Orientation

I had my local AFS orientation yesterday. Not much to write about really, but since it's part of the whole process I thought it merited a blog post.

The location of the orientation (Mt. Ida college) was about 20 minutes' drive from my house, a fact that made me think it was about as convenient for everyone going. Well, it turns out that's not really so. There were people from all over New England, including Rhode Island, Connecticut, and a large crowd from New Hampshire.

Anyway, after registration, we all (parents as well as us wee tykes) settled into an auditorium for volunteers to talk to us about the missions of AFS and a basic Q and A session. Then we split up: the parents stayed in the auditorium and the kids were sent off to different classrooms, one for summer students and one for year/semester students. It turned out more than half of the kids there were summer students, and out of the eleven or twelve year/semester students six of them were going to Germany.


Most of the day (for year/semester people) consisted of talking with two returnees about safety advice, culture shock, stereotypes vs. generalizations (I thought that part was interesting to think about), packing, school in another language, and anything else we had questions about. A lot of in confirmed things I already knew (from "don't go to a deserted beach with a creepy-looking pair of men" to "don't pack too much clothing") but it was really helpful to talk to the returnees anyway. Other than that, there was a final discussion with students and parents all together, and we also got t-shirts and luggage tags in exchange for completing an evaluation.

Oh, and we were taped together for lunch, which was an interesting exercise. :)

That's about all I can think of about the orientation. It wasn't a huge amount of fun (the returnees kept telling us that all the other orientations were a lot less boring than this one) but it was certainly informative, and it was nice to be surrounded by other exchange students! Oh, and inside the New England Institute building (where the orientation was), the walls were hung with things like an "Award for Excellence in Embalming" and a large framed tapestry explaining the importance of funerals, so I think it must have been a funereal education building. I sort of have to wonder if people who saw us going in there thought we were all training to be morticians...