New York and Rome :)

OKAY  I LEARNED MY LESSON BLOGSPOT. After typing up a post for 1 hour, save drafts freaking repeatedly or Firefox will randomly crash on you and leave you NO HAPPINESS. GAH FOOKING COMPUTERS IT'S NOT THE TIME FOR THIS. ಠ_ಠ
SO, to calm my anger I will make a shorter version to what I did before. Ugh. I am angry now with technology.

We prepared mainly mentally with talks and encouragement at the New York Orientation with the American kids before they leave to Italy. Signing contracts, raising our glasses to a toast for fun and simply chilling around to get to know each other. There were also quizzes about the world and AFS and my team almost won! Unofficial question in the end, and someone from the other team shouted out the answer so they won while we were still properly thinking, wtf. xD

The notorious AFS American ver. shirt

Getting Ready to leave Hotel

An Ice Breaker Game

Through Security

On Bus

Taking Pledge

Toast to pledge

Team "WIN" for AFS Global Quiz

Page in "Wreck this Journal", my favorite one :)

"Wreck this Journal", a book that tells you how to destroy it. I swear it's anger management. I would like one for Christmas. :)

Me and Annie :)

Jake, Malcolm, and Zakiyya :)

Me and Renee :)

After having a New York Orientation, the AFS Group flew off to Zurich, Switzerland aka Heaven (Well, it might as well have been that!) in 8 hours. The houses were so tiny and cute and the grass very green. It was something off the back of a postcard. I was seriously expecting Disney Characters to pop out of nowhere and start singing "It's a Small World". The Airport may as well have been a cute green farm, too. Looking out of the window at night on a airplane, I saw the most stars I have ever seen ever in the sky and it was so pretty! Some of us stayed up all night (Basically, a sleepover on the plane since we left at 9PM and arrived in Zurich the next day at 10AM).

Oh and at the Switzerland airport we met the very stereotypical Italian teenagers. Well they were football players and around or older than our AFS group's age. We saw them through customs pointing and smiling at us and coincidentally again when we discovered they were going to be on the same flight as us to Italy. They were really cute but they acted like the were 14. Making kissy noises, cussing for the girls, dramatic hand movements, and complimenting dramatically.

They sat down right next to me in the handicap section cause all the other seats were taken  up by luggage. And the AFS girls were trying to get my attention to talk to them and so were the Italian boys because they kept pointing at me and saying "Italia?! Italia?!" But the outside of the airport was too beautiful and I had to reluctantly tear myself away from staring. So they discovered we were part of an foreign program, I got them talking even though they didn't speak English well, and the many of the girls swarmed for pictures. The AFS boys had the "O" shaped mouth and the look of uninterest that said "Wow-_-". Haha I don't blame them though. It got really old and annoying after awhile.

But we flew to Rome, Italy (took an hour) to ride a bus for another hour and stayed in a Youth Hostel. (I've only read about them, it was so cool to finally stay in one!) From there we met many AFS International kids for the Orientation. Many Ice Breakers were played such as "Let Me See Your Funky Chicken" and "Big Fat Pony". I have them recorded but those will be put together in a video some other time.

I met so many people it was fun! At first the other American kids weren't mingling but they came around. :) It's so much cooler to meet people from different countries cause  you realize how cool some are. Many are down to earth and you learn some cool stuff! <--- Obviously someone is good with vocabulary//// XD fail

It was a fun Orientation and we only got to spend so few days together. The next day, Sept. 11th  we would be traveling to see our Host Families. :)