Local PDO

Having the alarm clock ring at about 6:00am a Saturday morning is not a pleasant experience- for anyone. But with great reluctance I got up, showered, changed, ate some breakfast and then headed to the AFS PDO. It was a nice interesting drive there and quicker than I expected. Anyways, once I arrived a few minutes later Emily (going to Indonesia) arrived so together with her parents we walked in, registered got nifty name tags (name and country) and a nice blue AFS Greater Chicago Area t-shirt. I feel like the t-shirt just made everything more real and legit.

I recognized some kids from my school- all of them doing summer programs, which was kind of amazing. I never realized how many kids from my school were actually interested in programs like these. So after a few introductions we all broke up into different groups (year and semester participants were in our own group). During our sessions we talked about the countries were we would all go: Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil, Denmark, Japan, Portugal and Spain. And then we had some discussion on our expectations and our concerns. It was nice knowing that many of us thought along the same lines and that in fact our concerns were pretty normal, if not expected. There was also a girl from Germany who was there to provide a fresh perspective of the concerns. Language, communication, weather, school, food, and getting along with our host family were the biggest ideas thrown around.

Afterwards we had a lunch break soon followed by a panel of current exchange students in the area (a guy who goes to my school was even there, it was nice seeing a familiar face) and we talked for a bit before the official panel. He told me he made most of his friends at orientations and although half the stuff is boring and kind of obvious, it helps. After the participant panel there was another group secession this time with parents.  This time it focused on knowing and getting comfortable with the country before actually arriving. What does that entail exactly? Well it is familiarizing with the music, with the politics, the government, the geography, the culture, the customs, you get the idea. Then we went in and compared our family lives with fellow participants and we talked about how even in the same country day to day life varies among families. Lastly we had a few situation questions that involved us being in awkward or difficult situations. For example, my host mom goes through my journal, or my host parents don't approve of my friends. We had to answer them and then discuss why we chose to act that way. What we all learned from this was that communication and asking questions are the best things to do- you have to communicate with everyone when there is a misunderstanding. And asking questions is good- you and the person both get answers and clarification.

Over all what did I learn during the PDO?

That is is going to be hard, but you have to go in with the idea that things aren't going to go like you want them to go. You are going to mess up, you will get frustrated, you will do things wrong but you have to just laugh at yourself and keep trying. That there will be bad situations but most likely you'll have as many if not more great memories.