Soon!

One of the inbounds from Austria is on her last month here in Canada, and it is making me realize how much closer I am to my exchange.

I'm so excited, and I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on my school work because of this whole thing. It's not particularly convenient right now since exams are coming up, and summatives have started.

I must concentrate! 

Orientation Weekend

On Saturday and Sunday, the inbounds and outbounds of D7080 gathered at UTM. The outbounds got training sessions to prepare us for the exchange.
I've received my guarantee forms! :-)

Here are the official pictures.

Announcement Day

I woke up that day not knowing what to expect.
I don’t think it had really sunk in that I would be finding out which country I would be in a year from now, that day.

I was so sure I would be sent to somewhere in South America.
The country list was:

• Estonia
• Sweden
• Finland
• Denmark
• Switzerland
• Austria
• France
• Brazil
• Venezuela
• Chile
• Ecuador
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Thailand
• South Korea
• Japan

That’s quite an impressive list.
I’ll skip all the boring bits…
I was having trouble opening my letter, so that added to the suspense. I took out my letter, and unfolded it. There wasn’t much reading to do since ESTONIA was bolded right in the centre of the page. I was not expecting Estonia, AT ALL. Mari, my pen pal in Estonia, was the first thing I thought of when I saw it. This whole though process happened really quickly, and the thought of Mari was already in my mind when I announced that I would be spending a year in Estonia to all of my fellow outbounds, their families, my family, and the Rotarians.
Only after a month has it really sunk in. I AM GOING TO BE IN ESTONIA AT THIS TIME NEXT YEAR. In fact, I’m going to be in Estonia in less that 6 months.
Here’s a brief little summary of how I know Mari. I started exchanging “letters” (emails, but more like letters without the envelope) with Mari in the summer of 2011. We eventually started to Skype (Estonian btw.), but still wrote letters to one another. I didn’t even know I would be applying for the RYE at that time. Even when I had applied for the program, Estonia wasn’t on the list. Estonia was added to the list later on in the process, and I wasn’t allowed to say which country I wanted to go to. The fact that the Rotarians felt that I would be suited for Estonia, is beyond incredible.

I found out later in the week that I will be staying in Tallinn, the capital city! Coincidentally, the same city as Mari! :D
I am so fortunate, not only for being sent to Estonia, but for the whole experience that has already begun.
If you would like to see my vlog on announcement day you can click any part of this sentence.

Camp Wanakita

From February 5th - 8th I was at Camp Wanakita with all the Outbounds and Inbounds from my district. It was quite a bit further north than where I live, so there was obviously a lot more snow in the area. All the snow was quite refreshing since winter in the GTA this year was nonexistent.
Before I left, I had to purchase most of the gear that was required. I had to buy snow-pants, a proper snow jacket, and boots. I feel that I was well equipped for the conditions. It was incredibly cold, especially overnight in the quinzee. I’ll talk about that in a bit.
We did a lot of winter activities like snowshoeing, skiing, broom-ball, tobogganing, orienteering, and whole bunch of other stuff. This was the first time that I had snowshoed or skied, so that was quite an experience. I fell down a bit too many times, overall it was great fun :D
We started to build quinzees, which are basically mounds of snow which harden, and then are dug out. One of the nights we got to sleep in one of the four that were built. All I have to say about that is that I was cold. yeah.
One of the coolest things that we did was write these letters to ourselves throughout our days at Wanakita. The first night we went out with these adorable candle-lit lanterns, into the forest, and wrote a letter to ourselves. We found out that the letters that we wrote would be sent to us in exactly a year while we are on exchange. All the outbounds couldn’t write an address because we didn’t know where we were going. It was all really exciting because in a few weeks we would know where we would be going.
It was also really awesome speaking with all of the inbounds who had been here for about 7 months, a couple (New Zealand + Australia) had only been here for 2 weeks. They were really helpful telling us about the whole experience they’d had so far.
It was also really anxiety-provoking because all the Rotarians were watching everything. I obviously had my preferences (which country I wanted to go to), so I didn’t want to do anything that was going against me (whatever that meant. What does being -insert country name- even mean?). That was a really foolish thought, which soon disappeared because I was so caught up with everything that we were doing. I completely forgot about my whole ~masterplan~ and was just myself.
The Rotarians found out that I really like space, and one of the Rotarians came up to me and said “We have to send you somewhere you can see the stars!” and then she asked me where I could see the stars, and I replied with somewhere in Scandinavia. :D
The last night there was a dance party, which I wasn’t too thrilled about since I’m not a ~dancer~, and I’m not into pop music. Thankfully the camp counselor, Matt, played Arctic Monkeys, I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor :D WOOOO! Then at breakfast the next morning, he played a bunch of Stars songs. *awesome*
Overall Wanakita was a lot of fun, and I have many great memories from those few days.
Here are some pictures:

on the snowshoe trek, on top of a beaver dam

the snowshoe trek group that I was in

the entire group jumping on a quinzee, trying to break it down on the last day

a group of girls jumping on a quinzee