Hello international folks,

the past two months have been mighty fine as legend aka an extraordinary Portuguese friend of mine would say. It’s going great here with my human reindeer hailing from the vast Tundras. Next to this glamorous description, there was another AFS camp he attended (actually in pjs… and yes, I am aware of how cool that is), there was two sightseeing trips he took to Graz and Vienna and there also was the first ever time I had to actually fulfill my duties as an AFS volunteer. A fellow ex-exchange-student-now-volunteer and I had to hold a short presentation about AFS to a girl which was pondering about going to Australia and afterwards answer her a bunch of questions. The whole thing was one hell of relatability and hence pretty interesting.

On top of all of this magnificent stuff, I eventually managed to skip the last week of school before Christmas to make a short ten-day trip to my beloved Portugal. I met up with a bunch of wonderful people, celebrated the legend’s aka an extraordinary Portuguese friend’s birthday and even got myself some picturesque band shirts.

Even though of having had to sit out most of the 23rd in Frankfurt I managed to not spend Christmas in an airport, which I very much embraced since Christmas ended up being absolutely amazing. Firstly, I got some dope Sami gloves, which will hold away any chill from my dear hands. Plus on top my Norwegian and I got gifted two concert tickets for a “Bilderbuch” (one of the sweetest Austrian bands out there) show, which — again — is just dope as hell.

Eventually, today — the last day of 2017 — a particular Norwegian brought a whole bunch of exchange students to sleep over at our home. Later from when I’m writing this we’ll probably be all out in the city together, celebrating the start of a new year full of international adventures!

Merry Christmas and an amazing 2018 to all of you out there, plus in classic AFS manner: Peace to the world in 2018!

Julian

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