Towards the beginning of April I finally attended spring orientation. It was just three days long, but my head is still whirling from all we were informed about. Throughout the week each of us had to present the presentation that we would give to our host club. The first day we did a couple of talks about culture shock and ways to make that transition to another country more easy. We also met with the travel agent that will be coordinating all of the tickets and visas for all the students. During the second day, we did some simulations on what it is like to be exposed to a country without understanding it.
That night we watched a movie called
Outsourced, which was used to show the process that each exchange student goes through. We were told that there would be four stages. Initial excitement and the honeymoon stage was the first step, then frustration and homesickness were the second stage, excitement about finally starting to understand was the third stages, and being able to fully integrate yourself into the culture was the fourth stage. On the last day, we were presented with our rotary blazers, which we would wear on our exchange and would mark us as rotary exchange students.
