School :)

Hi All :)
Well, I guess I'll just start this with saying that so much has happened these last two or three weeks in regards to school that I don't even know where to begin. So I guess I'll just start at the begining :) (Makes sense right?)
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So, it turns out that on the first day of school in Poland everyone wheres white on black....guess who found that out at 10:00 the night before school started! So, I wore a bright blue top with a black skirt just to make it painfully obvious that I was a foreigner...no actually, I just didn't have any other dress shirts except the bright blue one. My host sister came with me to help me find my way around (She's in university right now, so she wasn't in school at the time). I'm really glad she came with me because I would have been terrified otherwise. I got there and met my teachers, the two that are in charge of the class I'm in are very nice to me :) The kids in my class are all very nice too :) I was put in the IB class so they all speak very good English which is nice because I can talk with them :) They have all been very welcoming, and I am so glad that I was put in class 2F.
School is very different here, all of the kids are broken up into classes (mine has 35 kids in it I think) and then each class has a different set of classes given in a schedule. You then have to look at the schedule and see what time the classes you signed up for are at. Here you don't always start at the same time, and you get to go home after your last class is done, regardless of if its noon or 5:30. I'm taking Geography, History, Math, TOK, English, Polish, French, and Computer Science. Also, they don't happen every day. I think the worst part is that on Monday I am in school from 7:30-17:30 which is a bit rough, and I have to wake up super duper early to make it to school at 7:30 on Monday, Tuesday,and Wednesday. But its a really interesting school and I really like everyone I've met there, so its ok :D
One interesting thing about the IB program is that all the material is in English so almost all of my classes are in English.Which is good, because I can participate in the class, but it also kind of stinks because its hard to try to learn Polish while I'm busy with homework and classes in English. But I'm really enjoying my school (except waking up super early).
I'll tell you of more adventures at school later, but I'm tired and there are a lot. So for now, I am off to bed. Thanks for reading :) I love you guys!

The Adventure of a Lakehouse :)

Hey guys!
So as promised, here are some stories from my time at the lake house I went to :)
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So the Sunday I got back from Krakow I ended up meeting a new family, the family I was going to be staying with for a week while we went up to there lake house which was in a little town 20 km outside of Poznan. I was a little nervous because I was super tired from my trip and I didn't know who I was staying with, but I had nothing to worry about :) The family I stayed with was awesome :D They were so nice, and I loved hanging out with them. The house we went to was beautiful and it was so peaceful in the area that it was a pleasure just to sit and look around. We didn't end up leaving for the lake house until Monday afternoon, so before we left I went with my host-sister to go to Stary Broward (I don't know if I spelled that right). Its a big shopping center, I've never seen so many stores in one place! I ended up buying the first Harry Potter Book in Polish on a whim, almost like a promise to myself that I would be able to read it by the time I leave.
The days at the lakehouse were relaxing and wonderful; we didn't have a schedule so I woke up when I wanted to and went to bed when I was tired. It was amazing. The lake was a short bike ride away, and it was amazing. I'll put a picture in so that you can see :) My little host-brother joined us on Tuesday and he was really awesome, but hanging out with him made me miss my little brother! My host-sister had a friend stay for a few nights too and we all hung out a bunch. We taught each other card games (I now know how to say all the Polish card names) and generally just had fun :) For a few of the days my host mother and I sat at the kitchen table and she was nice enough to let me read Harry Potter to her outloud so that I could work on my pronounciation :D (I wasn't very good at it...the first day we spent probably close to an hour or an hour and a half on it...I read a grand total of 3.5 pages....). I also went on a lot of walks because they had a dog (His name was Freddy, he was adorable:) ) It was a wonderful way to spend my last few days before school started and I am so glad that they let me go with them! I really, really like them and I hope we get to hang out again this year :D

Lake :)

More lake :)

On a walk :)

Malls, Walking up Hills, Churches, and Wall Licking, Oh What Fun :D

Sorry this post is so much later than the last one, I got super busy and long story short I haven’t had a chance to put this up until now.

