RYLA!!!!!

 

Last weekend I went to RYLA - a program that Rotary does every year all over the world for youth promoting leadership and service. Eleven of the Rotary exchange students in my district went so it was really cool to meet them! I met tons of friends and got to practice my Portuguese a lot! I had a BLAST!

 

 

Saturday morning when we arrived, they split us up into groups. My group was RED or VERMELHO in Portuguese and we were totally the best group!!! Each team won points through contests and for being on time and tidy. My team was on the top of the board the whole weekend until....we were narrowly beaten in the end by our fiercest competitor AMARELO (yellow) by three points!!!

 

Saturday night each group put on a little presentation. My group decided to have me and Maria Jose (another exchange student from Mexico) sing a sertanejo song while everyone did the choreography! SO embarrassing but hilarious!!!!! Everyone in the my group is doing "arroxa", a strange but popular dance move here that everyone tried to teach me....but I was hopeless! I didn't even try!! hahaha! 

 

 

After we did our little musical number as a group, I played my oboe! I played a Bach concertino and it was really fun! Most people hadn't ever seen an oboe before and had no idea what it was! I hope I left a good impression on oboe players!!!

 

 

For one activity, a member of each group was chosen to give a speech in five minutes about a topic that the judges would give to them. The judges read the topic and then the contestants got a few minutes to collect their thoughts. Then they had to get up and give a speech on their viewpoint of the topic!! All the kids speaking were SO nervous! In the picture above is Andrew from my group. He's SUPER smart and has a lot of interesting things to say! He gave a great speech....as far as I know...I didn't understand it all! He won the contest and lots of points for our team!

 

 

 

After all the activities were over, we played games and these guys did the spider! They get in a circle and then one by one guys jump over the circle and land backwards and act like the foot of the spider.... It's hard to explain but it was SO funny!

 

 

Here they did a caterpillar! It got pretty long before everyone fell off!

 

 

My friend Denisse from Mexico taught her group a Mexican dance! Way cool!

 

Here is my friend Milena! She is such a sweet person and I loved hanging out with her!

 

In this picture is my friend Wilson! He's training to be a pilot and agreed to fly me back home to the USA next year! hahahaha! He also taught me a Brazilian dance....he probably has bruises all over his feet from me stepping on them so much!!!

 

Here is my friend Gustavo! He was an exchange student in Canada last year and speaks English well so he helped me out when I didn't understand!

 

My wonderful friend Nayara!! She helped a lot too because she was an exchange student in Ohio five years ago and speaks English very well!

 

 

In this picture are my friends Luiz and Andrey. Way cool kids!

 

Here are some more friends of mine....I don't remember their names because they were in other groups and I didn't spend a ton of time with them! But on the far right is Milena again!

 

More of my friends from my group!! I feel bad because I forgot some of their names! Alexandre is on the far left, next to me is Milena and Marie is in the pink. Alexandre is so hilarious! I had the hardest time saying his name! (Aleshandree) and his last name is "do Nascimento" which in English is  "Alexander of Birth!" So I ended up just calling him "Alexander of Birth"! Hope he didn't mind my teasing! I thought it was funny......hahaha!

 

Here are all the exchange students from Mexico....and me! I'm adopted Mexican now!

 

 

 

All the exchange students together!

Left to right: Antonio (Mexico), Edgar (Mexico), Abby (Boise, Idaho!!!!!), Ana Gabriela (Mexico), Christian (Mexico), Laura (France), Flossie (France), Denisse (Mexico), Paul (France) and me! There was also another American guy from Michigan who just arrived a day before named Lucas but I'm not sure where he was! Poor guy, he was probably so lost!

 

Here is my city from afar as we were driving home. I had an incredibly fun weekend!!!! I can't wait to see all my friends again!!!