Who am I, where did I come from, and where am I going?

The title of this post seems very existential, but this post is going to be more of an introduction to my current situation.

My name is Madison Connell. I graduated in May 2013 from Timpanogos High School in Orem, Utah, and I loved every minute of my high school experience. During the last half of my senior year, however, I decided to branch out a little bit and take the road less traveled. I decided that I would apply to the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) program, which exchanges US and German students for a full school year. The first 2 weeks of February were spent vigorously filling out the application and getting the documentation I needed. Finally, the day came when I finished the application and hit the "Send" button. Then came the hard part: the waiting.

I went about my daily life, keeping the program off my mind so I could focus on school. Then one day, the inevitable happened: I got an email from the director of the program. I read the subject line which said "Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Scholarship - FINALIST NOTIFICATION". I was at school when I saw this and I almost had a seizure because I was so excited. I had applied just to see if I could do it, but I never expected that it would actually come to something!

I had to go in for face-to-face interviews with the director of FLAG (which covers the southwest quadrant of the US) Tim, the inbound specialist Connie, the outbound specialist Luke, and a few other people. I completed my interview and left there feeling pretty good about myself. About a week later, I checked my email and I found that I had an email from Luke. The subject line said "CBYX Scholarship Recipient Notification". This was it. I was accepted and I was going to do something that I had always dreamed of doing in my life. It was just sooner than expected. I was heading to Germany.

Since then, we have had an orientation at the FLAG headquarters in Michigan, where I met other students that had been accepted. We have also had several online orientations preparing us for our year abroad. And that brings us to today, 24 days from takeoff. I will keep posting about all of my adventures and I hope you enjoy reading about them. :)