sarah nguyen

Got my Host Family!

After school on Friday I checked the mail and found an unusually fat envelope from ASSE. The first line said:

Dear Sarah,

Wonderful news! Your ASSE German host family has been found!

A few pages later is my host family placement form, which is filled with pretty basic info (age, occupations, contact info, pets, and activities) about my new family, the Schmidbauers.

Both of my host parents, Thorsten and Heike, are relatively young, and they have a 13 year old daughter named Annika. I’ll get more into all the details later as they’ve already e-mailed me, so for now I’ll entertain you all with some pictures of Haan, the itty bitty town I’ll be living in next year.


stolen from oddtodd‘s travelblog

I love the streets! And the buildings. They look so, well, German! Unlike Frankfurt and some other big cities I’m sure. The following is a side by side comparison of San Jose, CA (where I am now) and Haan, Germany (where I will be next year) from Google maps. If you enlarge them (click), you’ll see that Haan is MUCH greener and had much more open space than San Jose. I don’t know if that means it’s farming country or if there will be many fields to frolic in, but I’m fine with it either way. :-)

Official CBYX Acceptance Letter

On Tuesday the 18th, I received the official acceptance letter from ASSE. I think mine came a little late because they wrote a ’1′ instead of a ’4′ for my address (I got this fixed). The letter’s about three pages long. Summary of the more interesting parts:

• They’ll need to approve your final application before you’re officially accepted. My mom made me clarify this with Sandy Chase, my rep, and Sandy told me that she already received the list of those who had problems with their final application and I wasn’t on it, so I’m golden.
• The final application will be sent to Germany where it’ll be shown to prospective host families (eek!). After we know my host family, I’ll get a placement form/other docs that I’ll need to apply for my residence permit.
• ASSE will be sending a series of information letters at certain intervals to guide everyone through the process leading to departure. International flight details will be sent in May – I’ll know exactly what day I leave then o.o
• I’m responsible for the flight to Wash, D.C., but ASSE can help with the flight arrangements (student discount, perhaps?)
• Scholarship covers:

1. Program cost
2. Pre-Departure Orientation in Washington, D.C.
3. Round-trip international airfare
4. Three week Language & Cultural Enrichment (LCE) Program at the beginning of the exchange (We might have different host families during these three weeks than for the rest of the year)
5. Seminars in Weimar (mid-year) and Berlin (end of year)
6. Basic Health Insurance (what does basic mean?)

• The D.C. orientation starts sometime during the first week of August. Less than five months away!
• There might be extra trips available for a fee – I’m thinking places like Paris or Vienna. It could be compared to a trip to SoCal from San Jose. My mom says she’ll probably pay for me to go on a few of these if they’re reasonably priced, so I’m definitely looking forward to that. :D