Ironwood, USA ----> Rottenschwil, Switzerland

I found out a while ago now that I will be spending my exchange in the small town of Rottenschwil Switzerland. It is in the Canton of Argau, and is right outside of Zurich. Okay so small town is a little bit of an overstatement. It is a small village with a population of about 340 people. But it will be awesome because I could just get on the train in the morning and be in Zurich in a half an hour or so. So I guess you could say that I have the best of both worlds.

Ironwood, Mi, USA

Rottenschwil, Ag, Switzerland

Been a while i guess... so now I have a lot to write about.
About a month ago I started to Email my host sister back and forth. My family seems really cool and I'm really excited to meet them. In my first family, I have two host sisters at 19 (Fabienne) and 14 (Flavia) years old, and a host brother who is 17 (Yves) years old, but will be spending a year in Peru on a Rotary Youth Exchange so I won't get to see him at all. My older host sister (Fabi) spent a year in the US in 08-09 on an exchange not through Rotary in Virginia so she speaks English fluently... but we already agreed not to speak any English. Unless I'm really lost... which might happen a lot.... let me rephrase that... will happen a lot!
She also told me to bring my skis because each year her family goes on a week long ski trip in the Alps!! So I bought a Ski bag so i can bring them... I still have to get a bag for my boots though. And I guess that one of my other families goes on a ski trip too! I'm excited if you can't tell.

So here is a picture of my host family for ya.
Left to right: (Dad, Fabi, Flavia, Yves, Mom)

My school is called Kantonsschule Wohlen... and I get to travel by TRAIN every day to go to school! haha

This is a tiny little bit from an email about my school.

"Schooldays here are much longer than in America. Usually we start at 7:30 or 8:30, and can leave at 4:30 or 5:10 pm. it depends on the day. Every day is different, we don't have English every day, only twice a week."

My other two families are called 'Familie Lehmann' und 'Familie Ernst'. One of them is the next door neighbor to my first family, and the other one is a ways away, but still in the same village. My second family 'Familie Lehmann' has three sons the oldest 20 and moved out, and the youngest 12. My Third Family 'Familie Ernst' has two daughters and one son. the daughters are 19 and 18, and their son is 14.

So now for the USA news...
Yellowstone National Park

I've had two or three conferences/parties since i last wrote... We had an outbound party last week which was hosted by Andrew Kroll an outbound going to the Faroe Islands. It was three days long. It was surprisingly a lot of fun! Andrew lives out by a lake so we got to use his boat and go tubing and swimming. We had a fire (we burned a hollow log which was really cool), played Frisbee and volleyball. He had a 5 person hot tub... and we fit 12 people into it. (I'd say that's just pure skill there) haha. It rained both nights and we were in a tent... didn't hear a thing though. the girls got the camper. One of the nights we had a dance party in his garage.... then watched a movie. Now our next conference is the Grand Rapids conference in Grand Rapids Michigan. We get to take over the whole Calvin College campus and we sleep in the dorms. It Starts on Thursday the 8th and goes till that Sunday. But I get to go down on Tuesday because I'm in the show and we are performing there... in front of thousands of people.. It's going to be EPIC!
This week I am practicing for the 4th of July parades, I am marching in the Band for my school. We have a parade on the 3rd, and another one on the 4th. It will be the last time I get to see some of the people from school for the next year.

Almost forgot about our trip out west. On the 12th after I took the ACT test, we (as in me, my two sisters and my dad) left in our Motor home to go to Utah to drop my Sister Abbey off at college at BYU. the trip was a lot of fun, but at the same time really busy. we drove there through South Dakota, and over through Montana and Wyoming then down int Utah. On the way we stopped at the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Cody Wyoming, (we went to a rodeo there), and Yellowstone National Park. Then we spent about 4 days on campus so Abbey could get moved in and oriented. Since then it sounds like she is having the most fun of her life there..... except maybe the year she spent in Japan. Then the drive back was just a straight shot home, and we drove a lot every day.... The last day we drove about 900 miles!! So it was good to get home. Even though I left for the outbound party the next day.

At one of the campgrounds along the way, there was this huge Jumping Pillow. It was really fun.

Then after the Rodeo in Cody Wyoming, we went to Wendys to get some food, and only the drive through was open so what would you do?

So I guess that's it for now.... as my Econ teacher would say, "Thank you, and goodbye!"

