Hello everyone!
This is officially my first blog ever written!
This weekend my family, along with Chad (my friend going to Argentina), Nacho (from Argentina), Ba (from Brazil), Coco (going to Slovakia or Czech Republic), and Samy (from France), all squeezed into Chad's parents suburban and took the six hour drive to Newport for a weekend Rotary Conference. This conference was scheduled so that inbounds (exchange students that are here) and outbounds (students going abroad next year) could mingle about their countries. Unfortunately, since I am going to India and India is a new exchange program, I did not have a fellow inbound to chat with throughout the three days- I had my wonderful liason Sara who just recently returned from the district I am headed to in India. Sara and I explored many topics including food, school, cities, clothes, and bathrooms (as many of you may know, the bathrooms in India are quite different from those here in the states!).
The other focus for the weekend was the speeches and the talent show that we will be doing at the District Conference in May. The first day was devoted to all of us (inbounds and outbounds) giving our speeches about our thoughts and feelings about being on excange. While we were in our small groups, the Rotarian leaders evaluated each speech so as to choose the ones they wished to be presented to all the parents, students and Rotarians in the district at the District Conference. I wrote my speech about a week before the conference, and (I thought) had trouble giving the speech to my group, but, apparantly not because I was chosen as one of the five outbounds chosen to give their speeches in May.
The talent show was fun- I decided to play Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy on the piano. There were many acts ranging from dancing to Enrique Iglesias, to more classical piano.
This was a great weekend! My host rotary family for the weekend was very nice! I stayed with a girl named Michelle's family. Michelle is an outbound to Japan next year and has taught herself Japanese! Amazing! There were four of us in all; Michelle, Karen (from Japan), Jessica (going to Thailand) and myself. We had lots of fun playing Rock Band, and Karen even taught me the Japanese alphabet!
Overall this has been the most exciting experiance of my life, and this is only the very beginning!
Good night for now! (it may be a while...)
