Olà Grande Prairie!
Man, it feels weird trying to form sentences in English now. Anyways, here goes:
Ahh, Brazil. It feels like my home country now. I know my way around the city quite well (which is no small feat in a city of five million), my accent is finally disappearing, and it feels like I've known my friends and family here my entire life. It finally happened to me: I'm not ready to go home! I know, though, that soon my exchange will come to an end (I'll be back in Grande Prairie on July 15th) and when I do come back to Brazil, I will never be on student exchange again. That said, I'm appreciating every moment I have left, keeping my schedule as full as possible.
Since I last updated, quite a few changes have been going on. I started going to school in the morning instead of the afternoon. I was wasting weekday mornings sleeping in. Now, I wake up at 5:30 in the morning to take the bus for two hours every day, but it's definitely worth it to make full use of my time here. This means I have new classmates and new friends as well. I'm happy I made the change. My school is right beside a big university, so there's always something going on nearby. Usually in the afternoons I stay in the area to hang out with my friends and see what's going on around campus. I've been to quite a few spontaneous theatre presentations, picnics, and Socialist demonstrations. Socialism is very popular right now with Recife's youth, so it was interesting to talk to them about it and their solutions for the (many) problems here in our city and our country. It will be interesting to see how university life differs between Brazil and Canada when I get back home, but I think discontent with government is probably universal.
A couple weeks ago I finally saw Nelson, last year's Brazilian exchange student to our club. He lives in the same city as me, but 30 minutes away, so we didn't have an opportunity to meet until now. He's started driving, studying law, seems very mature. It was funny to speak Portuguese with him and talk about Grande Prairie again. (He misses you, Brent Oiland!)
I'm getting closer with my host family now. Every couple of weeks we go to their beautiful beach house for the weekend, and spend some quality time together. Most of the time in the city is spent apart though, with everybody working and studying hard. These weekends are getting more and more important, just to have some time to talk to them!
If there's one thing that still needs to be worked on with my exchange, it's my relationship with my Rotary club. I think I'm the first exchange student to my club with the desire to get to know them and volunteer, and they just don't seem to know what to do. I keep on calling my club President and my counsellor to mark a date for my presentation, and I keep on getting a paternal pat on the head and another promise that I'll present "soon." Anyways, rest assured, I'm doing my best. I want to make them realize that exchange students can be valuable to a Rotary club, and with luck, I'll have accomplished this, my final goal, by the end of my exchange. I think after I made my presentation maybe they'll open up to me a little more. This Monday I'll be putting that slide presentation to use at my school. My classmates were interested in getting to know more about Canada and my city, so I offered to make my presentation next geography class! I can already imagine the looks on their faces when I say minus 40. The coldest it's been since I got here is 26 degrees, in the shade, and snow is completely unheard of.
At the bottom here I posted some links to my photo albums on facebook. I usually keep them updated, so for those of you that are hip with the internet, feel free to add me!
March & Carnaval:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91251&id=519602018&l=d4fe6f6164
My big trip around Brasil:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=84551&id=519602018&l=284ba0f414
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=84557&id=519602018&l=2b30799ff3
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=84562&id=519602018&l=4689439b93
I don't know how to express how grateful I am for all of this, but simply, thank you, thank you, thank you!
Emails responded to promptly (usually) at gocatherine@hotmail.com
Sincerely,
Catherine Hilgers
(The photo posted here is of my friends and I in uniform at school)