A Girl Across the Sea

28 Apr

19:00

Preparation Weekend

This weekend EF arranged a Preparation Weekend for all students travelling to the US, UK and Ireland. We we're at a sort of conference center two hours south of Stockholm called Hjälmargården (right next to Hjälmaren). We had a tight and full schedule from the time we arrived to the minute we left.

All students were divided into smaller groups and each group had one color. My group (the best group) had the color green. I beleive I've already told you that. We were the only group with people travelling to both the US, UK and Ireland so that was very cool.

During the day we had different sessions where we discussed everything about an exchange year abroad. What to excpect, what to do and what not to do, how to solve problems that can come up during our year and a lot of other things.

We also had seminars, or lectures, with the EF staff about life in America, culture differences, the school system and the ambassadors (former exchange students) answered a lot of questions in all catagories. About almost everything.

I had no time to take photos so I took some now when I got home.

We got this cool t-shirt with a very nice print on it. It also says EF on the shoulder. I really like it and it fits really well.

On Saturday all groups had two hours to prepare a performance. We came up with some really weird and cool ideas but we decided to perform like a bus trip but the bus driver drove wrong so we ended up in Syria and the rest of the group were Syrian dancers who scared us. We were eight people that sat on chairs so it looked like we were on a bus and before we had realised we weren't in England we sang "The wheels on the bus". We also had two members acting as EF staff so when we were "scared" they said "Don't you worry child" and we started to sing that song. "Don't you worry child" sort of became our groups song.

After all the performances they threw out glow sticks and I catched quite a few. I made them into a necklace and some bracelets. One of the members in my group was like a DJ so he put on some music and everyone danced. So much fun! Me and Lovisa, a friend I met, were the only ones left with the staff members at the end of the night. I had such a good time!

When we arrived on Friday everyone got a bag with some brochures and a simcard in it wich we can use for calling in the US. The poster wasn't in the bag, they handed those out today for everyone. I thought they were very nice, it had a nice message. We are supposed to pack our hand luggage in the EF bag when we go so all the other students knows who we are. I think that's a good idea.

Last but not least we had name tags with the flag of the country we're going to. Very good for me because I'm not good with names... I learned the names of the people in the green group ofcourse, but all the others. He, not so much.

This was a really good weekend and I learned a lot of new things. I'm more prepared than ever and I just want to go now!