My Exchange Year (2016-2017): October

October started off very exciting as well as a bit scary. On October 1^st I participated in a common Brazilian school event called Gincana. Gincana is a themed competition where teams are judged for their dancing skills, props and costumes. This year’s theme was samba and my team was Equi-samba. About a month before, teams try to gain sponsors to make costumes, take dance lessons and get props for each task. Each theme chosen from a part of Brazilian culture. This year being samba, the music was very upbeat and it was an amazing opportunity to see my friends, teachers and other students show off their culture. To conclude Gincana, my team ended up taking home the victory. A few days later, like any ordinary day in October, it started to rain in the afternoon so I turned on a movie and got some snacks. But before I knew it the power had gone out and I couldn’t hear anything because of the rain. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t see out of the window because the rain was so heavy. After the storm calmed down I went outside to see if there was any damage. To my disbelief the ground was white, covered in hail the size of ping pong balls. The air was really cool and fresh. I couldn’t believe I was seeing this in Brazil. The next day school was cancelled and everyone was talking about the storm. Then Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving was my first holiday away from home. It was a difficult, mostly because they don’t celebrate it here so to them it was just a normal day. I shared some of our traditions with my host family and managed to bake apple crisp with my host mom for 6 people with 2 apples. Although I missed home a bit more that day, Thanksgiving is about being thankful and spending time with family. It ended up being a relaxing day and it was so nice to share apple crisp with my family. The following day I helped out in an Interact project. As a club, we went to APAE (similar to Community Living) to help prepare 1400 pizzas. It was wild! We set the room up like an assembly line and it only took about 5 hours! It was a lot of fun. On October 12 it was “dia das crianças” (kid’s day). As a Rotary club we set up a bunch of fun activities for kids in a park. There was popcorn, cotton candy, skipping ropes and big blow up slides. We also celebrated my host mom’s birthday in October. We spent the day in Ribeirao Preto, and talked to my host sister, Aline, who is spending her exchange year in Japan. Towards the end of the month I had my second rotary conference. We spent the weekend in a city called Orlandia. There we went to an antique car museum, had a pizza night at the local Rotary club, had a churrasco and toured my host dad’s work, Alta Mogiana. Alta Mogiana is a factory where sugar, ethanol and electrical energy are produced. I really enjoyed spending more time with the other exchange students.

Gincana