My name is Thales, I’m from the north-east of Brazil, the name of my city in Brazil is called Natal, and my city is the capital of my estate called Rio Grande do Norte. I’m doing my exchange program in Redding, California and my host Rotary club is Redding East Rotary Club. I love my Rotary club because there are great people right there, who always makes our Rotary Meetings very interesting and dynamic. My Rotary Counselor is for sure one of the best woman`s who I had the opportunity to meet in my life, she is always helping me and supporting me for makes my exchange program better. My school here is very different from my school in Brazil for many reasons, first we usually don’t have big schools in Brazil, we just have many medium schools spread out around the city, second we can’t chose our subjects that we want to take in Brazil, Third in our school system we never take classes with other grades and least we don’t change classes are the teachers who change classes. My host family is just great like my last one, and is really good because my two host mom’s are friends so I could meet my second host family in my first month and I saw that I got it two great host families.

My firsts surprising were much related to the cultural shock, like the food, because most of the people around the world think that Americans just have bad food for your health but it’s not true. The way of the teenager’s dress was another surprise because for my first impression of the clothes was that most of the teenagers were weird, but after a few months I made friends with the “weird clothes “who are great friends. About my perceptions of the United States, I think that it changed a little bit but nothing special, maybe over my exchange program I will have something concrete. I don’t have anything special to accomplish in my exchange program maybe just travel to nice places in California like Malibu Beach or exclusives places of the United States.

My ambitions are most related to my career, I just want to be a successful doctor with a good life, with good friends. The Rotary for sure have a big influence in all of this, because Rotary opened my world makes me have a better view of the diversity of people, and have real experiences like how will be my life by myself in the future and the responsibilities that I will have to assume. I see that all of theses for sure will makes me grow like I person and human.

Thales Nunes de Assuncao, from Brazil.