Pre-departure

Hey guys!  Sorry it's been awhile since I last posted, but I've been eagerly waiting to receive my host family and town that I will be living in next year.  Now I still haven't gotten my permanent host family, but there's been progress!  I'll start from the beginning which was about month ago.

About a month ago I went on a final vacation with my family which was beautiful to say the least.  We spent 2 weeks traveling up the West Coast by rental car.  I flew into Las Vegas one day after my parents because I wanted to spend my last weekend at Nelsons Ledges for a festival with Jacqueline for our final weekend together :(  I arrived in Las Vegas (this being my 3rd time visiting without being 21..) so I've officially decided that I am not laying eyes upon that city again until my 21st birthday when I can enjoy the city in all of its splendors ;)  Anyways, after we visited our family friends in Palm Springs and drove up to Newport Beach where we enjoyed the warm California sun and the Pacific Ocean which was pretty chilly but nonetheless amazing!  After we headed up Route 1 which was literally on the edge of a cliff spanning 150 miles and overseeing the Pacific Ocean the entire drive.  At the end of that drive we arrived at our destination..San Fransisco.  Visiting this city must have been my favorite part of the entire trip.  We had hotel right in downtown a couple blocks away from both Japantown and Chinatown.  If any of you ever decide to take trip up there I would highly recommend signing up for the Big Bus Tour.  It's a big double-decker bus that takes you on a 2-hour tour of the entire city, the Golden Gate and it's lesser known, but just as grand counterpart, the San Fransisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  The best part is you can't take the tour as many times as you like, so me and my family having nothing else to do, took the tour 3 times... at least now if my college major doesn't work out I can always become a San Fran tour guide!  That night we took a little trip into China town, had a very yummy meal at a dumpling kiosk on the side of the street and ventured throughout a sea of little antique and souvenir shops.  The following day we were on the move again this time on our way down to Sequoia National Forest.  We spent a whole day in the Sequoia forest traversing over 50 miles of winding cliffside roads and narrow passages in-between gargantuan Sequoia tree's.  There we saw the General Sherman tree.  The biggest overall tree in the world!  It was over 100ft in diameter and stood at a height of 275ft! Unfortunately, words and pictures do not do it justice, although I hope this picture with a group of people in the bottom right helps put it into perspective a bit.  With that came the end of our vacation and it was back to Brunswick, OH to begin my preparations for Germany!

 With new beginnings come the dreaded sad goodbyes as well.  This month has been chalk full of saying farewell to friends that I've grown immensely close to these past 10 years of living in Brunswick.  As sad as it is saying goodbye to old friends, it's an exciting time in all of our lives as we begin to grow more independent and experience all that this world has to offer.  I can't wait to see where everyones life path takes them and hope to one day meet up in the future.  As most of you that have been reading this blog know Jacqueline and I have taken on the scary, exciting and self-cultivating journey of a long-distance relationship.  The day before I left we exchanged little going away presents.  She made me an amazing scrapbook spanning our whole relationship in pictures (boy am I thankful that she was obsessed with pictures) and I bought her a promise ring with our names engraved and a stack full of Open When.. cards.  Before leaving I couldn't imagine going even a week without seeing her, it seemed almost impossible but before we both knew it its already been a month since we've last seen each other and hopefully time will continue to be on our side.  Now this journey hasn't come without it's ups and downs, sleepless nights and gloomy days; in the end however, it is well worth it in exchange for a lifetime full of happiness.  With change comes growth and after this year I know we will form a bond that will bring us closer than ever before.  5 more weeks and we'll finally be able to see each other again in Germany!! Words cannot describe the excitement I feel just thinking about that moment.  Whoever said that absence makes the heart grow fonder was absolutely right!

So apparently CBYX likes to play this game where they see how long they can hold out on telling people who their host family is until the week before they leave.. just kidding!  Seriously though I have spent the whole month of August eagerly awaiting the email containing the information of about my host family and city i'd be living in.  Jacqueline has also been waiting in order to choose a workaway that would be closest to my town, but to no avail.  The weeks went by and I actually began to worry.  Had none of the families liked me?  Was it my face? Will I even get to go to Germany next year?  Should I be prepared to live on the streets?  Well my homeless nightmares were quickly settled when I received an email this week telling me that I will be attending a language camp with a few of my AFS peers in the beautiful and historic city of Celle!  There I will be placed with a temporary host family for the first 4 weeks of the program after which I will be transferred to my permanent host family and town.  I am ecstatic to be lucky enough to see another city in Germany as well as having the opportunity to meet another, hopefully amazing, host family!  This upcoming weekend I leave for Washington D.C where I will meet with my state representative and take part in a 3 day orientation with all of the other AFS students before we head off to Deutschland!  By the time you next hear from me I will be writing from my host family's home in Celle, Germany!!

A New Beginning

They say that one day, one moment, one event, can change your life completely.

I never though that to be be true, until two of those moments happened to me within the past year. 

