Sam's Message and Eathan's Letter to Rotary

Mr. Hochrein,

Please read this, or part, at Rotary Lunch on Monday.

Its Ethan, I just wanted to send you a message and let you know that I have now been here a week and everything is going well. 

The time on planes and in airports was ridiculous. From the time I walked into Reno/Tahoe to when I walked out at San Paulo/Guar
was about 30 hours, and I didn't sleep, and then they took me around meeting people the second we got to our city. My host parents,
Aparecida and Leandro Bozola are amazing. They are incredibly understanding and nice, and I couldn't ask for a better host family.
They don't speak English, so I am being forced to learn Portuguese quickly. I have a host sister, but she is not here, she is on exchange in
Venezuela, and will not return until I have moved to the next host family, the Mantovani Family, who are incredibly nice also. 

The town I live in feels similar to Quincy because it is so spread out. There are patches of random rainforest in the middle of town,
and outside of town looks like a jungle where it has not been cleared out. The people here are incredibly nice and have been taking
great care of me. I have met the president of the local rotary, but they did not have a meeting this week, so I have not had the opportunity
to attend. 

I have only been here a week, but already I understand a large amount of Portuguese, which encourages me to believe that I will be speaking
easily and fluently in a short amount of time, much less than the 3 months that many believe. My family is more than willing to help teach me
new words, phrases, etc, including catch phrases of the young, which helps a lot. 

I have been playing a lot of soccer, and have gone out almost every night to hang out with friends in the Central, which is a lot of fun. There are
live bands and dancing and food and such there, and its good to go and meet people and talk and converse. i played basketball the other day,
and they were really bad, which was fun, because I am really bad at soccer here. 

Lastly, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to be here and do this. I appreciate the opportunity more than I can express. I highly
encourage anyone that can to do this. I have learned so much just being here a week, and have grown so much as a person, its an opportunity that
it makes me sad to think that many kids do not get. Thank you again.

If you, or anyone at Rotary, have/has any questions just email this address and I will answer it as soon as I see it.     Sincerely,
                     
              
 
              
  

   Nico, Ali, Ange, Henry, Patric and Colin

I am asking for prayer and any help you can offer a friend of mine. My friend Alienor was a foreign exchange student from France last year and  saved up all her money to come back to Quincy and visit this summer. She was in Quincy for 3 weeks before me and a friend drove her to San Francisco to drop her off at the SFO airport this past weekend- well needless to say three 18 year old girls not only got lost, walked 20 blocks, couldn't find our car and had plenty of problems in the bart station so that when she finally arrived at the airport she only had an hour till her plane took off. She missed the check in mark by TEN MINUTES and was unable to get on the flight. We all feel terrible and know we are all responsible- it was a rookie mistake but one we are all having to learn the extremely hard way because here is the biggest issue--- The air line will not refund her at all. They will not even give her a partial credit for a new flight. So now she is back in Quincy and the soonest flight back to Paris is this Saturday but it is going to cost her another 1200$ when she already paid more then that much to come here one way. She is studying medicine in France and is only 18 needless to say she has no money to pay for this. She will use her credit card to charge and get the ticket because it is her only option as she has to be back at school in 10 ten days. However I am just asking for prayer that somehow some way God will soften the hearts of the airline people and that she can find a way to get home without having to pay that much- even if the airline agreed to comp her half of that it would be a blessing. On another Note we are fundraising for her and are trying to sell valuables on eBay- if you have any item that you would like to donate it would be incredibly kind and appreciated. You can contact me Nina Martynn at 927-9621 if you do. Again all three of us understand we should have allotted more time but we sincerely thought 4 hours was plenty of time to get her there with reasonable time to spare unfortunately everything just seemed to go wrong.... Thank you so much for your prayers and any donations you can spare.