Distrikt and Dates

       Distrikt as in the German district of 1850 and dates as in flight departures, not romantic dinners!  So I'm already having trouble keeping this silly thing current but below you will find the narrative that I wrote the day after I found everything out.

       Wednesday afternoon, I got home and flipped on the computer.  As always, I opened my email hoping to see some news from Rotary, thinking  about how pathetic it's become to do this everyday. Sitting there surrounded by twitter notifications was an email titled "Rotary Youth Exchange".  With racing heart, I opened it, quickly skimming through a choppy email that was signed, Your German Youth Exchange Team.  It told me to follow a link to a website where they had a login for me and after searching the different tabs, in the bottom corner of the last one I found one minuscule box labeled Distrikt 1850.  Excitedly, I typed that clue into Google and it showed me that I will be living in the Northwest corner of Germany in Lower Saxony!

       The district borders the North Sea and the Netherlands.  It seems to be largely a farming community with a few larger cities like Bremen and Oldenburg.  I'm in love with all the old architecture in the area!

Old marketplace in Bremen

I posted my assignment onto a huge facebook group of rotary kids, and was automatically approached by an Aussie and an American who are in D1850 right now. I've talked to them some and I think that I will really enjoy my time there!
       A few days later, my YEO sent me an email that included all of the departure dates by district.  School in Niedersachsen starts earlier than most of the other states in Germany so I will leaving this great state of Michigan between July 29th and August 4th.  This is a few weeks earlier than I had anticipated so I will need to adjust some of my summer plans in order to fit everything in!  I have now officially started a count down, today I am 119 days away from GERMANY!!

       In other exchange related news, I've discovered Doulingo.com, a free, language learning site.  It is similar to Rosetta Stone with the main differences being the language selection and the crazy Rosetta Stone price! I highly suggest if you're learning Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, or German that you take a look at Duolingo.  I also believe they're working on a version for Mandarin Chinese so you can look for other languages in the future!

Happy Easter!
~M