Introduction

Hey I assume that you know that I'm Kendra and you may or may not know but I am planning on spending my Jr. year of high school in Italy on an AFS exchange program for 10 months. I will be there some time from September 3 - September 6 through some time in early June. I'm so EXCITED about going to Italy.

My application has been in Italy now for about 2 weeks and AFS says that the time frame for finding out if you are accepted is 4-6 weeks. That means that the earliest I can find out is November 22ND and (hopefully) the latest is December 14th. I hope that it is sooner rather then later, but it is more likely that I will find out on the later end of the spectrum. I don't think that I can wait another week and it will be impossible to wait for 3 or possibly more weeks. UGG its sooo hard to wait. Once I find out if I'm accepted then I have to wait 9 months before I can even leave for Italy, and then there is the issue of how I am going to graduate when I come home.

My new class schedule is going to be so bad . I have the WORST second semester this year. I'm a sophmore so I have to take all of my sophomore classes this semester (speech, American heritage 1, English 10) and 4 total Jr. classes but I'm already taking 2 of them this year next year (American Heritage 3, Brit Lit) and I have to take a summer English class. We had this Big meeting with my counselor, the principal, the AFS coordinator, me and my parents. We decideded that I will be able to graduate on time, but i have to take all of those extra classes. That is going to suck so bad but it is SOOOO worth it because i will get to go to Italy for a year and not be in this tiny little town for my Jr. year YAY. I don't know if i will transfer any credits because if I do all of the grades will be counted for my GPA, and all of my grades from Italy are going to be kinda bad considering I do not speak Italian so in the beginning doing homework is going to be impossible. School here i get all A's so my GPA is good so I'm worried that if I transfer my grades from Italy, that my GPA will go way down and that colleges wont even look at my application, but if i don't I will only have the exact minimum number of credits to graduate,24.

People say that when you go on exchange that you mature alot and that when you come back you are WAY more mature then your friends and that you have to make all new friends. I'm so scared for that because I love my friends and I'm scared that we won't be friends and that scares me. I'm afraid that I will miss my friends and my family alot and that I will be so home sick that I will not be able to make any friends or bond with my new family. Ok I'm just kinda scared because this is some thing that i really want to do and now its coming true and kinda the reality of what is happening is setting in