I am no longer a virgin blogger!

First and foremost, welcome to my blog! My name is Katie Grobengieser, and I am currently a 16 year old junior from Amish country USA! I live in what is essentially one giant cornfield in Pennsylvania, with a few gas stations and a storage depot or two thrown in for good measure. I've been toying around with the idea of starting a blog for a while now, and although I'm definitely late to start, I will try to keep up with it as much as possible! The reason I'm giving blogging a shot is that I am leaving in September to become an exchange student for 10 months in Italy! Long story short, I won a full scholarship (it's a 14 thousand dollar value so not too shabby) through the amazing Speedwell Foundation. This foundation is a part of the larger organization , AFS, and every year they hand out about 30 scholarships to high school students from central Pennsylvania who want to spend a year abroad in a foreign country. When I was in kindergarten I can remember seeing a map of the world and just trying to wrap my head around the fact that there are 7 continents I could explore and 7 billion people I could meet on this planet. Although that's probably a tad ambitious, that thought eventually grew into a love of traveling (to this date I've been all up and down the east coast and to 7 Caribbean Islands) and also of other cultures in general. When you've spent your entire life living in a place where people still live without electricity and use horse and buggies for transportation, it can be a little suffocating. As much as I love my quiet little town, the older I got the more I realized I would not be happy with my life unless I took advantage of every possible opportunity to see as much of the world as possible, YOLO if you will. So, by the time I found out about the Speedwell Scholarship, it was late March and they had already selected the winners. My first thought was "well there goes any hopes of that ever happening, better get back to living my exciting life of  watching Netflix and  eating ice cream!". However, my parents were surprisingly encouraging (okay so I might have left out the part about being gone for 10 months to them initially) and they urged me to contact the AFS organization. Well, sure enough I must've done something right, because over the next two weeks I, along with my incredible application advisor Kendall, completed an application that was designed to be done over the course of several months. Once it was all done and I could finally breathe again, then came the agonizing reality that since I was coming into the process so late, there was a chance that I wouldn't be offered a scholarship. So for an entire week, I rode the most insane emotional roller coaster ever imaginable! I mean, I would allow myself to get excited at the thought that I could actually escape the cornfield and do something totally amazing, but then a minute later I would tell myself I was too late and that I would just have to suck it up and take the impending rejection like a man. Well, I can assure you that there is a God, because exactly a week later my prayers were answered and I got the call that if I was still interested, there was a Speedwell Scholarship with my name on it! Now, aside from the initial moment of "OHMYGODWHOAMIWTFHALLELUJAH" a million things were racing through my head. I had to pick a country to go to (pretty important step) get a travel visa, learn a new language, notify my school, and try not to poop my pants or curl up into fetal position at the thought of all of this. A few days and a small anxiety attack later, I had decided on Italy, because my first choice of Spain was filled and Italy is gorgeous and has an incredible history, and okay yea I also happen to love The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Once that was all squared away, slowly but surely all of the rest of the paperwork came trickling in. I had to write acceptance letters, thank you letters, basically any form of letter ever created, I've written. In addition, back in May I also had an orientation with the rest of the AFSers from the Central PA area. I met four other girls who are going to Italy with me, and so far one has already become one of my closest friends! Love ya Kara :) It's incredible how quickly you can form bonds with people! I have been doing Rosetta Stone for the past month, because we are required to complete Level 1 before we leave. Trust me, it is NOT as fun or easy as those cheery commercials make it out to be. Well this has gone from a single blog post to a small novel and in everyone's best interests I am going to end it here. Arrivederci!