The IPSE was amazing for so many reasons. It was wonderful to be able to walk up to anyone and have something to talk about with them. Everyone was so inclusive and there was never a second where I felt lonely or bored. Throughout the weekend, we each had two group evaluations, an individual interview, a workshop, country tables, and a French interview if you were hoping to go to a country that spoke French. The country tables were very informative and I appreciated being able to take home information sheets about many of the countries to show my family. The individual interview was intimidating, but the interviewers really wanted to learn about you and were very nice. The group evaluations were actually very fun and I had an awesome group to hang out with. The workshop was interesting and I loved getting to hear the rest of my group's stories. The French interview did not go as well as I was hoping (I seemed to forget that I did know the past tense) and I left that interview feeling less than confident.
Although I enjoyed the various evaluations, my favorite part of the weekend was the free time. I met so many incredible people who were so similar to me in their desires and interests. It was always so fun to sit in one of the common areas and listen to people's stories about their lives. We also spent a lot of times playing games which was always very fun and very loud. Leaving on Sunday was a sad experience for me. I hated knowing that the next time a group of these kids was together, it would only be just over half of us. That was intimidating to think about and also hard to accept, since all of the people there had always been so nice to me. When I left, I wasn't sure whether I would ever see any of those people again, but I knew that I would stay in touch with them and that I would be excited for anyone who was selected as a finalist because everyone there was so deserving.
Some of my favorite memories from my weekend in DC include meals, which were great for meeting new people and for sharing many laughs, staying up talking about anything and everything late into the night with my wonderful roommates, an UNO game where the same people always seemed to get skipped over, multiple trips to the ice cream machine at each meal, discovering that you could get to any building in the center through a maze of underground tunnels, and a crazy aggressive game of Spoons with some truly awesome people. The IPSE was truly one of the best weekends of my life and I sometimes wish I could live it all over again. Now that I know I am a finalist, I am beyond excited to see many of the people from the IPSE again and hopefully have another amazing experience. Thanks for reading!
This is not my picture, but these were our handbooks for our weekend. We basically took them everywhere with us because they had our schedules and everything we needed in them. Sadly, this is the only picture I could post because I smartly decided not to take any pictures and this one is taken from the internet.
P.S. I'm hoping that future exchange students applying for YES will read this sometime, so I wanted to talk quickly about clothes for IPSE because I know I was very nervous about this. I wore jeans, a nice shirt, and boots the first and last day since we were traveling and a dress with a cardigan for the other day. There were people in all different kinds of clothing so don't worry too much about it. I would just say that I think dressing somewhat nicely is a good idea, but make sure that your clothes are also somewhat modest because you are trying to make a good impression. Also, just make sure you are comfortable in whatever you wear because you will be wearing it for a very long time.
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