Pre Departure Orientation!

     I got to fly by myself for the first time EVER on Friday! That was a bit scary but it was a beautiful day and I took notes about what I saw and how amazing I thought it was. That was groovy. Then I found the YFU (Youth For Understanding) people and got all situated.
     When I got to the college EVERYONE was speaking different languages at me and I had to figure out what I had to do. I thought it was a brilliant exercise! Before that exercise ended I was handed a bucket with a scoop of rocks in it. I set the bucket down and all of a sudden EVERY volunteer swarmed me yelling "nenenenenenenenene" filling my bucket with rocks, they stopped when I picked it up. The bucket thing continued for the entire weekend and it was an exercise in learning unspoken cultural rules. It got tiring having to carry a bucket of rocks around but you could get rocks taken away for doing "good" things like telling someone "DO NOT PUT YOUR BUCKET DOWN, WHAT EVER YOU DO!"
     Green team was CLEARLY the BEST! I was on green team so everyone on my team was Scandinavia bound with someone going to the Netherlands and myself. I found out that I'm part of Benelux or Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg  so that was interesting. I miss my team but we started a Facebook group so we can keep up with what everyone is doing.
     My roommate was AWESOME! She and I talked about German food and Tintin and Santa traditions in Germany and Belgium and just all sorts of stuff! I liked her a lot.
     Everyone played a game where the rules at every table were different and we couldn't talk so we had to figure out what the rules were as we switched tables. I just volunteered to lose because I didn't know how to play even when I got back to my "home table" because someone had basically invaded us and imposed their rules on the table.
     The food was pretty good. I had to eat with the Benelux group on the day we had spicy food and the person who had gone to Belgium said "You're from the Midwest aren't you?" after I made a comment about how I didn't much care for spicy foods. One of the activities there was, was this set up where a bunch of people had tables in the middle of this room and were sharing about their exchange but some had food to try! I tried a Dutch food I've heard about and LOVED IT! I did not much care for black liquorish. Haribo Pico Bolla was pretty good and so was the Korean jello thing I tried but after I tried the VERY sweet jello treat I sampled some tea and threw my taste buds into shock! I probably would have liked the tea if it hadn't been for having something bitter right after having something sweet. Oh! German food day was the last lunch we had and I was so happy because it was among my favorite meals I had plus I had a lemon bar and those are my favorite so it was epic!
     I came home Sunday and had to navigate O'Hare airport in Chicago so that was interesting. I saw a friend off on their plane. I also walked around for HOURS and eventually bought a snack and went to go chill at my gate for an hour.
     This is the VERY condensed version of this story but it's getting extremely late and I am going camping tomorrow so I will update this story plus camping when I can. Have a great day!