Rotary

Festa Nacoes

Bands, Brazil, City, Exchange Students, Exchange year, Nation Fair, Rotary, Unites States

The highlight of March was a surprise visit from other exchange students in another rotary district coming to visit for our Nation Fair. That day was more special for the RYE outbounders 17/18, because it was good to see our friends we’ve missed from our Northeast Trip.

Nation Fair is to share our nationalities with the community. This also helps the outbounds choose which country they will choose next year. Every country is responsible for serving a traditional food and decorating each stand so it catches the strangers attention. As a representative, we are given stickers with our nation flag on it. When the outbounds come find us and ask about our nationality, we try to convince them to choose our country for the following information. When they fill up their booklets of stickers they turn it in and choose the top three places of their dreams. This event is open to everyone in the community, so it was a big deal when the city’s governor made an appearance. To keep the energy up all day long they have dances from all over the world perform to keep the audience entertained. This event takes all day because all the outbounds have to finish their book then the Rotarians make the final decisions so they head home knowing where they will go. We get the honor to announce which exchange student will be coming to our countries next year!

It is a long process to be chosen for this amazing opportunity, but as soon as you get there all the hard work pays off. With all the friendships you make across the world it turns out to be the year that changes your life for the good!

And so it begins… 2017

Beach, Brazil, Exchange year, Holidays, host families, Rotary, Stories, Travel

A normal New Year’s resolution usually is about traveling to the city of your dreams AND I got to start the New Year in the Country of my dreams. How lucky am I? A year ago I didn’t know this city even existed and now everything in my life happens here.

Today is my 147th day in Brazil! I am told by the people around me that I am growing up to be someone more wise, mature, outgoing and friendlier than the person I was 5 months ago. I think it’s the amazing people that surround me, and the time spent with each and every day with that has had a huge influence on who I have become.

I enjoy meeting new people and building all kinds of different relationships. My connection with all the other inbound students in Brazil started because we are all students exploring a foreign country, learning a new language and culture. The connections I have with friends in SUMMIT is built amongst everyday hobbies, class, sports (etc…) we have in common. The friendships are both important but built on different experiences.

Traveling makes it easy to see different cultures, but to have a relationship with the culture is special. I might post pictures like a total tourist, but I have stories behind them that say otherwise. The touristic side and local sides are very opposite. I think sharing the holidays with my host families makes a huge impact on my experience. In my opinion, the way you spend holidays with your parents would stay the same where ever you might be to spend it. But to celebrate with your host parents you really get the feeling of the another culture and new traditions.

The best news to finishing out 2016 was our host parent’s surprise was to spend New Years at the beach here in Parana. It’s not ideal paradise, but we made the most of it. It recently had a hard rainstorm that wiped out most of the sidewalk along the beach and knocked out the cellphone signal. For the last 4 days of the year, If we weren’t laying out in the sun at the beach in Mathinos, we were playing cards, cooking delicious fish or churrasco and listened to Brazilian music. Each day the beach got more and more crowded with families visiting for the holiday. It was tough taking photos without someone standing in the background!

Here in Brazil, it’s a tradition to wear all white representing peace with colored underwear representing how you are feeling. For example loved = pink, happiness = yellow, lucky = green. Everyone stays up until midnight then heads down to the beach to pop some champagne while you watch the fireworks. After doing so, you think of 7 wishes for the new year and jump 7 waves for good luck.

Fireworks

She was my Mid-night Kiss

3… JUMP

2016 Highlights:

The greatest lesson I learned, your best friends will be the ones that notice when you’re gone and miss you but more importantly can’t wait until I get home!

The most difficult thing of 2016 was letting go of my past so I could stop being defined by past mistakes and start living for the new challenges and strive to be a better me.

Favorite memory would be my school trip to Spain only because that was the first time I flew overseas without my family. That was the first time I lived with a host family. The first time I got super close to new people both from my school and in Spain!

I will never forget meeting all the other exchange students that are living in Curitiba. Our friendships are built off the experiences we face together during these incredible 10 months aboard.

Looking ahead to 2017:

Right now, I am looking forward to my Northeast trip that will start at the top of Brazil and continue down the coast to Rio in a bus with all the exchange students from my district.

