Pilot Post

After a long, tedious wait following my acceptance into the CSRYE program, I finally received my country assignment! It is....here goes......BRAZIL!

this picture is accompanied by an (the) angelic chorus in my brain.

I am so excited, although I speak no Portuguese, only a little Spanish...which may or may not help.

So I have decided to start a blog in order to maintain my sanity through the six months wait before departure and onward into the ten-month long haul. The posts during the six-month stretch will most likely be far and few between in hopes of saving you from the details of my everyday life. I'll let you know when something important comes up, such as an rotary info meeting or an exchange event. I'll pick up more consistently as I get closer to Brazil!

My parents are pretty nervous. Spain was at the top of my list, but due to the insecurity of their economy and ongoing riots, it was decided too dangerous to send a student there. It is hard to remember, but I think I had a few other South American countries down before Brazil as I was hoping to make use of my Spanish. Argentina, Paraguay, Peru and Bolivia were a few options. My parents are afraid that Brazil is unsafe, because my dad went to Rio De Janeiro on a business trip once. He stayed inside the city and was told not to leave the hotel because crime rates were so high. I do not, however, believe that rotary would send me into the heart of a city with a murder rate of 6,000 people a year. I have constructed an argument in hopes of convincing him that the rest of Brazil is not as dangerous as Rio. So far I have this as evidence:

1. I don't own any jewelry expensive enough to make me a target

3. I live on 8 mile, (yes, like the song by Eminem) Just forty minutes away from Detroit, a city with a homicide rate of 411 per year and rising. I might as well live 20,000 miles away with the amount of crime I see in my quaint little town of Northville. It goes to show that you can't judge a region by its city, just like we shouldn't judge the whole of Brazil by Rio De Janeiro or Sao Paulo.

4. I have viewed countless other blogs of foreign exchangers in Brazil, and all of them are ten months long and end with a plane trip back home, not a high-adrenaline chase between Liam Neeson and Albainian Human Traffickers.

5. At a district exchange event I met a few Brazilians who will be home next year and who I can keep in touch with during my stay. They can answer my questions and give me tips on how to stay safe.

6. Rotarians are good, upstanding citizens who I would gladly trust to house me and safely escort me through the obstacles of travel even in the more dangerous areas of Brazil.

7. I WILL BE THERE FOR THE FIFA WORLD CUP HELD IN BRAZIL IN 2014!!!!!
which is a huge selling point for me. Also that since there will be a lot of tourists, the officials will be layin' down the law to make it World-Cup friendly.

Other factors in my parent's argument lie as such:

1. They have seen both "Taken" movies and my dad is afraid that he will not be stealth enough to come to my rescue if by chance I was captured and sold into human slavery.

2. A family friend went on exchange a couple years ago and her host family left her at a train station (oops..) --that's to say, she came home early

3. The day we found out that I was going to Brazil the local news channel informed us that there was a nightclub fire in Santa Maria, a city in southern Brazil. 231 people died, with many more injured. (but c'mon, it's not like I am going to be club hopping around Brazil, am I?)

Anyways, we'll see if my argument can hold up against the rigorous questioning that my parents are putting me and the district exchange officials through. I should know for sure by February 16th, the day of the first info and training meeting.