So my last post was about the learning aspect of language camp, now let me tell you about the fun part:) (uh, I mean, not that five hours of class every day wasn’t fun…;) ). So we ended up doing a lot of ‘field trips’ in the evenings so I figured I’d just go in chronological order.

Tuesday-We went to the mall, which normally I wouldn’t be super excited about just because I am not the biggest fan of shopping, (I know, being a girl should mean I like shopping) but I was excited for this one because A. I would be able to hang out with some friends and B. There was wifi at the mall. Now, I know you all must be horrified that that is what I was excited about, but for the first few days of camp there was no wifi and I am going to have to admit I am a bit addicted to the internet. Honestly, I didn’t realize how addicted I was until this. I found myself going to turn my computer on so that I could send an email, catch up on news, or talk to a friend, only to realize that I was completely cut off. I think what made it harder for me was that not only was I cut off from things like facebook, or youtube, but by not having internet at camp I was effectively cut off from everything back home. I couldn’t email with my parents, or talk with friends, or just find comfort in something familiar. I still can’t decide if that was more or less painful than the constant reminder of home that the internet brings me.

Wednesday-Today was a national/church holiday in Poland and it was one of the only days where women are allowed into a really awesome monastery that was near the language camp. So naturally we all wanted to go see it. Well, it was absolutely gorgeous! I was stunned at the grandeur and I almost felt disrespectful for taking pictures, (Key word there is almost, because I did end up taking pictures).


Saturday-We saw more churches today! We went to the famous cathedral in Krakow, where all of the national heroes/presidents/royalty/anyone else super important are buried. It was huge! Also, it was stunningly opulent, and I felt so tiny in there. When not only is the building huge, but also old, so old that it has seen hundreds more years of history than you ever will, it has a tendency to make you feel tiny. Or at least that’s the way I felt. I remember looking up at one of the statues adorning a post and thinking “Wow, that statue has seen kingdoms rise and fall, it has seen history at its crossroads, how I envy it".

Sunday- I licked more walls today than probably healthy :) We went to the salt mines near Krakow and it was really fun. We walked down like 50 flights of stairs and the caverns down there are GINORMOUS!! Like there are three chapels, a few dining areas, a giant pool thing, a place to have a wedding or a ball or a fashion show; it was intense. And yes it really was a salt mine (my tongue can verify that). But don’t worry I didn’t get sick or anything:)



We did more stuff the next week, but none of it was super interesting. We went back to the mall and then there were some activities just in the little village the language camp was in. Oh, we did wishing lanterns! For those of you who are facebook friends with me, that’s my profile picture right now! That was a really, really awesome experience, to see all of our hopes and dreams float up into the night sky.

Anyway, I’ll tell you about the lake house next post :)

Passing the "Intensive Polish Curse"

My first two weeks here I was actually in the south of Poland, attending a language camp with all the other exchange students. So, before people get all freaked out that I called it a Curse instead of a Course, I would like to point out that on the certificate we all recived at the end of the course had a few typo’s. One was, apparently my name is now Rebeca, and instead of an “Intensive Polish Course” we all took a “Polish Curse”. But, curse or not, it was a week filled with some amazing memories that I will cherish forever.
At first, I wasn’t super happy to be there, because there were a lot more rules at camp then I have ever had to deal with before, and we had to pay for our own water, and other small things that really were rather irrelevent in the end. But pretty soon I started making friends with the other exchange students, and I realized that these two weeks weren’t about little things that annoyed me, but instead it was about learning the language, and making friends that will hopefully be life long :)
Our schedule was typically something like this:
7:30-Breakfast
8:00-Lessons
-Second Breakfast
-Break
1:30-Dinner
2:00-3:00-Free time
3:00-4:00- Study time
4:00-6:00 or 7:00-Field trip/activity
7:00 or 8:00-Supper
Evening activity
11:00 Bedtime

This was probably the most intense class I’ve ever taken, if only because its 5 hours a day of one subject, and it was fast paced learning. I did alright the first week, I got a 90% on my first test, but the second week was harder. I spent most of my time in class feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, and I don’t think I retained very much of what I learned the second week. This was reflected in the fact that I only got a 75% on my second test. But oh well. I still have my notes, and I review them all the time. Even though I survived the “curse” I am still busy trying to learn Polish, but hopefully I will start making significant progress soon :) I’ll write all about my field trips next time I post :)

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Hey Guys, so obviously I really, really stink at this whole blogging thing, I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in ages. But my first month anniversary has already happened and that was when I realized I was just miserably bad at blogging, but I’m going to put up stuff now :) Also, I figure I’ll just do this in little installments so that A) I don’t overwhelm everyone with one super, super long blog and B)I have a chance to actually reflect on everything that has happened to me this month. So here goes nothing!

