NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST.

- J. R. R. Tolkien

I don’t want to “get away”. I love my family and friends, everything about the place I’ve grown up. What I want is to take a risk. I can’t stand the thought of looking back years from now when I’m old and home bound, regretting a decision I could have made. Not trying to be dramatic or anything, that will come later. Truth is I didn’t have the guts to say no. So I said yes.

I’m giving up a lot. Senior year. Driving. Prom. Walking in graduation. For what? The answers are endless and still completely, excitingly unknown.

And hopefully not my sanity.

That was a joke, Mom.

METHOD TO MY MADNESS

..there is none.
As a future East Asian Studies Major, decided since 8th grade, people ask me:

-"WHY GERMANY?!?! It doesn't make sense. What's there?"
-Listen, if I knew what was there, why would I go?

But in all seriousness, I don't know why Germany. It just happened that way and I'm not going against the river flow. Because you just don't mess with the river flow.
To reassure (my mother) there is a slight method to my madness. I'm going to a totally new country, to learn a totally new language, become more independent, maybe mature a little to the point I can do my own laundry, and meet some hopefully amazing people. I have hope that anything can happen and going to Germany is just the start.

IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY

...how many days I spent just figuring out how to make a blog. I'm amazed that it's finally happened and how simple it turned out to be*. I wanted it to be super creative and impressive but then I figured out what I write is more important (just a little bit).
So, now that I've finished the hard part--Hi! My name is Adrienne. I'm 16, from Brewster, N.Y (GO BEARS!) and I'll be going to Germany through AFS from September 2011 to July 2012. At this point I don't know where exactly or who I'm staying with but I'm going! Just to mention it, in my house at this very moment there is minor tension over my situation. Should I explain?

My dad is a teacher and he gets these random emails about "educational opportunities" which he often sends me. I being the diligent daughter, often delete these emails without a glance. Apparently fate gave me the golden ticket when I actually read one of these emails. Guess what it was about? Just guess!  Yeah Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange Scholarship! To learn more about this scholarship and others, or to apply please click on the section at the top of the page marked CBYX & MORE

And the story goes on to me applying (with basically no comment to my parents) and G-E-T-T-I-N-G it. The hilarious part that anyone who knows me knows--is that I want to be an EAST ASIAN studies major in college. Explaining why I'm going to the wrong continent should be fun...

 * it was NOT simple--I changed from Tumblr to Blogger after (cough) 13 blog posts, so I have come to believe that decisiveness is not my defining quality.
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Some little notes to make:
-I am NOT very organized in my thinking/writing
-I make a TON of grammatical errors, mostly because I can barely speak English due to....(there's no reason)
-I will probably end up using lots of unneeded parenthesis and quotation marks
- I apologize in advance for not keeping up with this blog and/or not explaining myself correctly, but questions are welcome.