When I went to China a couple years ago, my parents shipped me off to a "heritage" camp to tour a certain part of the country. I got the typical tourist outfit, with the bonus package of being in a tour group: t-shirt with the logo on it, bag with the logo on it, little knickknacks with the logo on them, a huge group, and a bus.
BACK TO FRANCE: how many of the tourist things did I have?
T-shirt: Check! I had to wear a t-shirt to show that I was with YFU.
Bag: Check! We were given little (ugly looking) passport holders to carry...around our necks.
Little knickknacks: Check! Our baggage had little YFU tags on them.
Huge group: Check! The massive hoard that consisted of all the YFU students from all those countries.
Oh wait, what about the bus?
CHECK! A bus took the hoard to, not the historical sites of Paris like we (the YFU students) hoped, (though I'm not sure Paris would approve of my très chic tourist ensemble) but a little, picturesque village called Bapeaume.
The bus ride was an hour and a half long! Let's consider my sleep schedule at the moment.
AWAKE:
Day of Flight 9
Flight 7 (got one hour of sleep on it)
Waiting 5
Bus + 1.4 (got a wannabe nap)
22.4 hours
and yet I felt totally fine. My friends? Zombies. I was just so excited that we weren't in the airport anymore, and that there were beds, and showers, and food, and internet!
The beds were bunk beds which was totally fine, especially since I knew with whom I was...rooming (? Is that the right word?), though that raises the awkward point. Depending on whether or not you do funny things in your sleep, for example, talking, having a bunkbed with someone you know could be awkward.
Julia: "Goodnight Lisa!"
Lisa: "Goodnight!"
next morning...
Julia: "Good morning Lisa!"
Lisa: "...good morning...you talk in your sleep"
Julia: 'oh awk' "...sorry"
I was super excited to use the internet without a time limit, but then I found out...it wasn't wireless. Now, that doesn't seem like a problem, but I didn't bring a laptop. The only electronic thing I brought was my iTouch. It wasn't until the last day a fellow YFU student figured out how to use her laptop as a router for those (me) that couldn't use not-wireless.
Now, the sequence of events at the Orientation (which lasted three days, by the way) is a bit fuzzy for me. Thankfully, it's not likely that YFU France will come after me with torches and pitchforks when I get the order wrong.
Hmmm....okay. There were three buildings. An eating hall, the dorms, and the school (I don't think I explained properly before; we were staying at a boarding school).
The school was where most of the Orientation was held. There was a the central room, and a bunch of other tiny classrooms. In the central room, all of the YFU students were split up into groups distinguished by color (and by color, I mean, one group was called the blue group, another group was the green group, etc).
In our groups, we learned about French life. The bise, vous vs tu, basic manners, etc; I'll explain them all in further detail in other posts.
Basically, the Orientation was a place to meet other YFU students and hang out with them (best part of the entire thing, honestly), learn a little bit about France, and as a rendez-vous point for our host families to pick us up (except for those that took a train to their city)!
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