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“Hey so your plane from Denver leaves tomorrow at 10:08” is essentially what the email I recieved from Tzell (the travel agency Rotary works with) told me when I read it at around noon on the 7th of August. This sent my family and I in a slightly panicked, but organized frenzy as I started final preparations. Before you ask, no I wasn’t as prepared as John Denver when he was leaving on a Jet Plane. My bags weren’t packed, I was excited and ready to go emotionally but realistically I wasn’t very prepared. Hence me being silly and leaving all of my belts hanging up in my room instead of packing them and bringing some things that are probably super useless and won’t see daylight ‘till I unpack them when I get home. Haha anyway, I managed to get my marbles mostly together and one of the last things I did was hang out with one of my friends, Koby :), and we bought her a fish (His name is Norbert) and then I had an absolutely wonderful dinner with my family. It didn’t really hit me then, but in retrospect I realize that that was the last time we will be able to be together as a family for a long time. So I love you guys a lot :) (Also, I hope you are reading this, because otherwise these last few sentences would be worthless hehe :) )
So I’m pretty sure I slept, no joke, maybe two hours because I stayed up super late packing and then got up super early to make it to the airport super early, and Keely and Koby met me to say goodbye, I have the best friends, I love you guys :) I’m not going to lie, I think the only reason I didn’t cry as I waved to my family for the last time is because I was super duper tired and excited.
Then I got sick. Not terribly ill or anything, but just sick enough to make me miserable with a head cold, sneezes, and an annoyingly runny nose. I ran into a former exchange student at the airport and we chatted for a bit. After that, nothing super interesting happened. I made it to my plane from Denver to DC and that was a rather uneventful flight. Then it got interesting o.O I couldn’t find a desk to give me my ticket (I wasn’t able to do an online checkout, and other stuff just wasn’t communicated well, long story short I didn’t have boarding passes prior to making it to the ticket desk at each airport) and I only had like 30 min before the plane started boarding. So there I was, running around Dulles about to miss my plane and then I finally find a ticket booth. Well there was a nice lady at the desk and she handed me a ticket and was like “oh are you an unaccompanied minor?” And being sleep deprived and having a killer headache my poor, befuddled brain answered “yes” forgetting that that is a service offered by a lot of airlines that parents pay for so their children get taken care of etc. and that we hadn’t done that. I thought she was just commenting on the fact that I was going overseas and I was not an adult (oops). So I got shepherded around by that service when I made it to Copenhagen, which turned out to be a good thing, because I would have gotten so hopelessly lost I probably would have missed my flight. I made it safely to Poznan and met my first host family and stayed with them for two days before leaving for Krakow for two weeks.
Looking back, I wish I had had some profound moment on that initial part of my trip; a moment where I was like “Wow, I’m leaving behind everything I know, I am walking out a door and when I return in a year I will be irrevocably changed in some ways. When I return, everything will be the same, and everything will be different” Sadly to say, I didn’t have that profound moment, so I don’t know what that says about me as a person but I was just so filled with excitement at my near future that pretty much everything else in my world was moved to the back burner as thoughts of my trip filled my brain with excitement. 

Visa, School, Packing (or the lack thereof) and umm stuff?

