Planning An Exchange Year, 3 Tips

Hi people on the Internet,
today I thought I would make something a little bit different. Since I have already experienced quite a bit on the journey of planning an exchange year, and sometimes I wished I would have known these things in advance, I wanted to share my knowledge. So, here are my three tips:

1. First tip is, talk to someone. If you don't know where the destination you belong to is, it can help to talk. I've experienced that myself. If I wouldn't have talked with my teacher about my plans,  I would have never even started getting concrete. It was thanks to her that I have decided to go to Australia and it was her that encouraged me to discuss it with my parents.
2. Second tip: Make a folder where you put in everything that seems important to you. In my particular case, I've put in a calendar to plan everything, the letter I wrote to the exchange agency and the paperwork I got when I applied for my passport. If that doesn't sound much, you're right, but I'm still only at the beginning and there will be more stuff to put in.
3. The third tip, and probably the most important, is that you should inform yourself. There is lots of information on the Internet, from the size of the country to a description of the coffee bar near 2nd street of some random city. Some things that might be important are eating habits (not only the typical foods, but what the people there actually eat every day), the school system, how big the cities are and much, much more. Also, there are lots of fairs where you can meet people and find exchange agencies. There you can ask all the things you want to know and the Internet didn't answer.

There you had it, three tips on how you can plan an exchange year.

Travel Fair

Hi people on the web,

today was really interesting. I've been waiting for this day for a long time, because today we got more concrete on the plan of me going abroad. Today was a fair, I think it is called "Youth Education Travel Fair" or something, and it was really interesting. There were many exhibitors and it was nice to see the people you are eventually going to the other end of the world with.

I found it interesting how different the offers are and how different every organization handles flights, insurance, visa etc. Of course the price varies too, but even how you pay is different. There was one organization that sends you all the original bills from the school, travel agency (for the flights) and other costs in a transparent way, and others just send you a bill from them you have to pay. What is important for me is that I know what is going on, so I think how the first organization handles this is quite good. (And damn, guest families are expensive)

Another thing that is important is that you have someone to talk to. If I for example can't stand my guest family, I want to know that there is someone who supports me. And while I think that every organization does its best to assure that, you never know.

An advice someone gave me is that you can make your life much easier if you go to a smaller school. You can find friends more easily, especially because in the australian school system there is no such thing as normal classes, it changes after every subject. That makes finding friends way harder, especially for someone like me, whose friends are literally only his classmates.

Also, I think a small organization may be better, because when I plan something like this, I want to talk to someone who is familiar with the subject. If someone has to call ten different people, just to ask how much it will cost, I don't feel like this person is very professional. And it is nice to know that the people who choose the school with you know you in person, and not just as a picture and some information on a piece of paper.

That was it for this week. Be sure to let me a comment if you want to know something or only to know you were here.

Bye

January

Hi people on the internet,
since today is the last day of January, I wanted to talk about everything that happened this last month, and there were quite a few things.
The first thing that has happened is I have started my blog. While it technically was last year, I really feel like it began in 2015, and based on my posts, I'm pretty sure you look at it the same way. There were some posts about me, some about other things, some were longer and others shorter, but I am pretty happy with where I stand right now.
Secondly, I got sick. It was awful and I am happy that it is over. It was especially bad because when I first got sick, I went back to school as soon as I felt a little bit better. Turns out, I have not waited long enough and I got sick again. But now I am feeling awesome and healthy again and am ready to go back to life.
Then, a school project started. The school calls it Clil and it is pretty much the most nonsense thing that exists on this planet. Together with our italian school pendant, we have to analyze a church and then present our results. Since I can't have any luck ;-), we got a very old and boring church, where not even the walls are straight. We tried our best and this coming week we have to build a model, so stay tuned for the result. I will most probably be putting everything online, but it is in german and italian, so I'm not sure what you would do with it. But you can just look at the pics if you are interested.
Bye

I'm Sick

Hi people on the web,
as the title may imply, I'm currently sick. That's why this post won't be too long, but I wanted to at least let you know what is currently going on in my life.
Because I'm a bit of a tech geek, I have been following the event Microsoft has streamed about Windows 10. While the OS itself was predictably not bad, there was a product that was amazing: Microsoft Hololens. I am also downloading the new version of Windows 10, and if you are interested I'll let you know how it is to use it. I am particularly excited about Cortana and how it works on old PCs, and I'll report about that too.
That's actually everything interesting I've been doing the last week, so I'll let you go with a recommendation to at least check Microsofts Hololens video out and a wish to let me know in the comments what you think about it.
bye