Chicago and Future Plans

Last Weekend I went to a huge conference in Chicago. We performed on Wednesday and Saturday. They absolutely loved us. But besides performing, I got to talk with a lot of Rotarians. I talked to one from Switzerland and she was really nice, and even gave me one of the pins she had on her blazer. I like talking with them, They always have really fun stories, or really good advice to give you. We (as in all of the exchange students in the show) didn't go to any of the sessions of the conference. Steve Selvick, the one who was in charge of the whole conference, and the one who was in charge of our show, thought that we deserved to be doing fun stuff rather then sitting through meetings all day long. We had a coach bus to use the whole weekend, which was really convenient. On Saturday, we went to the Shedd Aquarium, and got to see a dolphin show, and beluga whales! haha. so that was a lot of fun. We also
got to tour the Rotary International World Headquarters, which was really cool. The top 3 floors were devoted to Rotary Youth Exchange. We got to see the office of the President, Vice President and President elect.... they were huge!

So here are some pictures...

Well this is most of us

At the World Headquarters, they had every flag that Rotary is associated with!

Besides the show, we also did the opening flag ceremony..... and I got to present the Swiss flag!
Some pictures of us setting up.

USA---->SWITZERLAND


Abbey, Robin, Colin, Emily, Natalia

When we had free time, we liked to use the pool... which was AMAZING! It was huge. There was an inside part, then you would swim under a bridge, which had glass you swim under. and the outside part was really big too. It was 12 feet deep outside! And of course we all wend to dive in the snow, then jump back into the pool.
Besides the pool, we would just hang out in the lobby. It was fun because every once and a while, a Rotarian would come up and start talking to us about our exchange plans and what we are looking foreword to.
The food at the hotel was amazing, we had a continental Breakfast in the morning that had the best fruit ever, and there were always heaps of bacon and french toast. Along with anything else you could think of.

On our last night there after we were done with our performance, we cleaned up all of our stuff. By then, it was like 12:30. Then Steve tells us that we wont be having a curfew that night.... so what do we do??... we set up an AWESOME dance party in Steves huge office... And what does Steve do??.... he gets us 10 pizzas, 3 pounds of chicken wings, and 5 liters of pop! (there were only like 24 of us in there). It was so much fun. I don't think we went to bed until at least 5:30 in the morning. Then we had to get up less then 2 hours later to eat breakfast and get on the bus to go home. I'm pretty sure that everyone fell asleep within 15 minutes of leaving the hotel.

So now I'm studying like mad for both school, and Switzerland. It's been a really busy year. I have my next outbound conference next weekend on on the 13th and 14th. Then the week after, I have the PETS conference where we will be performing again on the 19th-21st.

Variety Show Practices

Over the past month, I have had two 4 day long practices for the show I am in for Rotary. It's really coming along now, and we all have a lot of fun doing it. We have our first performance at the NAYEN conference in the last week of February. For one of the shows, we are doing a western theme with about 9 different numbers. The other show is a twenties theme. All of us got cowboy outfits for the western show, and for the twenties we are wearing a tux, while the girls are wearing red dresses.
Next week we go down to Chicago for the NAYEN conference for 5 days. We will be bussed down there in a coach bus picking up students along the way. We have two nights of performing, and the rest of the time, we will help run parts of the conference, and go on tours of Chicago. Everyone that is in the show gets to go to the big aquarium for one of the afternoons. The hotel that the conference is being held at is a Marriott. I guess that they have a really nice pool that goes indoor and outdoors... so I'm excited for that.
Besides that, I've got my second outbound conference coming up in March and then a couple more performances in April and May.

Past six months

Just have to say... these are the biggest paper clips ever!

Since August of 2009, I have been involved with the Rotary Youth Exchange program. I went through the application process in September, and got accepted to study abroad in SWITZERLAND! I found this out last Sunday afternoon.


I had a my first outbound Rotary conference in October. I met a lot of new people and made a lot of new friends. Since October, I had a conference in November for the show I'm in with about 20 other exchange students. We are going to perform at a few different conferences including the Rotary International conference in Chicago next month. There will be representatives from all over the world there. My outbound group already received and finished our first assignment of reading a book and writing our paper about it. Now that we all know where we are going, we have our big country assignment to do. It has to be ten pages covering different topics about our host countries. My next conference is for the show in two weeks from Thursday to Sunday!