Andrea Perez Vega

2003-04 Inbound from Ecuador

Date of Birth: January 2, 1986
Hometown: Ibarra, Ecuador
Sponsor: Ibarra Rotary Club, District 4400, Ecuador

Host: Daytona Beach Rotary Club, District 6970, Florida USA
School: Spruce Creek High School

Andy's Bio

I'm from Ecuador - my country is small but it is beautiful. I'm 17. I have an older sister and a younger brother. My parents are doctors. 

I decided to be an exchange student because I want to meet different people of different countries, and in this way learn more about different cultures. I'm here also to improve my English, and I really like being here, but it is so difficult for me...

About school, it is too big, and is very different that the school in my country. But I like it, and I'm starting to meet new friends. 

I like to draw, and I would like to be an artist. My goals in my life are to be a great artist and to have a nice family.

Arrival in Orlando

October 10 Journal

Hi everybody, this Ecuadorian girl wants to say: "I'm so happy of being here, in Florida".

I have been here for two months and a little more, time is passing very fast, I can't believe it... My story here starts with a really bad trip, it was terrible, at first I arrived in Miami and they didn't send my bags on time, so I missed my connection flight and I had to wait for three long hours in the Airport to take the next flight to Orlando. After a long time I was arriving in Orlando, and when I found my host family they seemed to be very tired after waiting all the afternoon for me, and they already had my bags when I found them hi hi, they were very nice to me, but at that time in the night the only thing that everybody were thinking was to go back to Ormond Beach (where I live) as fast as possible and find a bed; we were arriving in Ormond at eleven thirty in the night… That was a really long day.

But since that day all the things are getting better, I’m really enjoying my stay here and I love my host family - they are like a real family for me and I feel that I have lived more time than just two months with them, they know 
a lot about me.

I really like my school, but it wasn’t easy to make friends for me. Young people are really different here than in my country but I’m starting to understand the way they are and now I have more friends and more knowledge about American culture. At first was so hard to understand my teachers, and I was so slow doing my homework, but with the help of my host family, teachers and friends now every thing is easier for me and I have really good grades at school. I like school here because I’m interesting in art and here I have the opportunity of taking art, opportunity that I didn’t have in my country. I love my Art class and I think it will be a good base for studding art in college. I want to be an Artist.

Now, I feel that I am learning a lot about American Culture. When I went to my first football game in Jacksonville with my host family, I was completely lost, I didn’t understand nothing but was really fun because was a important game (Jaguars against Redskins). Since that day I’m going some Fridays to the football games of my school, and my host brother is always trying to explain me more about football so I’m starting to understand more about this game.

Last Saturday I went to Mainland’s Homecoming with Lars, another exchange student from Germany, and that was so much fun, we really had a good time and we felt more American. Last weekend I also went to The Power Weekend, which was organized for Daytona West Rotary Club, where we worked with kids between nine and ten years old. it was so hard to catch their attention, they were really hyper kids but I loved to work with them and help them to know more about themselves, and when the Power Weekend finished I was so sad for leaving my kids. Last 
weekend was unforgettable.

I love to be here, I always have something new to do, my new friends are very nice, and the most important is that I’m really growing up and getting mature.

Thank you everybody and that is all for today………

Andy  J

January 6 Journal

Hi everybody: Now is five months that I have been here already and when I look back I realize how much I have lived, changed and grown.

School starts tomorrow again after winter break and with this it also starts the second half of my exchange student year. During all this time I have traveled with my host family and also with the other exchange students, and I have met different and amazing places. I really enjoyed these five months, every day and second of them are important and have too much worth to my life experience. Something really special for me is the weekend that I went with my host family to Saint Augustine, they told me everything that they know about this city, which is the oldest city in the whole United States, I love this city, it is so gorgeous and it has all these old and beautiful buildings, small streets made with stones and with small houses full of flowers at each side, some places of Saint Augustine remind me of my city because it also have some places with colonial style and old buildings and small streets; I like St. Augustine also because most of its places and restaurants have names in Spanish because it was an Spanish colony.

By the end of October I traveled to New York with my host family, it was amazing, I was so excited because I was looking with my own eyes all those buildings and the Central Park that I had only seen in movies, and I never imagined that I was going to see all of this in front of me, without a screen. We spent three days and a half there, and we got to know a lot of New York city, we even went to a play called “The Producers”, it was really good and it was the first time that I had the opportunity of being at a play of such magnitude.

In November I had the opportunity of celebrating a really new holiday for me: “Thanks Giving”. It was interesting to see how people celebrate it, and I spent a good time with all the family together. The way that everybody try to be kinder this day is interesting. I liked the idea of buying things for the people that need some essential things and give it to them, at least my host family did that and I think that this custom is really nice.