School

Hi people on the internet,
First off, sorry for publishing this post on Sunday. I didn't make it for Saturday because I was out all day.
Today I want to talk about school. I know that sounds incredibly boring, but the ten and a half years I was in school, a lot happened, both for students in general and in my personal life. Of course the biggest thing to happen is the Internet. Some praise it as a revolution of teaching and learning, others are afraid of the younger generation not using it properly. I just wanted to write down my opinion: While there are things I don't like about the web, I think it is an incredibly useful tool. We have access to most of humanities knowledge with just a tap. It might be true that we don't have to learn some things anymore, but I don't see it that way. If we don't have to calculate every calculation manually but with a calculator we are much faster and can go on with other things in math. The same applies to history. Searching for something in an encyclopedia is much slower than the internet, so we can spend more time with the actual thing than with just searching it. And that's the case for almost every subject, so I think we don't do enough with the web rather than too much.
That was the first thing, now I want to talk about something personal. When I was in elementary school, I didn't have many friends. Most of the time I was alone, and I made just fine. But sadly, it wasn't just the loneliness, I got mobbed. Back then I didn't know anything about it, and while it didn't feel good, I did make it through elementary.
When I got in middle school, I made a clean cut with my past and started new. And it really did work, in my new class there was nobody that didn't like me. While I was certainly not friends with everyone, at least nobody hated me either.
And then there was this girl in my class. She wasn't very smart (sorry to say it like that, but she needed a special school program, and she definitely wouldn't have made it through school without it), and guess what, she got mobbed. As somebody who went through the same thing, I should have done something to prevent it. But I didn't. Actually, I sometimes said bad things to her myself, and it wasn't pretty. I can only imagine how she must have felt. Looking back, and being completely honest, this is the only thing I would do different if I could do it again, it is one of the things that keep in up at night.
I didn't talk to her since middle school has ended, and that was almost three years ago. Sometimes I wonder what has happened to her since then, I hope she has done the same thing I have, made a clean cut and began again from zero.
While I really regret anything that has happened to her, I think it has changed my perspective on many things. Now when something like that happens, I do something to help them, and I even feel bad when I talk about someone behind his or her back.
I hope you enjoyed reading and I see you next week. Bye.

My past

Hi people on the internet,
first things first, this week we had to make a presentation about a country on the planet, and I chose Australia. It's obvious why I chose it, but nobody knows yet about my plans to go there for a school exchange. Do you think this is an opportunity to tell them, or should I wait? I mean, it would definitely be good timing, but I don't want to rush on it. Please let me know what you think in the comments below.
Next is the actual content, I want to talk a little bit about my past. This week, I want to write about my really early years.
When I was young, I was a very big fan of Lego, and I remember I always wanted to build houses with it. From a small beach house to a luxurious villa and even a hotel I've built everything. My Lego constructions were very detailed and perfected, and I loved tweaking them for months until they were really "perfect".
But Lego was not my only interest. I really loved "girls" toys like kitchen mixers or toy ovens. My parents once bought me a small washing machine and I was so happy when I got it. Some of the other kids in kindergarten didn't share my interests and I was really more of an outsider. What I now know is that it was never the act of cooking or washing clothes that fascinated me, it were the machines. I loved how they looked, the materials the different companies used and how they worked. I loved to look at existing products and then build my own. My parents had a phone, and I had a cardboard phone, with numbers and everything else a phone needed in my eyes. I once built a small kitchen with cooktop, fridge and even an oven where you could insert pictures of food.
That love for products has never changed. I still enjoy good design and I even found my dream job in it. First I thought it was being an Architect, but what really fascinates me is being an industrial designer. I love to design, especially electronic devices. I've designed phones in all colors and materials, and in my head is even an idea for a smartwatch, but I don't know yet how to realize it.
I think it is amazing how a love for something that fascinated me when I was so young could only get bigger after 12 years. I really think I found my dream job, and if anybody that reads this has any experience in this job, or even only a suggestion, then I would be glad if you would write a comment.
Thanks for reading!

PS: In the following days I will post my Australia presentation for everyone that could need it.

Time to know me better

Hi people on the internet,

this is my second post, but the first one was just a short explanation of why I'm doing this, so I consider this my first "big" post.

What I want to do is pretty much summed up in the title. In the following weeks I want you to know me better and everything that matters to me. 

First I want to write about my language. As written before, I currently live in South Tyrol, a region in the north of Italy, where there are three official languages: german, italian and ladin (ok, I have no idea if ladin is the right translation, but in german it is called "ladinisch"). They also teach english at school, and that's why I happen to speak three languages. German is my native language, so it is the language I know best. Since first grade we got teached italian, and I don't speak it really bad either, even if it is not the greatest. The year I got in fourth grade, South Tyrolean schools introduced english as a subject, and at first I didn't like it. The english teachers we had in primary school were terrible, they didn't speak the language much better than we did. In middle school it got better and I learned the grammatical foundations and built up a basic vocabulary. 

Then in high school something happened. At that time I was a big fan of How I Met Your Mother and Season 8 just started airing on german television. But I was so curious about how it continued that I tried everything to avoid waiting one week for the next episode, until I began watching episodes online, in english. At that time I realized that english is far more than a school subject, it started to have an actual application in my life. So it happened that I learned the language faster and better than my classmates, and I got the best marks. I remember one time we had to write a short text about the progress humanity made the last 100 years, and when I got the text back, I got the best mark possible. I was shocked. My teacher said my language was far better than the one of most other people, even those in senior year. 

Since then, I have started to be on YouTube for way to much time of my life and have fallen in love with many american TV shows, with Orphan Black being the most recent one. Also, I started to wonder if I was actually able to live somewhere where they only speak english, so I decided to make an exchange year somewhere. It was pretty difficult to figure out where to go, but at the end I was able to make a decision. And now we're here, in the middle of planning.

I hope you enjoyed reading today's blog, and if you did I hope you continue following me on my journey. And feel free to leave a comment.

Bye!

PS. I wanted to announce that I will write a new blog entry every Saturday (or Sundays really, really early, depends on where you are in the world), so stay tuned for more.