress. Then about ten of us went to the pool until midnight. Getting up the next day at six was rough, but okay because we would get to nerd out all day about something we are so passionate about. We heard everything about what might happen next year, and what we need to prepare for. Each of us had to give a speech in the language of the country we are going to, and a speech about our hometown. I had practiced my Danish so I thought I did pretty well. Then I found out I pronounced 'I' wrong, so I am really not that good at Danish. They really stressed to us how important learning the language is. That Saturday night most of the outbounders went to the pool again, for like three hours straight. The later it got, the more people left for bed. At about one, there were only five of us left so we went outside with one of the outbounder's car keys trying to find her car. I eventually got to bed at two and had to get up at 6:30, so I was very tired. Sunday was our last day and the day of our blazer ceremony. They gave us cute little symbolic speeches and then told our parents to put on our blazers. We became official exchange students and my mom and little sister cried. Then about a million pictures were taken of us, and a million goodbyes were said. It was kinda sad knowing that there was not going to be another exchange weekend and that we probably were not going to see each other until after our year abroad. That orientation weekend was one of the best weekends of my entire life. Here are all of the outbounds in our cute little rotary blazers with flags of where we are going.

The next stage of the exchange program, the one I am still stuck in now, is waiting. I do not know where in Denmark I am going and it is driving me crazy. I talk almost constantly with the other rotary kids. I work on my Danish, but it is a very tough language so I am not doing it as much as I should be. I found a Danish teacher, but I haven't really started lessons with her just yet. I am on the constant look-out for pins or anything to decorate my blazer with. I have only three more months until I leave. It is crazy because it feels like just yesterday that I was applying. I have already finished my visa application and I have to wait for that too. So that is how one becomes a RYE student, or a soon to be RYE student. The thing about Rotary Youth Exchange is that they really call us ambassadors, and have us interact with people our age. I love that because I really have already made some great friends with the outbounders. From what I have learned and heard about from other exchange students, this program is just amazing. It is a life-changing experience that students keep with them forever. Woo hoo exchange!!!