Thursday: On Thursday morning, I got on the bus in Tualitin. In Troutdale (about an hour later), we split off into two different buses, separated by country officer. I was on the bus with all of the inbounds from and outbounds interested in Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Austria, Denmark, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy. I spent the majority of my bus ride sitting by Pauli, the inbound from Chile. We stopped for lunch and then went roller skating in Pendleton. We finally arrived to Cove around 6 pm, had dinner, talked for a while about the plan for the next few days, then went to bed.
Friday: We woke up early on Friday for breakfast and the outbound candidates spent the entirety of the morning doing a simulation that was meant to represent some challenges we might face on our exchange. We met back up with the inbounds (who had spent the morning at a low-income elementary school in La Grande talking to the kids about their countries) for lunch and then headed out to the Oregon Trail Interactive Museum. Afterwards, we had dinner and then went to a basketball game at Cove High School. It was funny seeing everyone's reaction when a group of 90 kids walked into a gym to watch a basketball game played by a team who's school only has 114 students. We had a lot of fun, but unfortunately our enthusiastic cheering did not result in a win for Cove. We went back to the camp around 9 and talked about the plan for the next day. At around 10, we were allowed to go to bed.
Saturday (selection day!): We were woken early again on Saturday. We got all of our snow gear ready, ate a quick breakfast, and then loaded the buses and headed up to the mountain. Once we got there, everyone went and rented their equipment and began their lessons while I stayed behind and filled out my final ballot for country choices. I chose Chile as my first choice, and my four alternates were Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil. Due to my arm injury, I was unable to participate in the skiing or snowboarding, but luckily Bill (country officer of Chile and Denmark) and Barbara (country officer of Austria and Czech) were snowshoeing so I joined them along with one other outbound candidate, Sophie. We got about a mile away from the lodge before Sophie and Bill managed to get stuck in a creek and buried up to their waists in snow. I snowshoed back to the lodge to get help and everything turned out fine. Bill was lucky that he avoided hypothermia. At around 3, everyone met back up at the lodge and we left. We packed up camp in Cove and traveled to La Grande where we spent the night at a community center, participating in things such as laser tag and a haunted house. The country officers came at around 11 pm and gathered all of us. They lined up all of the outbound candidates and then whispered to their inbounds which 2 outbounds would be assigned to their country. Once the inbounds were told, they came up to the line of outbounds one at a time, circled around us, and then eventually hugged the two people that were selected to go to their country. It was a very long and exciting process, filled with tears of joy and lots of cheering.As the people slowly got selected, I was still left standing. Amanda and I ended up being the last two! At that point, we knew we had both gotten our first choice of Chile! We were so happy, all we could do was hug each other and hug Pauli and thank Bill. We danced for the rest of the night and went to bed very late. It was one of the best days of my life.
Sunday: We were supposed to be going home on Sunday, but due to weather conditions we decided it would be safer to stay another night. We packed up and headed back to our camp in Cove, where I spent the day relaxing, learning some Spanish from Pauli (I already know the basics, as I've been taking Spanish in school for 4 years), and then we all went out to the movie theater and watched Monuments Men. Later, we went out to dinner and then back to the camp. We went to bed early, which nobody protested. We were all extremely tired.
Monday: We spent Monday traveling. Amanda and I took turns sitting next to Pauli and speaking to her in Spanglish. She introduced us to some good Spanish music and taught us a few slang words used only in Chile. We arrived back in Tualitin in the afternoon and I said goodbye to all my new friends, knowing that I wouldn't see most of them again until the district conference in May.
(Amanda, Pauli, and me! The Chileans)
(We were a big group!)
(Me and Sophie taking a break. Snowshoeing is hard!!)
