16.August 2007 Departure

Thursday August 16,2007

I left the house early in order to be at our local PAD airport in time for the departure of our 2007 participants. Ealier this year we had chosen three very promising students for our second 90 Days Exchange program: Carolin S. and Nils S. ( both attending the Pelizaeus Gymnasium )and Jan Sch. ( attending the Goerdeler Gymnasium ).

The Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt was scheduled to leave at 9:05 and when we gathered at 7:45 we realized that we had arrived much too early.This gave us time to fill out additional, more stable baggage labels and to exchange some final " do this and please don't do that" vows.There was exitement and anticipation in the air.I took a last photo of our trio and we all wished them luck as they walked through security.Their hopefully fanstastic voyage had finally begun.

When I was driving home I felt thankful and relieved.Everything had worked out well in the end:our friends in Belleville had found three open-minded host families,the schools here and there had cooperated and DAFK had successfully managed the selection and logistics processes.The parents had bonded a bit as well through an initial meeting at the friendly home of the Schulze family.Doris R. from Belleville happened to be in town and was thus able to provide all of us with important details and documents.Robert Berns, a member of our very first delegation, stopped by as well and thanks to his brilliant DVD based slides the 2007 team was able to share the experiences Robert,Felix,Gesa and Maren had had in Belleville back in 2005.