Preparing for the trip
Written by: Danique
On June 24th I attended an informational meeting about what the trip is about and how the group from last year experienced it. I knew about this trip, because my sister went on it last year and I remember being super jealous of her because she was going to America. Besides knowing about it from my sister, I also saw one poster hanging near the printer on my side of the school, it was not noticeable at all and near the teacher’s lounge.
To be honest with you, I didn’t plan on attending that meeting, because I had to go to my job almost right after. Right now, I am so thankful for going because little did I know you had to be there to sign in and it being valid. So I just did that, and they said I would get an email about what I had to do to prove myself worthy to go on the trip.
So on June 26th I got the email and read it… I had to write a motivational letter in which I had to explain the following:
- my motivation to go
- my contribution to this program based on your expertise
- what I want to learn or want to develop more on this trip
So I started to think to myself… How will I do this? How will I stand out? My sister gave me tips and I got an idea; I will say I will do some small money-raising events to fund the trip. So I wrote my motivational letter, put it in photoshop and made it look good. I even made a quotation for those little events. This is my motivational letter, I won’t insert my quotation due to personal information.
I sent it in on July 3rd at 11:51 AM and so the waiting began…
The day was September 2nd and the clock passed 10:20 AM. My sister called me asking if I got in because the list of people was known and sent out. I was playing the sims at that point and just made a deathtrap for my Sims, so you know, I was doing nothing special at all… Anyways, I closed my game and checked my mailbox… And I didn’t have an email at all. I didn’t get in? My sister told me I would get an email even if I didn’t make it. So I waited while being nervous about if I got it or not.
Three minutes after the call and refreshing my mailbox every few seconds I got an email. It was about the program. I clicked it right away and started reading it… I got in! I jumped up from my chair and ran downstairs to remember I was home alone and started running back upstairs again. Once back in my room, I called my sister and as soon as she picked up I yelled into her ear “I got in!”
She then told me she knew and that’s why she called me. The week before that one of my other teachers randomly knew about the trip and told me she had a good conversation about why I should go as well, and kind of told me I was going without knowing I didn’t know that yet. I kind of brushed that one off.
After the short call with my sister, I called my parents who were both happy for me as well.
Besides the email telling me I was in the Honors Program 2020 group, it also told us about the first and official meeting with the group and an American student would reach out to us within a week, with questions for an interview.
The first official meeting was on September 16th at 4 PM. I traveled to school for it and walked towards the location it was at. Nerves went through my body as I came closer. I’m always a little shy when it comes to meeting a new group of people and I didn’t want them to dislike me.
When I arrived I saw one of the teachers and a few other students were there. I walked over to them, introduced myself and sat down. More and more people arrived and soon everyone was there. We all introduced ourselves, and we got more information about the groups we would be working in. After that, we all started talking to each other about our ideas and what we wanted to do while being in America.
When we were done with that, we all went to Happy Italy and had dinner there. Happy Italy is an Italian restaurant known for its cheap prices and huge sized dishes. I shared a pizza with Amalia as we both can’t finish one whole pizza. While eating dinner I discussed weird laws in Florida with some people and the whole group had a laugh about one pizza tasting like soap, nasty soap.
After dinner, we went back to school and our parents came to join in. We got more information about the trip later that evening.
We texted via WhatsApp about the groups and then formed the official groups:
- The blog group
- The Instagram group
- The vlog group
- The magazine group
- The after movie group
- The organization group
We talked more about it at our second meeting which was a week after. We continued to have meetings every other Thursday. It was from 3:00 PM until 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM. We had English classes which taught us more about the language, the culture, the politics, the history and more things. Before or after that we watched an episode of the show ‘America To Me’ which is about kids and their high school experience. I thought it was interesting but I overheard some people say they didn’t like it.
We had time to meet up as a group and make a plan about how we are going to do this.
I enjoyed going to the meetings because I got to know the people I’m going with better and they weren’t boring classes like most classes were.
I also had an interview with an American college student. Due to our busy schedules, we decided to just send the list so I could type the answers out. After doing that we also chatted a bit about our experiences at our schools and past schools. That was a lot of fun as well. Maybe I will be meeting her when I am in Orlando, but that isn’t official yet.
On January 27th we had a Skype call with people from Valencia College. Most people from our side were busy or not feeling well, because of that we had 5 students… I didn’t plan on going in the first place because I had exams that day but when I saw that not many people were able to go I decided to come.
I had to wait for about 2 hours, so I met up with an old friend and chatted with her until I had to go. When I got there I had to install Skype which was a whole process itself because I somehow had an account and had to log in. When I got in, one call already started from a teacher’s computer and there were about 25 people in that class. That meant everyone had about 5 people to talk to at once. So we all switched to separate calls and it was very chaotic. You could barely hear the people you were talking to because I could hear people in the same room as I talked and heard other callers reply. But all struggles aside it was fun and I planned to do something to do with them.
As I am writing this it’s February 5th and the trip is getting closer and closer. I am really excited to go. We have one meeting left and on the 13th we will be watching ‘The Florida Project’. I am curious to see that movie because it will shine a different light on what Disney does to Orlando. Besides that, I really can’t wait to just be in America and create a new memory with these people. This trip is really a dream coming true and I can’t wait to share my story with the people reading this.
Honors Program Orlando 2020 