Hi my name is Jordan Granquist. I am from Marshfield Wi, a small town (20,000 pop.) in the middle of Wisconsin, USA. I have been accepted to be an exchange student for the 2011-2012 year in Germany. I just recently found out my host families and city. I feel like I was one of the last people to find out my information. When I did it only made me more excited to go(obviously) and it made the upcoming experience more real to me. Up until now when I thought of going on exchange it was all a fantasy and I pictured myself living in many different cities and it was always random. Now my destination is set and I am ready to start this journey of my life.I will be living in Rosenheim, Germany. This is in Rotary District 1840. Rosenheim is a town of about 60,000 just southeast of Munich. Rosenheim is very close to the South Border of Germany as well. I will be attending Ignaz-Gunther Gymnasium in Rosenheim. I have 3 host families set up for me. The first is Benedikt and Ina Veibahm. They have 3 children and actually live in a small town called Aschau which is not far from Rosenheim, and from what I saw on Google Earth, not very big either. The region of Germany that I will be living in is called Bavaria. This region is really close to the Alps as well.
The only information I had prior to this was my district. So once I got all this information my mind was completely overloaded. I spent about 3 hours on google looking up everything I could possibly find about where I am going to live. This included looking on Google Maps, watching videos on Youtube, and anything I saw that pertained to Rosenheim. This has been the most exciting experience of Rotary for me so far. I knew I was going to write a blog but I never had reason to start one until now. My excitement on a scale of ten is about 18 right now.
Now to recap how i got to this point. In September of 2010 I applied and was accepted to be an Exchange Student with Rotary. January 2011 I was notified that I got my first choice of Germany. February we had our first Rotary meeting with inbounds and outbounds. I was very overwhelmed with all the new people. April we had another Rotary meeting for outbounds only. It was a informational meeting (boring yet helpful) but I met a really cool and down to earth girl who is going to Norway so it was worth it. May 2011 we had another Rotary Conference with outbounds and inbounds and a few rebounds. This was the best conference because the akward stage of meeting completely new people was over and we were(and still are) friends. Savannah ,the girl going to Norway, and I hung out the entire weekend together and we are really good friends now. And now today- the day i finally received my information.
For my upcoming plans for rotary. There is one last conference in Grand Rapids MI which should be really fun that is 4 days long and it is suppose to be a blast. All exchange inbounds, outbounds and the rebounds fresh from their exchange, from all over Central States will be there. I am super excited for that. I am suppose to leave for Germany somewhere between August 30-September 7th. School starts on September 13th in Germany for me. I am now excited even more for this journey to begin, and I will continue to write in this blog for my entire exchange. Auf Weidersehen.
