My name is Ana. I’m from Colombia, South America, and my sponsor club is Club Rotario Neiva las Ceibas district 4290. My host club is Chico Noon Rotary Club which is really big. My Rotarian counselor is Leanne Chrisman, who has been great with me and is doing as much as she can to make me feel really good here. Besides I am going to Pleasant Valley High School where I am a senior and have met many amazing people and have made a lot of friends. I think there are many differences between my school back in Colombia and my high school in the U.S, there my school was private, we were only girls and I had the same 16 classmates the whole day. Here I have different classmates in all my classes and every time I walk somewhere I see someone I have never seen before because it is a really big school with about 2000 students. My Colombian school had 280 students since kindergarten to 11th grade since we don’t have 12^th grade in Colombia. In addition, my host mom is the librarian of my school which is great because I go with her every day to school. She understands me and helps me. My host dad is a teacher too, but he teaches in another school and my host sisters are both in college, with one of them is in Irvine and the other one is here in Chico but lives in an apartment. I love the fact that their youngest daughter arrived about 3 months ago from an exchange to Colombia so she helps me a lot to understand some cultural differences. My host parents are making me feel as another member of the family and that is wonderful.

One of the most surprising things for me is the importance of time for the Americans, because almost everyone I have met has schedules with everything planned and organized. I think is great but it is also really different from what I am used to because in Colombia we are more relaxed about the time and we are not really good making plans. Also I love that everyone is really nice and treats you as good as possible and that sports are really important for almost all Americans. One of the first things I did when I arrived here was ask about the sports teams in my high school and joined the tennis team even though I have never played tennis. I want to see all the aspects of the American life.

In Colombia I already finished High School and now I am in college. I finished my first semester of law and one of my biggest dreams is to become a really good lawyer and I think that coming here to the United States and learning about a different culture will help me in every single aspect of my life to become a better person and see the world with a different perspective. Besides, all my life I have been really close to Rotary because my dad is a Rotarian and in my city I was the president of Interact before coming here. I’m sure that Rotary Youth Exchange helps towards International understanding and world peace because going to a country and knowing the culture makes you understand all the differences between your country and your host country, to see the positives and negative aspects of both places, make you question and examine your beliefs, traditions and values and in this way, changes the perspective that you had before, so when you go back to your country and tell the people the amazing experience that you had and all what you learnt, you are helping in the relations between the countries. On the other hand when you go to a new place, meeting new people and telling them about your country, acting as ambassador you will change their point of view. In my case just explaining to everybody that Colombia is not all about drugs and violence; that we have a lot of good things that many people do not know because in the news you only hear bad things, it is good to explain how everything is much better now in Colombia, helping them change what they think. Additionally, in few years all the exchange students are going to become professionals and are the ones who will be making many decisions about our countries. The experience of being an exchange student will allow us to make informed decisions about the future of our countries based on the fact that we appreciate firsthand how one country is successful or less successful. We can take that knowledge and use it to determine the best way for all countries to attain peace and prosperity through understanding of many cultures.