It has been an exciting week since I last wrote. Everything from school, to rotary, to surfing has happened, and it has been great! I figure I'll just kinda go through it chronologically.
So, the first 2 days of the week were spent being like "oh yeah first day of school tomorrow", but then it didn't really happen till Wednesday. Finally on Tuesday evening I got my uniform for school, which really brought home that it was happening tomorrow, and that was great. Unfortunately, here my first class starts at 7:10 AM, so I have to get up pretty early. The good news with that is I get out at 1:00 PM, so my whole day isn't just gone. On Wednesday I got up, and we went to the school. I spent the first hour doing some of the paperwork for my entry in school with my host mom, then I go to go to class in the second hour. Overall, the school is structured a lot like schooling in Spain, you have your classroom and class, and the teachers move around not you. Then in the middle of the morning there is a break where we can go play indoor soccer, talk, or get something to eat at the cafeteria of sorts. School is going to be a little weird for me for a few reasons. First off, this is the southern hemisphere, so they just came back from winter break. That being said, we are in second semester. The school wants me to be with the same class in both parts of the year here, but what that means is for this first semester, I am with the equivalent of a junior class, however, in Brazil, they graduate a bit younger, so everyone is roughly 15/16. That makes school a little weird, but its not too important. Everyone has been nice to me, when I try to understand the classes I can get quite a bit, however I think part of that may be because this is mainly material that I covered 2-3 years ago. I'm trying to find some stuff to keep my mind active, and recently I have been watching Khans Academy videos online. The second and third days of school got better and better. Lots of people talk to me now at all the breaks and everyone is super friendly, so its really great for the social and cultural part of my exchange. I'll make sure to write an update on it within a few weeks.
The next big thing that happened for me was surfing. I woke up yesterday around 11 and they were like hey ya wanna go surfing with your older cousin. So naturally I said yes. We left around 2 and drove for roughly 40 minutes to an obscure beach, where we then climbed through the jungle a little bit with surf boards before reaching a beach with many surfers. Just above the beach there were some amazing cliffs, they were absolutely breath taking, and I was so sad I didn't have my camera. I tried surfing almost right away, and it didn't exactly go to plan. I had a lot of trouble just getting out to where I needed to be. The waves were around 1.5 meters usually, so after all my experience with the ocean after living in Iowa, I wasn't exactly prepared. When I finally did get out there, I didn't really catch any waves. It rained for a few moments which was pretty cool. I periodically got trashed by I slightly larger wave. Then my cousin caught a wave. One or two waves later I saw one that I thought looked good so I turned to face them to ask if it was good. Everyone started yelling, I turned around, and got pummeled by easily the largest wave we saw all day. We'll just call it a cultural experience. So after sitting out there for 5-10ish more minutes, I went in. Gabriel and I did take some cool pictures, but we only had a GoPro which isn't as good for photos, nonetheless they came out pretty cool and I will attach some of them. Eventually Gabriel did try to go in, but he didn't make it out to where he needed to be and came back within 10 minutes. We spent probably about an hour and a half just messing around waiting for the others, and I got prettttyy cold since I didn't have a surf shirt, just my bathing suit. That night we went home and I just had a quiet night in. Today we had a Rotary Event, so just before 10, me my host mom and dad all packed into a car with my blazer and headed out to an elderly home where my rotary club is doing a project. We got to see them helping out, talk to some of the elders, help a bit, and take some photos for youth exchange. (I forgot to mention, all of the exchangers except one were there). After that we just came home.
Unfortunately I have been feeling a little ill since around Wednesday, and it really decided to hit me on Saturday night, so since then I have not done to much except for lie around. Hopefully I'll be up and about having more adventures soon.
This week should be the first normalish week of school, which well be great to get to experience, with the only exception being inbound orientation starting on Friday! It will be a lot of fun and I will get to meet everyone! I'll make sure to post a lot of photos so check the blog, or follow me on my instagram if you don't want to wait.
I also want to give a shout out to some people back home, you guys have been the best with helping me out with various things like me not having contacts here (big thank you to my mother for sending them out). And everyone else for being supportive, and making me laugh so much.
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