Dzien Dobry Everyone! So I realized that some stuff has happened with regards to my exchange, and I haven’t really shared it with my blog…which is remiss of me because that’s why I have a blog so here’s another post that’s probably too long:)

1. Visa

I sent off my visa application to my travel agency and it got there on June 11th and now I’m just waiting to hear from them saying that I get to go to Poland. (Ok, fine hoping that they say that I get to go to Poland) I hope I get a visa, I haven’t done anything to make it so I don’t get a visa I think. I mean, I’m not a serial killer or a terrorist or a ….well whatever makes it so that you don’t get a visa so fingers crossed, I hope that comes in sometime soon so that I can leave :D

2. School…..

I found out that I am going to an IB (International Baccalaureate) World School. Um yeah, paint me all kinds of intimidated and thrilled (no I don’t know what colors those make). I am intimidated mostly because its taught in English and I am taking a few HL (Higher Level) courses which I’ve heard are like AP classes on Steroids, so here’s to not failing out of high school. But I am so excited because I have heard wonderful things about IB Schools and I am really, really glad that I will be able to take a challenging course work because (for those of you that don’t know) I am a bit of a nerd and I really adore school when it challenges me and when I can be learning lots of new materials so I am super thrilled about that. Anyway, I had to sign up for courses a week or two (or maybe three?) ago and I am going to be taking HL English, HL History, HL Geography, SL (Standard Level) Math, SL French, and SL Computer Science. I’m not going to lie I sort of can’t wait for school to start (yes, yes I am insane) because these all sound like fun classes.

3. Packing….

hahahaha so I am a slacker and I haven’t even really thought about what I am going to bring with me besides the basic clothing, laptop, etc. But really, any ideas for what I should bring?

4. Stuff:

I GOT A NEW CAMERA!!! IT IS AWESOME! its a NIKON L810 and I am in love with it :) So that was exciting. The only reason I was able to justify spending that much money on one thing was because I am going to be having a phenomenal journey so I might as well get a good camera right? I have started looking around for gifts for my host family and I realized that I enjoy buying other people stuff much more than buying myself knick-knacks and whatnot. Anyway, I think that’s all I have to say for now, so thanks for reading this :) I love you guys and feel free to send me a message on this or an email at travels.becca@gmail.com

The Start of a Wonderful Adventure

Hi guys!

So for those of you that don’t know, my name is Becca :) I am going to be spending my senior year abroad in Poznan, Poland! So, this is my first blog, and I don’t really know what one does with a blog so I guess I’ll just do a quick re-cap of what has happened so far:

October (I think?): Local interviews

November: District Interviews- So, I went up absolutely terrified and sick to my stomach. Then I got there :) I met so many amazing people and had so much fun that I forgot to be nervous! Of course, all the nerves and unease came back after I got home and let myself think about all the what-ifs and I had to wait two weeks to find out if I was accepted and where I was going

December 17th (I think): I got my letter saying I was going to Poland! So, funny story about that. (Or maybe not so funny, it makes me laugh at any rate). We were sitting down at dinner and my friend Will was over when I casually mentioned that I was disappointed my letter hadn’t come in the mail that day and my parents looked up at me surprised and were like “Oh, we haven’t gotten the mail yet” and went back to eating. I sort of maybe freaked out and dragged Will up to the mail box to get the mail. I live in the country so my mail box is kind of far away from my house and it was cold and dark so I drove up to the mail box. I climbed back in the car and couldn’t wait until I drove back down the hill so thumbed through the mail in the car and then proceeded to give Will a heart attack as I drove back home screaming “I’M GOING TO POLAND!!!! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH”

March: Orientation Weekend: This weekend was pretty entertaining, I got to see all of the friends I made during the interview weekend and hanging out with them was fun, but I’m not going to lie….the actual orientation was sort of…..well, long. Now don’t get me wrong, it was jammed full of lots of super important information, I just happen to have the attention span of a flee…..oops. But it really was much fun :)

May: I heard from my host Mom and I am so excited!!!!!! She seems like a really awesome person and I can’t wait to get to Poland. I also got all of my visa information so now I get to start filling that out….yay? I have also been working on all of my graduation requirements so that I can graduate even though I will be out of the country :D Speaking of which, I’ve got to go finish my Sr. Portfolio, because I’m super on top of things (not). I need to present it tomorrow, and I sort of only have like 3/4 of it…oops? So, I’ll try to post regularly when I’m in Poland, I can’t wait to share my adventures with everyone!