Introduction

Hello there! ⍟ 

My name is Sophie and I’m sixteen years old. I’m half German and half Japanese but I live and grew up in Germany. I like a lot of creative things like photography, writing, playing the piano or doing web design just like this blog.

I absolutely love traveling.  
It’s really exciting to see different cultures, different landscapes and different sights and I’d like to visit every continent at least once. I just want to see everything the world holds for us, because it holds so much and I believe that there is no end in exploring new things.
Also, this year after the summer has passed, I’m going to spend one year abroad in the USA. During this year, I’m sure a lot of things are going to happen that I want to capture somewhere, all the experiences I make and the progress and development of myself. So I decided to create this blog. I also plan to film important times and take a lot of photos, but I think a blog is something great, where I can write my thoughts down and the ones I left behind in Germany can follow me up in my experiences.

I’ll travel with the organization Rotary International. 
Rotary was founded 105 years ago and is the oldest service club-organization in the world. Their goals are creating humane living conditions, helping countries that need support, working for better education and overall care for the international understanding.

During the time I’m away, two exchange students will also live with my family. First that was really problematic because my mother wasn’t sure if she could handle an exchange student. I had to discuss that a lot with her. A lot, believe me. But since the other organizations were too expensive, this was the only way to do this, and because it was my one and only dream, I did everything to persuade her. And finally she said okay.

I have many reasons to do this exchange.
It has always been my dream and I love the English language. I always tried to improve myself by watching English movies or reading English books. So I think that, if everything is English, everyone’s a native speaker and I can only communicate in English for a whole year, I can raise my English up to a perfect, fluent level. That is definitely something that I want to achieve.
I think this is a really good opportunity to experience something entirely new, everything’s going to be different, the culture, the school, the people and the lifestyle. 

Although I’m a bit afraid that my host family isn’t that nice, that I might get homesick, or that I can’t keep up in school, I’m sure that this stay in another country will bring me forward in many ways and in my personal development as well. In this intensive and long time I can integrate even more into the new culture, the surroundings and the society I still don’t know of. I can learn much more than I ever could in a short, superficial holiday. The memories and experiences will stay forever. I am so excited to see a new country, from this totally different point of view I’ll have.

Of course not everything will go as planned, and it will be adventurous and emotional, but I’m really looking forward to it and I can’t wait for it to begin.

153 days to go!

So this is my first blog post, thanks for reading! There will definitely come more so stay tuned!

Bye ⍟