I want to learn how to Zumba dance and cook my favorite Brazilian meal before I leave.

For school, I want to get these online classes out of the way so I can enjoy my exchange!

On a personal level, I want to be spiritually grounded.

My motto to be a good person, but don’t waste time proving it!

Natal dos Crianças

Brazil, Clubs, Cool People, Exchange year, Rotary

Today, my rotary club brought Christmas to the less fortunate. It kills me to even imagine the lives of all these children. In their eyes, poverty and drugs are their idea of normal. We spent the day making food like fruit salad for a snack and hot dog sandwiches for lunch followed by experimenting with cotton candy for a little sweet treat while they played at the playground in the mean time.

These kids come from a little village called Colombo Parana and their school brought them here today for a little Natal (Christmas) surprise. At the end of the day, Papa Noel (Santa Claus) came to visit and deliver some gifts. The boys received a World Cup soccer ball and the girls, little purses with different Disney characters on it to carry their school supplies or their makeup every other day! It was warming to see their reaction to Santa Claus when he showed up with bags full of wrapped gifts. We got the impression that they don’t normally receive gifts in their everyday lives. As the kids lined up to visit with Santa Claus, one by one the Rotarians explained that their parents usually just spend their money on drugs or food, but very rarely do the kids receive gifts. It touched me to see some kids weren’t very excited about the gifts. But as I put myself in their shoes they just weren’t sure how to react because they have never gotten a surprise before.

Right before they headed back to their school, we held a raffle for a backpack full of school supplies and a bike. The kids were previously numbered on the attendance list and all the numbers were put into a bag. My soon-to-be exchange sister from Hungary and I helped pull out the numbers from the bag. First, we raffled off the backpack. A little boy in spouted out of his seat with excitement when his name was called. Shortly after, we raffled off the bike and the shyest little girl in the crowd won. She seemed so confused. I felt bad jumping in her face and taking photos, but seconds later her brother came and protected her. I can’t imagine living in a small village and the families surprise when this small girl comes home with a new bike! I don’t think she even knows how to ride a bike, but I hope someday she will learn and enjoy it for the rest of her life!

~Halloween~

Brazil, Cool People, Exchange Students, Exchange year, Holidays, Rotary, Travel

Halloween will never be the same as it was while I was growing up, but will always be my favorite holiday! Halloween is actually only a big deal in America. It usually revolves around a lot of candy and costumes, but this year I spent Halloween with people that have never set foot in a costume store. Really? I thought to myself, where do they get their Halloween costumes?

In Brasil, you never see kids trick or treating or houses decorated with orange lights, pumpkins, and scary stuff from the outside. As Halloween approached, I found myself getting a little homesick for friends and traditions, but as it turns out it was a great time here!

The Rotex actually organized a costume party for us and surprised us with a costume contest. Unfortunately, my costume didn’t win but my friends and I had a blast getting ready! For those of you who don’t recognize our costumes, we dressed up as Aliens. No one really knows what real aliens look like so there was no wrong way to LOOK. The party was awesome with plenty of dancing and meeting new people. There were students there that will be leaving Brasil on an exchange next year, rebounder, Rotarians and the INBOUNDS! Getting to share my favorite holiday with most of my newest and closest friends was a dream come true. I know now that Halloween is not worldwide, but I hope they enjoyed celebrating it as much as I did.

IMMERSION weekend

Brazil, Cool People, Exchange year, Rotary, Travel

This past weekend I spent all day Saturday and Sunday with our rebound/exbound (Rotex) counselors and the inbounders apart of 4730. The weekend was full of team building activities and all kinds of competitions. We traveled to Colombo, Parana and stayed in a house full of dorm rooms, an inside and outside pool, living room and dining room and a basement with pool tables to play cards. The first activity we participated in was a relay race…. first step you had to spin 10 times then try and run in a straight line, second step you had to answer questions the Rotex asked you, the third step was bobbing for an apple, fourth step was finding a wood pick in a plate full of baking flour with your mouth, fifth step was carrying an egg on a spoon with your mouth and final step was to crawl under a ladder in mud.

Mud Fights!

