Royan Orientation....Trip of A Lifetime

Okay before I get to telling you about my amazing trip to Royan this past weekend....I have an announcement. I will be posting now on, religiously, every Wednesday. Yay! Okay one more thing a quick story. My host mother happened to be gone this week....which left all of the driving around, school stuff, and (dear God) cooking to my host father. The first night my host father attempted a meal he made a microwave pizza, bacon, and meat from a can. The pizza was raw and cold and the bacon was rock hard, and the meat from a can....well was meat from a can. The next meal he completely gave up and brought home food from his private clinic. We ate patient food for dinner. Needless to say I am making dinner tonight.... On Royan This past weekend was the first of five Rotary gatherings where ALL the exchange students in District 1690 come together and eat, complain, and most importantly laugh. The weekend started with a 4 hour 30 minute drive from my home town of Ustaritz to our host city Royan. Ya Wen and I were the first students to arrive at the camp site. In fact we were there before the host Rotarians. So there we were one large American girl and one very small Taiwanese girl....looking like the odd couple standing in the middle of a bunch of RVs and portable homes.

Thank God we were saved by the head camp organizer who took us in his little go cart to our separate cabins. Here is some pictures of the cabins I took when we got there.

(The room three of us shared)

(Thats gonna be interesting....)

(Emily Anne Does NOT like small showers) I tried to stay out of our cabin as much as possible. When all the students started trickling in we all greeted each other and exchanged pins. Each student needs to bring pins with them to exchange with other students. Mine are little American flags made out of safety pins(they went over great)!The meet and greet was moved over to the dinning hall where we were once again told all of the rules of being an exchange student (there is really only so many times we could be told NO DRINKING< DRIVING< DATING OR DOING DRUGS) Then we retired to our rooms and like good exchange students we all went to bed early and slept all night. There was no "sneaking to others rooms" or "talking until 2 in the morning". Nope just good old sleep. That is all I can say about that night. We all woke up bright and early the next morning...none of us tired of course because we went to bed early. Breakfast we followed with a flurry of activity. We were going on a boat ride! To an island! With a lighthouse! And a 1 mile walk over hard sand in bear feet! No but seriously....it was a long walk....and a bumpy boat ride. But the view was worth it...not really but the friends I made on the way was really worth it. I could not ask for a better group of people. I have never felt so comfortable with strangers.

(The Americans) Part 2 Next Wednesday! Or sooner! Maybe Not!