On Friday my host family and I took a trip to the city of Goiania, capital of the neighboring state of Goias, which has about 1.3 million people. This was because in order to do a Rotary Exchange here, or at least in this district, you need to pass a long written exam as well as interviews in English and with a psychologist. This came as quite a shock to me, as I only had to complete my application and conduct two interviews with some local Rotary officials.
Anyway, we left in the afternoon on Friday, and after a two hour or so car drive, we arrived in the small city of Goiatuba, where we stayed with the family of my host mother's brother. There, we had a fish dinner and caught up on some recent things that had happened. The event wasn't very remarkable for anyone else, but as I was sitting at the dinner table I thought, "If you had told me two years ago that today I'd be sitting in a small town in Brazil, eating a fish from the Amazon, and being complemented on my Portuguese skills, I would have said you were insane." This was one of those moments when it really hit me how different my life is right now than the normal high school experience, and how grateful I am that it's like this. After this moment of self reflection, I promptly bit into one of the bones in the fish that the family had warned me about, and I was snapped back into reality. After a nice, restful night, we got up early and went to Goiatuba. There, there was a big meeting for everyone before the test, with some words about Rotary and the test. Since a few (6 of us) exchange students went to the test, they had each of us introduce ourselves. There were 3 from Mexico, 1 girl from Canada, one boy from Taiwan, and then me. Since the test (prova in Portuguese) was very long, we all went to a nearby mall to hang out and get to know each other better. I spoke almost entirely in Portuguese with the Mexican students, and in English with the Canadian. It was great to have someone to commiserate with in English about our experiences so far in Brazil, as well as learn about some of the little differences about where we live. Her Portuguese was not as good as mine is, so when we got lost looking for the college it was up to me to ask for directions and buy water from a local snack shop.
It was around this time that I started to not quite feel right. I got a weak headache and started to feel somewhat tired (this was at around 1:00), and by 3:00 I had gotten quite sick. When we got back to the school were the test was being taken, I was shivering, aching, and had a splitting headache. After that I had to sit through a 5 hour car ride back to Uberlandia. I think the best way to explain the way I felt is this: I was brainstorming what words (agonizing, horrific, excruciating, etc.) would be strong enough to describe how awful I felt throughout this. After 12 hours of sleep, and a restful morning, I'm feeling almost 100 percent now.
So, good and bad, this weekend was very interesting, in between seeing a new city, meeting new people from all over the world, and getting exceedingly sick from a mysterious illness. That's an exchange for you.
