Zurich Exchange Program: I'm In (and have a sister-blog)

I got some good news today that my family and I were one of four families at my school selected to participate in an exchange program with a school in Zurich, Switzerland. This school in Zurich wants to establish a Zurich/San Francisco sister-city relationship and is working with four schools in San Francisco – mine is one of them. When our Dean of Academics first announced this opportunity a few weeks ago I was immediately interested: a Zurich 16/17 year old comes and stays with us for three weeks in early November through Thanksgiving. He’s been in intensive English language studying in Zurich. Then, when school gets out in June, I go to Zurich and stay with that same family for three weeks and take classes there in English as their school is still in session. $500 covers all expenses, everything. What a deal.

So I put my name into the hat. I knew there would be a lot of interest, who wouldn’t want to do this? When I emailed the Dean, I put a sales-spin on it: “I’ve never been out of the country and I believe I could provide this kid an interesting and multi-faceted experience.” Despite my academic struggles, I have a pretty strong relationship with the brass at my school, I seek them out often (hey, who wouldn’t want to spend time with super-smart PhDs).

Yep, I’ve never been out of the country. Most of my friends did all sorts traveling and international programs this past summer. I worked (and traveled up and down the coast on Southwest). It was fun, make no doubt about it, but everyone keeps coming back saying “you really get a whole different perspective.” I was getting anxious.

Today I learned I was chosen. I have started a sister-blog within my TypePad account called My Zurich Exchange Adventures. There, I will be lightly posting news, updates, and pictures both when he comes and when I’m in Zurich and Europe from now till June. Occasionally, I may post Zurich thoughts on this main blog. FeedBurner has a cool feature so I created an animated GIF on the right column of my main blog that says “Latest From Zurich” and it pulls the latest headline from the Zurich blog. if you’d like to subscribe to my Zurich feed, use this link.

I would close with something like “Ciao!” but alas, Zurich has three official languages.