Pre-Departure Orientation: Day 1

Today was a big day!

This morning, I decided to dye my hair red (because why not), and I cleaned out my room and checked to make sure I had packed all the necessary amenities. After that, I went to one last lunch at District Taco with my family. My dad came from work and my brother was also there even though he had just finished school, which was really great! He even got me...something. (I am not quite sure what to make of it.)



Since I live just outside of D.C., I drove in to pre-departure orientation (most participants flew in from all around the country) after lunch and checked into my hotel room. One of the girls I was rooming with was already there and the other arrived soon afterwards. They were both really nice, but I think everyone was a little bit shy at the beginning, so we didn’t talk too much.

About an hour later, we headed out to start the orientation process and the whole group headed over to the American Councils building which was only a short walk away from our hotel. They had several tables set up in a conference room and each participant got their own folder with more information and a copy of their travel itinerary.

Since the Moldova group was with the Estonia group throughout the day, it was a little hard at first to figure out who was going where and what groups we were in, but eventually I found a table with about seven other girls going to Moldova with me.

For the next hour or so, a State Department employee in charge of organizing the NSLI-Y programs came to talk to us about how the program was structured, explain the role of the U.S. Embassies in Estonia and Moldova, and share how some alumni of the program have managed to incorporate things they learned from NSLI-Y into their careers.

After that, we did a few icebreaker activities in our table groups involving some Russian, and we did a visual exercise to get a better idea of where in the country everyone was from. We got pizza delivered for dinner and we also got our t-shirts!



Overall it was a pretty busy day but it was great to meet everyone and I can’t wait for tomorrow, when we break into groups based on our site location (Moldova/Estonia) and get more in-depth about the specifics of the experience!


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