I am a senior at Brunswick High School in Brunswick, Ohio.  I have lived in Ohio ever since I was about 6 years old and previously spent my childhood in the town of Brasov, Romania where I was born.  I can still remember my parents telling me that they had won some sort of visa lottery and were chosen come over and begin a new life in the United States.  I was immersed in a whole new culture and forced to learn a whole new language from scratch before I even fully understood my native tongue to begin with.  Now since I was way too young to blog and share all those new experiences my 6 year old self was exposed to, I've decided to give it a shot this time around and track the process of cultural immersion as an adult.  Enough about my childhood though and on to telling why this year has been the year that will have forever changed the course of my life.

 It was to be just like any year of high school that I've endured, except this one would be my last and college would be waiting for me shortly thereafter.  It became very apparent that time would fly by  quickly and would continue to relentlessly do so for the coming months in which I was to supposed to specifically decide a major and career that I would being doing for the rest of my life.  It was nerve wrecking to say the least.  I was fairly sure i'd want to do something with sports medicine, but not 100%.  There was a constant clash in my mind about whether I should choose a career that guaranteed me success and a hefty annual salary or one that would have me waking up every morning with a smile on my face, saying to myself that I'm truly happy doing what I do.  I wanted to succeed where so many before me have failed and wound up working a job they had to endure for the sole purpose of making a big old yearly salary and attain 'success' in doing so.  I wanted to do something with my life that guaranteed me happiness and the money would come in time. I eventually knew that I wanted there to be no question that whatever i'd be doing would be out of passion and true enjoyment of whatever it might be and not it's yearly salary, so I decided to keep searching.  It was then, around mid September the first moment that would completely change my life happened.  I met the girl of my dreams.

Her name is Jacqueline.  We were introduced to each other via a mutual friend (my best friends girlfriend) and the first couple times we saw each other I didn't think much of the her other than the good looks and outgoing personality she presented.  I knew she had visited Italy her sophomore year as an exchange student which sparked my curiosity and I suddenly found myself wanting to know more about this girl that I've talked to on about two occasions.  Time passed and we became closer and about a month into knowing her, I asked her to be my girlfriend.  We had such similar interests and life goals that it was hard to believe at first, that a person like this had come along so early in life.  Late nights would drag on as we talked about our future plans of joining the Peace Corps after college, myself infatuated with small villages in the Andes mountains and her with the tribal societies in the plains of Africa.  The thought of traveling the world to learn new languages and engage in new cultural experiences led us both to consider possible careers in international studies.  She had already previously decided that she planned to attend Ole Miss and learn Chinese through a Chinese flagship program offered there which would guarantee her fluency in the Chinese language after graduation.  I on the other hand had been long obsessed with the countless variety of cultures and languages that existed throughout Europe.  I decided then to switch my major and delve into the realm of international studies where I could do exactly what I wanted and had the opportunity to make a profound difference in the world by hopefully one day being employed by an environmental NGO, the Foreign Service or a branch of the United Nations.  Jacqueline's strong wanderlust and optimistic spirit was one of the main sources of motivation that helped me realize the wide array of opportunities that existed out there if you would just stop and search for a bit.

This leads into the second moment that changed not only my future, but helped me become more confident in the way I perceive myself.  After finding out that Jacqueline had applied to a program called NSLI for Youth, which provided full merit scholarships to high school students to study critical languages abroad.  It struck me as an amazing experience and I began to thirst for a similar experience to travel abroad with such a scholarship, partially because my family did not have the money to pay for such trips out of pocket with AFS, so this was my only shot.  I scoured the internet and was heartbroken to see that most of the opportunities to travel abroad on a scholarship were past their due dates, until I stumbled upon CBYX.  The Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange provides full merit scholarships to students who want to fully immerse themselves in German culture by living with a host family and attending a local high school.  I searched through the website for quite a while, reading reviews, news articles and former CBYX student experiences.  It all seemed too good to be true and the best part?  The deadline for the application wasn't due for another week!  As fast as I had begun, I was already disappointed to see a page of the application where you must list all your wonderful services to the community and extraordinary clubs/extracurriculars that you have participated in.  The problem is, for me that number amounted to zero, zip, nada.  I thought to myself, "Mihai just give up right here and don't waste your time typing all theses essays and filling in the rest of these blanks. You'll never compete with the other kids applying for this".  For once or maybe a couple times in my life, thank god I went against my better judgement and upheld that gut feeling that I should at least try god dammit!  So I slaved away a 5 short 250 word essay's to hopefully make up for my lack of extracurricular and grades.  Four months later, here I am, emailing back and forth with CBYX discussing all my preparations for my departure to Germany next September and sharing this blog with you guys!  If I learned anything from this experience is that you're desire for success must be greater than your fear of failure or else you will achieve nothing in life just as I wouldn't of if I hadn't decided to push through that application despite my lack of credentials. I hope that you continue to follow me and Jacqueline, who is also traveling to Germany next year to backpack throughout Europe, on our future endeavors! Who knows? Maybe those of you looking to travel to Europe can get some insight on what to expect and for those of who who aren't, well you should definitely pick up that computer and search for some scholarship opportunities to study abroad because you got nothing to lose from it :)