Jul 24 2008
Tomorrow I leave San Jose. There are many swirling teenage feelings in my mind I’m sure, but between fitting stuffed bears into my luggage and going through clothes that mysteriously smell like this person’s house or that exboyfriend, all I can think about at the moment is that I
Must. Fit. Nine. Pairs. of Shoes. Into luggage!!
More like eight, but this is frustrating anyway. ;D
May 30 2008
I’ve been terrible about posting. My host family has e-mailed me tons so that’s exciting, but for now I’ll just say that my parents booked airplane tickets to leave San Jose on Saturday, July 26, at 7:45 AM. We’ll spend about a week touring the East Coast and visiting family before my parents drop me off in D.C. on the 3rd of August.
Basically, Friday the 25th will be the last opportunity to say “Smell ya later” to me in person. 
The following is the rather adorable countdown I’ve created for all of you to easily reference. Fun!
May 19 2008
After school on Friday I checked the mail and found an unusually fat envelope from ASSE. The first line said:
Dear Sarah,
Wonderful news! Your ASSE German host family has been found!
A few pages later is my host family placement form, which is filled with pretty basic info (age, occupations, contact info, pets, and activities) about my new family, the Schmidbauers.
Both of my host parents, Thorsten and Heike, are relatively young, and they have a 13 year old daughter named Annika. I’ll get more into all the details later as they’ve already e-mailed me, so for now I’ll entertain you all with some pictures of Haan, the itty bitty town I’ll be living in next year.
stolen from oddtodd’s travelblog
I love the streets! And the buildings. They look so, well, German! Unlike Frankfurt and some other big cities I’m sure. The following is a side by side comparison of San Jose, CA (where I am now) and Haan, Germany (where I will be next year) from Google maps. If you enlarge them (click), you’ll see that Haan is MUCH greener and had much more open space than San Jose. I don’t know if that means it’s farming country or if there will be many fields to frolic in, but I’m fine with it either way. 
May 14 2008
I just got a letter from ASSE with my flight information. We have to be at the airport in Washington, DC (Dulles) on Sunday, August 3 from 1-4 pm. The international flight is at 5:23 pm on August 6 and we arrive in Frankfurt, Germany at 7:10 am on August 7, their time. It’s a 7 hour and 47 minute flight, by United if the information on expedia.com is accurate at all…Interestingly enough, I can click to view the seat plan from expedia.com, and all the more upfront (though still economy) seats are filled. Exciting! We’re supposed to send in the details of how we’re going to get to DC to ASSE.
I’m super excited because I can finally plan my summer. My parents may decide to take a week long vacation on the east coast before August 3. That’s it. Sweet!
Apr 27 2008
On Friday night my parents and I went downtown to see The Magic Flute, performed by Opera San Jose. I’ve watched it a long time ago on DVD or maybe even VHS. The singing was in German, and spoken conversations in English. This was a bit jarring, but the performance was very good nonetheless. Subtitles in English (as well ad advertisements) appeared in a screen above the stage, which is pretty standard nowadays. This is probably the best opera for kids, and those who don’t usually go out to see concerts/operas.
Afterwards we tried following the words along with a CD of The Magic Flute performed by another group, and found that even with words in hand, it’s extremely difficult to follow the female singers. No problem at all following the men, but this probably proves my parents’ assertion that I will not understand everything sung in German by this time next year. I’ll still try to find another opportunity to watch it live next year, though.
On a related note, my sister and I attended a piano concert at the San Francisco Davies Symphony Hall starring András Schiff on April 13. He is currently going through the entire collection of Beethoven piano sonatas in a series of concerts. Our night included Sonata No. 12, No. 13, No. 14 (Moonlight), No. 15 (Pastoral), and a Bach piece for the encore.
I’m extremely lucky to have such opportunities, but I definitely don’t appreciate them enough. My usual pattern is to be extremely reluctant about going (it’s expensive, takes time, and so on), and enjoying it in the end anyway. Both of these performances were great experiences and if possible I’ll be attending more operas and concerts in Germany. These are a few of the things I want to see live in the future, in no particular order:
If you’re so inclined, you can click the links, scroll down, and listen to the pieces. The file qualities aren’t very good, but I’d say the performances are.
Apr 20 2008
Yesterday I received another package from ASSE, which was super exciting because it’s been more than a month since I got the acceptance letter. It’s filled with basic guides to being an exchange student (culture, school, your host family, and “It’s all up to you!”), a handy Celsius<->Fahrenheit guide, and some fun info about Germany and a rather dry overview of their history.
