Pre-Departure Update

Hello again!

People keep asking me if I've updated, and I haven't because I haven't really had any new information. I was obviously unable to leave on the 20th due to the length of time it has taken to acquire my visa, and we are now looking at sometime between the 6th and the 14th-15th of August. I'm just going to have to miss the beginning of school, but hopefully they'll let me rest up a bit and get settled in for a few days before I start. My travel agent should be sending me an itinerary soon, so I'll let you all know what's going on.

As far as the party is concerned, we went ahead and removed my name from the originally scheduled party, and let Lane have it all to himself. Mine is now tentatively re-scheduled to the 12th of August, and it's in Morgantown, probably at my grandparents' or our house. Again, everyone is invited. We canceled the last party mainly because a good number of the family members that I wanted to see before I left couldn't come, so hopefully this time things will work out a little better.

I think that I can only put one picture/post on her, and that won't really be enough for my purposes, so I think I'm going to get a shutterfly or Kodac pictureshare account and post them that way. I'll try to find something that you all won't have to join just to look at my pics, but I'm not sure if the sites allow that. I'll look into it. They're pretty handy tools to share pics with family and friends who are far away, so it might be fun to get one anyway to do your own thing and not just look at mine.

I have heard from my family a bit more, and apparently they live in a subdivision with a good bit of my host mom's family living in surrounding houses. They sent pics of the cousins that live there are the neighborhood; I'll post one of them. They all seem very nice and welcoming, so I'm not worried a bit about having trouble fitting in and whatnot.

I still have a lot to do before I leave. They're giving my room to Hyland after I'm gone since I'm essentially moving out for good and his is tiny, so I have to pack up all my stuff here in the near future. I also have to finish up my scrap book, make a list of all the stuff I'm packing, and get some things straightened out with the bank and whatnot. I really wasn't ready to leave the 20th, so I'm not overly-upset that it fell through. It is a shame, though, that I have to get there after school starts.

Oh, I forgot: I went to a Rotary convention the other weekend for all of the outbound exchange students, and it was really nice just to meet all the other people who are in my same situation, and to figure out how mine related to theirs. I found out that I was actually pretty far ahead in the visa process, and that everyone else felt pretty much as in the dark as I do. Also, hardly anyone knows the language of the country they're going to (even people going to Thailand and Taiwan, places like that), and apparently you're pretty much expected not to know the language, so that put me at ease. We basically had meetings/workshops all weekend with everyone and with only the people who are going to our countries. More than anything it reassured me that I'm one of many, and that I have a pretty good support net even if I feel a little isolated at times.

As far as language goes, I have actually been doing my CDs lately, and I really think it will help. At the least I can say that I don't speak Portuguese/don't understand, that I'm American, simple greetings, etc, and I have a basic understanding of pronunciation/grammar rules. Basically, I can barely get by, but I'm not too worried about it. I can read it pretty well because of my Spanish background, and I don't think picking it up will be terribly difficult once I'm immersed. I'll proabably be going to bed with a headache every night, but that's all part of the fun, right?

Anyway, I feel weird talking about myself for this long, so I'll go now (I guess I did have some things to say, after all). If you want to leave a comment or anything there's a link at the bottom that says "comments," but you might have to have an account to do it; I'm not sure. Also, you can subscribe to it using Google, Yahoo, etc., and that way you won't have to just look it up when you think of it to be annoyed that there's nothing new, haha. Or, if you want, I can make a group in my e-mail to inform when I've posted. However you want to do it is fine with me. Maybe I'll just go ahead and send out an e-mail this time, and see how you like that! :-P

I hope you all have a lovely day!

Mucho Amor

Alanna

Welcome, one and all

Hi there!

This is my first post on this blog, and nothing too exciting will be happening for at least two weeks.

I have been in contact with my first host family, the Paianes, and they sound great. They have sent me a family portrait and a picture of their house (as seen above) in Presidente Prudente. They have a 16 yr old son (who will be studyig abroad in Canada this year, so I won't really get to know him) and a 13 yr old daughter; my host mother works at her father's factory, and my host father travels around during the week selling very nice stereo equipment. I don't feel like I should give out any more info. on them until I meet them/have their permission, so that's it for now.

I should be getting my itenerary very soon, and my visa application process is (hopefully) in progress. I've done everything from my end, so now it's their responsibility (yay, haha, that was rather stressful). My family wants me to come in around the 20th of July so that we can stay in this "charming" city on the outskirts of Sao Paolo for a little holiday before school starts.

School starts on July 30th, and it runs from 7AM to 12:30PM, then you go home to eat with you family, and I think a lot of kids take extra classes in the afternoon. I hope to so that I can meet people, keep my mind occupied, etc.

A girl from Hungary got ahold of me through Myspace, and she will be going to the same town that I am through Rotary. She told me that there are 10 of us that will be in PP alone (I was quite surprised), and as they say your best friends are the exchange students I'm quite pleased about that. There are 3 Americans, 4 Mexicans,1 German, 1 French, and 1 Hungarian. I'm hoping that the Mexican students will be nice and let me practice Spanish with them because I'm a little worried that I'll go learn the Portuguese and totally forget my Spanish. We shall see.

Right now everything seems to be moving very quickly, and I'm not totally sure how I feel about the whole thing. In fact, I think that I feel so many things that they're all starting to cancel eachother out, and I'm almost starting to feel more like a spectator than a participant in my own life. This process has been pretty stressful in a lot of ways so far, but at the momen there's little else I can do, so I'm basically just riding out the days and hoping it will all come together. I know it will.

Here are a few links for more information on Presidente Prudente: (If you copy and paste either of the Portuguese addresses into google, the site will come up as the first search item, and you can click on [Translate this page] to the right of the title for English)

http://www.yep4510.org.br/
http://www.prudensite.com.br/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidente_Prudente

Finally, there is a going away party for me in Pittsburgh at my mom's on Saturday the 14th, and everyone is, of course welcome. However, since it's pretty far from Parkersburg, I think we'll do another little something either the following week or weekend depending upon my departure date. It'll just be a little cookout-esque thing, nothing too fancy, and I would love to see everyone. And if you know anyone who you think would be interested in reading this feel free to give them the link. It is meant to be public, so I'm happy to get all the attention! :-P

That's all for now!

Mucho Amor

Alanna