The mud was the highlight of my weekend because we weren’t supposed to get totally covered in mud but that escalated real quickly after the competition. The inbound exchange students started the mud fight with the Rotex counselours. The mud stuck to you like marshmallows in your hair, stunk like animal food and hurt when it hit you because it was so heavy packed in balls. Most of the exchange student including me avoided getting in our mouths or eyes so we could still take photos all dirty. You could tell some kids didn’t mind getting it everywhere on their bodies because they rolled around in it and jumped in the pile of mud. This activity was dirty but fun because every man was for them self so you interacted with more and more kids with the same idea.

Too hot to handle

Later that night we separated in little groups by nationality to talk 1 on 1 with a counselor about how our year was going so far. Some thoughts were sad but others were fun to laugh about. This is when I really connected with a new group of girls because we gave each other useful advice to help one another. Those girls and I never saw each other outside of Portuguese classes until this weekend, rooming together and spending every waking moment together for two days brought this relationship to a whole other level. After the heart to heart stories, we had a pool party in the dark, unfortunately, after you jumped into the pool it was surprisingly freezing because it was supposed to be a heated pool. With the lights off we hooked up a playlist with songs in every language and blasted it on a speaker. My roommate and I didn’t last very long in the freezing cold water so warmed up under the hot water in our shower and finished the night out playing cards in our pj’s until it was bedtime.

Early Sunday morning we woke up for some breakfast and split back up into our teams for more competitions. The first game was trivia about Brazil and once you knew the answer you ran down to the other end of the room to grab a water bottle in the middle of a table. If you were the one to grab the water bottle you had to share your answer to the counselors. The second game we lined up in our teams outside the house and they would pick an object you had to find in the house but they would only say it in Portuguese. The third game was a tournament of tug a war and last but not least some exchange students climbed up in a tree house to tipline into the outside pool.

My team won the relay races and the retrieving the objects inside the house. The prizes were discounts off the next Rotex weekend!

FOFO… meaning “Cute” in Portuguese

Brazil, City, Cool People, Exchange year, Family, Rotary

This morning I went and interacted with children that came to the eye doctors on a school field trip. As a part of this Rotary club, it was our project to volunteer to show these kids where to go for an eye test and entertain them while waiting for the rest to finish up. As teenagers, some of the adults just left that part up to us because the little kids were so drawn to our attention. All the kids that showed up today live in a poor area of Curitiba and most families can’t afford to visit the eye doctor for an exam to determine whether their child needed glasses or not. So we took care of 107 different children all different ages Rotary sign , from 2 different schools and it turns out 60% needed glasses. The barrier of the language was not a problem. We helped them pick out glasses, paint their faces and took a couple pictures. The picture on the left is Zsofi (Hungarian inbound) and I next to our Rotarian banner. The picture on the right is a young girl wearing her school uniform choosing what color glasses she wants. They had all kinds of styles in every color for these kids to choose from. This was the end of the boring/most important things that had to be done.

After about half the kids got through the eye exams we brought out the face paint and they all lined up boys in one line and girls in another. All the girls asked for was a butterfly, a heart, a mermaid or a flower and all the boys just wanted a skull. I think the little girl’s masks are “masterpieces” because they drew them themselves so I simply just copied their ideas!

Only spending a couple of hours with these kids went by fast. It also wasn’t enough because they influenced my life and at the same time I inspired them. Today got me thinking about everything I have and got me second guessing everything I want. Today I got to connect with little kids that have never imagined doing what I am here for this year. Because for them, a well spent typical day is playing with their friends around their villages inventing games and what they want to be in when they grow up. I inspired them today because they helped me with a little Portuguese while I taught them English. And now they want to travel the world because we showed them where we are from.

Zsofi and I are two of many in bounders apart of this exact Rotary district. Here in Curitiba, there are at least 30 different Rotary clubs. For those of you, that are not familiar with Rotary clubs… It’s basically the group you connect with and they do all kinds of life changing projects. These projects keep you involved with the community or culture. The members of the club can also be your mentors while you are here. You don’t have to see them all the time but they meet once a week to plan more projects or reflect about previous ones. They are always there for you to reach if you need anything so it’s comforting to keep in touch with what they are doing so you get to know them too. My first Host dad is the president of this club so that’s how I get to be a part of these activities. You do not have to be apart of the club to attend these activities its just how I am offered to be apart as well.