Pre-Departure Thoughts on India

Now that I've finished my only AP test today (it was World History... 6000 years of interesting stuff), I can now agonize over finishing my Eagle Project and the end of the school year. But until I leave for India, I have some thoughts about how I think my junior year in the Raja will go:

• To lay it out right away, I have absolutely ZERO expectations about how India will be, because if I have any, I will be disappointed with the outcome when that the scenario for that expectation occurs
  
• I want to make friends and connections for the future so if in the event that I travel back to India for say business, I will know how to work with the culture there
• I want to ride an elephant!
  

JE

I won the scholarship!!!!!!!!!

Just to let you all know, I have just found out that I have won the blog scholarship to go to India! I wish I could thank each and every one of you who voted for me in person. This means the world to me (if that makes any sense...)!

Click the link below to see for yourself!

http://usa.afs.org/usa_en/news/article/5520

AFS Blogger Contest Entry

When I was in seventh grade, I applied to be one of 32 Pages for the Virginia House of Delegates and was accepted out of hundreds of applications sent in. This seven week job entitled me to miss school and still get all of my school assignments completed because I had to live down in Richmond and wasn't able to go home except on the weekends. Workdays went Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 5:00pm. From 5 to 7 was our free time for us to go back to the Omni Hotel, get into street clothes, and get dinner. Then from 7 to 9 was study hall, which was required so we could get our schoolwork done. We were required to wear a blazer, slacks, dress shirt and shoes, and tie as our uniforms. All Pages were to behave in an adult manner at all times, whether on the hill, out and about in the city, or back at the hotel, for we were representing the integrity of the Page Program. Halfway through the session, I requested that I change roommates because my first roommate and I weren't getting along at all. I was nervous because my first roommate was popular and intimidating, but I used my peer mediation skills that I learned from being a Lanier Peer Mediatior and pleaded my case, in which we were switched and was able to room with another Page, with whom I became good friends. When I was given an errand to do (in session or in the fax and copy room), I sometimes thought, "I don't want to do this!" But realizing that every small errand affected the productivity of the Virginia government, I did what I was told to do and was afterward glad I did it. Also, when I was in the Page Room waiting for an errand to run, I was listening to my iPod, which was not a very smart idea because "listening devices" were prohibited while at work. In almost an instant, I had my iPod taken away and didn't get it back for another three weeks. I learned that I needed to pay the consequences if I didn't follow the rules. This experience in Richmond, which was out of my comfort zone, allowed me to live and work with other teenagers from Virginia, get an inside look at the workings of the state government, start to get a feeling for what the work world will be like when I get out of school, and make right choices in life.