004 It's starting

Nothing stays secret in Rotary youth exchange students Whatsapp group - at least nothing regarding to your exchange year.

Last weekend the Rotary people organizing our exchange year sat around a table and started to send our applications to the other countries. During that weekend we, the impatient exchange students, found out that even though somebody might have found host country already, the Rotary members were not allowed to reveal that information before a certain date.

Tomorrow.


I swear to God, the whole chat group went berserk after the shocking news. Not that we weren't eagerly waiting to know our host countries before that but now that we have a date, we know exactly what to look forward to. We literally can't stop thinking and talking about it. For a second I even thought about not sleeping at all this night in case I might get the email telling where I'm going, though I'm pretty sure that the Latinos won't make an exception on this one - they are never on time.

Still, this is something we exchange students have been waiting for from day one. You can't even imagine how frustrating it is to have people being all: "Oh, you're going to be an exchange student? Where are you going?" and then as much as you'd love to tell them, you have to answer "I don't know yet... But I have applied for Spain, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador." Sometimes it feels like the other's feel I'm not being taken that serious because I can't answer them. Most of the exchange organizations send you where you want to go and where you pay to go, but that's not the case with Rotary. Still, in a way I prefer it like this. As excruciating as this phase is, we can let our imagine's go wild and think about living in various lands - anything is possible.

Things get serious after we get our host country information. We start to realize that this is happening, we are leaving for a year to live in that certain foreign country you know nothing about. We can start to make plans, look up all sort of information about our host country. We get realistic about something that was once a wild dream. I know I will be scared and start having doubts at one moment and then get all psyched up the next.

So, in a way I kind of want this moment to last. I want to know where I'm going more than anything, but it has been so fun to just speculate with other exchange students, make guesses, be wild. I'm going to miss the things that are part of this step. I feel like every single step is important starting from the moment when I first realized this is what I want to do.

However, tomorrow is going to be a blast. I'm most likely to cry tomorrow and it doesn't even matter whether I get my host country information or not. I'm going to cry for everyone who get theirs AND for those who don't. So if you see me on tears in school tomorrow - don't worry, no one has died.

That's all for tonight, folks. I'm off to bed!