Orientation Weekend with All of the Inbounds!!

I love this new family. <3

Friday afternoon we arrived in Kroměříž after the longest 45 minute drive because I was so excited to meet everyone. Most people in this country aren't super into hugging everyone, so when we pulled up to the building and people came running up to our car to hug us, I was beyond excited. People I have never met, but that I have talked to for months, were finally all here in one place. We all hugged each other and were immediately very close to each other. After most people had gotten there we had dinner and then started some of the presentations. We got to meet all of the Rotary members and some Rotex. We played some game to get to know each other and were we were all from. We ended the night with the Rotex, with a very intense game of musical chairs that ended with a broken chair. Then we had a little bit of time until curfew so we went upstairs to one of our floors and had a dance party in the hallway. Then we all had to go to bed and be quite so that we could get up at 7 the next morning for breakfast.

After breakfast we had a day of presentations ahead of us. First we took our language test that was 3 pages long. Not many people thought they did well, but at least we tried. We learned about the two counties all of us are staying, culture shock, how to deal with homesickness, who to go to if you need help, and all of the Rotary rules. In the middle of the day we had lunch before continuing with the presentations. One of the activities we did to go over everything that we had learned was to do skits. First Rotex showed how not to deal with each given situation then we were supposed to re-create them and do it the right way. The situations were: when your friends ask you to travel with them, when your friends offer you alcohol, how to deal with your usage of social media and contact back home, what to do if you have issues with your family, how to stay out of relationships, and what to do about not understanding your friends and not being able to communicate with them. After all of the presentations we had time to get all of our pins and have a big pin trading party for our blazers. I had only 5 or 6 on mine to begin with so I was quite excited for this. I ran out of pins quite quickly, so I emailed my district chair back home and asked for more. After we were done trading we all went to our friends' rooms and helped each other decorate our blazers with all of our new pins. Then we got our flags, newly decorated blazers, and new Rotary 2240 polo shirts, so that we could go walk to a set of stairs to take our big group picture with the Rotarians and Rotex. After a bunch of pictures and a lot of standing around getting everyone in the right place, we headed back to where we were staying so that we could ditch the blazers and polo shirts for our walk around the city. We had time to take pictures with all of our friends and whatever groups we wanted before we left for our tour. On our tour I think we had 3 different speakers playing different songs. The Aussies were playing some of their music and some songs that were popular awhile ago in the US, then there was all the Latino music, and then random US songs all playing at the same time. Imagine a group of about 80, 15-18 year olds with country flags from all over the world, parading around a little city singing and dancing to all sorts of music and causing traffic jams. Random people were taking videos and pictures of us walking around since we had become the tourist attraction at this point. We stopped at some statues and stair cases along the way and learned a little bit of history and took many more pictures. We started taking pictures by country and friend groups that were starting to form, along with whole group pictures. Then we got to the main square where there was a lot of open room. The Rotex wanted us to hold hands and form a heart in the middle of the square so we could take a cute picture. This, as you could imagine took forever. It's hard to make a shape like a heart out of 80 kids that are not all listening or understanding what we were doing. After many attempts we finally got something that resembled a lopsided heart, but that was as good as it was going to get. So we all sat down and got our flags situated as they took a bunch of pictures. Then we went to a open field for more pictures. There, we saw rabbits and peacocks wandering around. After all of our pictures we went back for dinner. Before and after dinner we had to get our paperwork checked. Then we got our language test back and got to see who had the highest score for Slovak and for Czech. After giving back our tests we had another dance party on the stage. Then we moved it upstairs to one of our floors. We all got yelled at for being a little late to curfew, but we all ran to our rooms and tried to be quiet. Most people went to bed, some of us had a bit of energy and ended up staying up really late. Staying up until 2 in the morning just hanging out was immediately regretted at 7 the next morning.

We had breakfast before learning about traveling rules. Once we were done with that, the meeting was already over. For once in my life a Rotary meeting was over an hour EARLY, so a lot of us just sat around and hung out waiting for our families. Some people left soon, so we said some goodbyes. Even though we will see almost everyone again it was very hard to say goodbye. We won't see anyone who doesn't live in our city until December. Also if they don't live in the same country as you, we won't see them until ski week (an optional trip in February that not every one goes to). This meant saying goodbye for at least a couple months. We also had to say our goodbyes to the Aussies since the Czech kids wont get to see most of them again since they live in Slovakia and their exchange year goes from January to January. My host parents arrived, and took Ana and I out to lunch before taking her home to Brno and then driving us home.