Rotary Youth Exchange

My name is Emma Blankenship and I have been blessed with the opportunity to travel to Brazil for this upcoming school year.  I will be going through the Rotary Youth Exchange Program.  This program has been in existence for 75 years and I am one of five girls from my district  to be going this year.  I will be living in Paracatu, Minas Gerais for a year.  I applied in September for this opportunity, and I was notified of my acceptance in January and found out I was to be going to Brazil in February.  I am incredibly excited about this.  In order to be able to do this I will be graduating in August, so I will be in Paracatu late July or early August.  I had my first orientation this past Saturday in Asheville, NC and it went really well.  I am right on track with my passport and other various papers, getting my student visa is next in line.  As well as learning Portuguese and learning about a new culture.  I feel so blessed to be able to do this, not everyone gets a once in a life time chance like this.  This blog will be my main way to stay connected with friends and family in the United States next year.  I'm going to try and update whenever I get some great news or do something really cool.  I also plan to use this blog to upload pictures so people can see what I am doing. I hope that everyone will read my blog next year and email me if they have any questions about what I will be doing.