Also, to confuse my parents, they start the packet with the words, “Congratulations on your final acceptance as an ASSE exchange student…” Aha! You weren’t finally accepted before! You were only a finalist then! No one actually said that in my house, but I swear I could hear it from CBYX-er’s homes nationwide. I’m sure they’ll congratulate us again in the future, but no will will complain. We also get an official ASSE folder to hold all these information letters in one place, and I suppose it’s as nice as folders come.
Today marks the beginning of the end. There are only eight more weeks of school; one is full of STAR testing (to measure my school’s performance), and one is just graduation practice and having fun, so there are really only two more weeks of school. It’s frightening.
Apr 09 2008
After one week and three days, Anna, our student for next year finally emailed us. It turns out she was on a class trip to England and she didn’t have internet access there. Those Europeans have it good over there - we only get class trips to Southern California or Yosemite. The Washington D.C. and New York trips cost almost $2,000 each for us NorCal kids (not that I went to either).
So in her e-mail, Anna mentioned the lovely SJ weather she will be enjoying, asked if I have any questions about Germany, and requested photos of her new home and so on which we will of course oblige her with. For now though, I sent off a gigantic e-mail about introducing myself and Lynbrook. First on the agenda is making sure she gets good classes for next year. I’m not quite sure how much privacy I should give Anna on this blog, so if any of you readers know blog etiquette or have an opinion on that, insight would be greatly appreciated!
Mar 30 2008
Yesterday morning I went to the dentist for a regular checkup. Despite regular brushing & flossing, I apparently I have gingivitis Thanks to my dad, I have super weak gums, and the oral hygienist even looked at me suspiciously when I told her I floss everyday. Then she told me to be more aggressive when I floss. Or, to put it another way, to draw blood. And unfortunately, she’s right. >.<
Anyway, when Dr. Smith came in, I mentioned that I’d be gone for a year, which meant scheduling for pulling out my wisdom teeth (which haven’t shown up yet) would be kind of awkward. He decided to give me another x-ray of my teeth, and after showing that to the oral surgeon, said that since my roots haven’t grown yet, it might actually be easier to pull out my wisdom teeth this summer before I leave instead of waiting another year. My dad thinks our dentists are just trying to make more money, but that’s the way it goes. Yayy.
Mar 26 2008
After being accepted on March 6 (time is flying!), I did the logical thing in this digital age and made a Facebook group for CBYX 2008-2009 participants. The group is only three weeks old, but as of right now we’ve grown to 19 members, and two of the exchange organizations have yet to finish notifying their finalists. It’s pretty exciting, and everyone there seems to be really friendly. You can check out the group here, and if any of you reading are CBYX participants this year and not in the group, join up! =)
Mar 25 2008
On March 11 we got an e-mail from Rotary saying that our chosen student has been confirmed, and on the 20th we received a call from another guy saying the same thing. He came over on Sunday to get some signatures from my parents on the Guarantee form, and on the Thursday before that to drop off a hard copy of our girl’s application. It also included her transcript and a copy of her passport, which were both pretty interesting. The coordinator sent Anna this e-mail on Friday:
Greetings from Cupertino California. I am Harvey B——- and I am the Cupertino Rotary Youth Exchange Officer who is organizing your stay. Irmgard L——- will be your Rotary Counselor while you are here. She will be meeting with you on a regular basis.
Cupertino is a small city in Silicon Valley. Cupertino is the home of Apple Computer and Hewlett Packard. We are a very mixed community mainly of white, Chinese and Indian. At the end of this email I will add some links to some web sites that will help you to know more about the area.
You will be attending Lynbrook High School in the Fremont Union High School District. Lynbrook is a high achieving high school with many varied programs and activities. Mr. Rich Amlin will be the vice principal you will be assigned to. He can help you to select the courses this spring that you can take next school year. I encourage you to email him soon to start the process so that you get the courses you want. Mr. Amlin’s email is: r—_amlin@fuhsd.org. Please take some time to explore the school’s web site. It is: http://www.lhs.fuhsd.org/home/.
I have also asked Mr & Mrs. Nguyen your first host family to be in touch with you to introduce themselves.
I am looking forward to meeting you.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns before your arrival.
Harvey
Prettyy exciting. Apparently a few of the Rotary people know Amlin pretty/semi well. Anna hasn’t replied back to Harvey yet, and my parents won’t be e-mailing her till she does that. I guessing her family was celebrating Easter. I’ve already written my e-mail, but I don’t want to send it till my parents send theirs.
