My Experience in Brazil
By Vijaya Meenakshi
Hi, I am Vijaya Meenakshi from India and I am doing my exchange year in Brazil. Even though I did not have a say in choosing my host country Rotary couldn’t have picked a better country for me do my exchange Here’s a little bit of my life here in Brazil before Covid -19.
Brazil is completely different from my country, first to start with the people here are really warm-hearted,they even greet strangers with a sweet good morning ,it makes one of the hardest part of exchange easier but it might be a little difficult to get them to hang out with you because they are really serious about studying .So I mostly hung out with the other exchange student in my city.
Like every other exchange student I had also imagined the perfect ending to my exchange, but to the surprise of everyone occurred a global pandemic.
Second, my host city, it is not as big as my hometown but that didn’t stop me from having fun, going to bakeries and restaurant to eat little and talk a lot and going to the club or to someone’s house to have a little party were some of my favorite things to do in my teeny tiny city and my school starts at 7:30 and on Mondays ,Wednesdays and Fridays it would be over by 11:55 and on Tuesdays and Thursdays they have afternoon session for the high schoolers. School was definitely not the fun part of my exchange except getting to meet my friends.
I also went on trips during my exchange year, the best one was the northeast all the beaches, funky music and crazy exchange students are the perfect recipe to a remarkable summer trip and I also went on small trips with my rotary district to Canela, Gramado, Santa Rosa and Sao Miguel.
And let’s not forget the hard times like being homesick or trying so hard to fit in and not being successful. This is a part of every exchange years and like every other obstacle I overcame it too.
