Culture Weekend

This weekend was culture weekend. All of the exchange students (Inbounds) from Hessen met in a youth hostel in the middle of Frankfurt. The future exchange students from Germany (Outbounds) and the people who had already gone on exchange (Rebounds) as well as Rotex and adults from Rotary. We met of Friday afternoon and it was great to see everyone again. There are people from the southern hemisphere that come in January (Oldies), and people from the northern hemisphere that come in August. I know all of them because we meet up occasionally, but this was the first time that we had all been together in the same place at the same time. Friday we spent a lot of time listening to the guy in charge talk. We all introduced ourselves to the new Outbounds and they introduced themselves. We had to say why we were doing our exchange, and it was really hard because no two people were allowed to loose the same word. By the time my word came around, every word in my German vocabulary had already been used, but everyone had already started repeating things, so I was okay. In the evening, we had a "Question and Answer" session with the Outbounds and then we sat around and played guitar and sang. There was a couple people who were interested in going to Alaska, which I was really excited about.
On Saturday we presented our countries to the Outbounds. We all did Powerpoint presentations and some people had videos. I wasn't really happy with the America presentation, because we never really took the time to make it really nice. I tried, but I can't do everything by myself. I'm just glad that it's over. Later we got to show dances from our cultures. The Latin Americans all had really cool dances, but America's dance was by far the best. We did Cotton Eye Joe. We used the original dance, and mixed it with a couple of other line dances that we knew, and it was a lot of fun to dance and to teach to the other people.
The weekend came to an end way too soon. Sunday was a very sad day because it was the last time we were all going to be together. The people that came in January have all come to the end of their year hear, and they are heading back to their home countries. By the end of the day, we were all sobbing and hugging each other. The funniest part was that we were all crying and hugging each other right then, but half of us were still going home together. A couple of the exchange students even live in my same house, and I have my German course with 3 of the Oldies.
All in all, it was a really fun weekend, and I'm glad I got to see everyone.

More soon.