By the beginning of December, I went with all the exchange students to the trip that we all had been waiting for………… We went to Disney and we spent four wonderful days there thanks to all the organization and arrangements of the Chairmen of the different districts and also different Rotarians that made it possible and that were with as in this amazing adventure. Everybody knows what is Disney and where it is, and a lot of the exchange student had visited it before this trip, but I had never had the opportunity of being there, and this was absolutely exciting because it is not only that I got to be there, I also was there with all this friends that made of this trip an unforgettable experience. I am so waiting to the tip to Key West, which is another trip that we are going to meet all together again.

After this December passed so fast to me, and I got out of school for winter break, and in just few days it was Christmas Eve, I was a little down this day, because it was a little hard to me being far of my family this special day, specially because in Ecuador I meet with all my family in Christmas Eve, we celebrate it this day and we open the presents at twelve. But the Christmas Day was really special to me, I had a good time with my host family, they are so important to me and we all had a wonderful Christmas.

New Year Eve came so fast, and I just cannot believe that it is already 2004, it is going to be a great year for me, I know that. My host family made a little party here in our house, I had the opportunity to invite some friends and it was really cool, we played pool (I just discovered that I am really bad in pool) and we ate as much as we could.

To complete all this special dates that I have already celebrated, I also celebrated my 18th Birthday on January second, some friends came over to my house and I had a good time, and of course I got some presents J. I can’t believe that I am already 18, I feel like 14, and it is not only because I look like, ha-ha.

Tomorrow is school again, I am lazy and I don’t feel like coming back but I know that it is going to change since the first moment that I start enjoying of the good times at school.

This is all for today, I’ll write again.

Andy

April 10 Journal

Today was my first day of Spring Break, so I just went to the beach with a friend to forget all the work and stress of school. When we got there, we just laid down on the sand to take the sun and we got really quiet, this was the best opportunity for me to think about my whole year here, a wonderful year that is almost over.

I remember that when I just got here, my host siblings told me that the best time in Daytona is during Spring Break because there is too much going on here during this time; but when they told me that it seemed to me that Spring Break was far away, and now I just don’t know when all this time passed in front of me and I didn’t even realize it.

I have a lot of different feelings that are really confusing me, I think that leaving here is going to be harder than when I left my parents, family and friends; because I knew that I was going to see them again, but now I feel the end of this so close that I don’t even know what to feel or what am I going to feel.

I gave this day to me; I spent the whole day thinking in what I was, what I am today and specially what am I going to be. I think that this year has changed me a lot; probably all the experiences that I went through during this year came to my mind today and made me change my attitude with life and with myself. I realized that I didn’t have my life in my hands before, I realized that I was expecting everybody to do everything for me, I was so afraid of living and taking my life in my hands because I didn’t want to be wrong or taking the risk of being wrong. But today I thought in all the things that I have done during this year, things that proved to me that I can do too much more than what I think I can; we can do whatever we want, of course, if we fight for it.

My life is going to be different when I go back to my country, I won’t be the little girl that goes to high school and that has her parents next to her to solve all her problems any more. I will be going to college and I’ll have to move to another city. And today, I am still afraid, as I always was, of not having my parents close to me and having to talk to solve my problems by myself, but the difference is that now, even when I am still afraid, I am looking for this, I want to prove myself that I can move on, that I can be myself and that I can fight for what I think and get what I want. This year made me change, I don’t know how or how much, but I just feel myself different.

While living here, I had the opportunity of knowing different things and places, I had the opportunity to see snow in North Carolina for the first time in my life, since in my country never snows because it is right in the equator, I have traveled to different places, and my host parents are taking me to Washington D.C. this Thursday.

But there is one event that shock me most during all this year, and that is the one that specially made me think about taking all the experiences of this year and putting them all together to grow up and make myself a better person. This event was the Orientation camp for the outbound students, the guys that are going from here to different countries around the world to experience the same thing that is almost over for me. This weekend was really special for me, because it was in the same place that I had my first orientation camp with the inbound students, we all were so insecure and afraid of talking, our English wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be, and at least I got so frustrated because I couldn’t be myself because I couldn’t express what I wanted to say. But this second time that I was there last weekend, it was one of the most special feelings of my life when I found myself again, in the same place that I had been seven moths ago, but I was another person, I found myself this time speaking English fluently with out being afraid of saying everything what I wanted to say, and the most important thing that made realize that this year was worth it was when I was talking to the guys that are going to be exchange students this year and that are going to pass through all the fears and joys that every exchange student pass through, telling them what being an exchange student is like, and it made me feel, somehow, special. I realized that they referred to me like the exchange student from last year, and this made me sad at first, but when I started telling to the guys about all my experiences and what I went through I discovered that I will leave this country really soon, but this country and all what I lived here won’t leave me ever, all what I had, have and will have here, until the day that I have to leave, all the images and feelings, all the people that I got to appreciate and love, they will be with me for ever. They are part of my life and my change; they are, somehow, part of my past, my present and my future; part of the child and the new person that I am today.

Being an exchange student wasn’t as hard as I thought it will be, but I think that being an ex-exchange student is probably going to be harder than I think it will be. This has been an awesome year, a year in which I have lost and found myself more than a couple of times, and all this different emotions were the beginning of my change.

Andy