Bianca "Bia" Santos

2008-09 Inbound from Brazil

Hometown: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

Sponsor: Salvador-Itapagipe Rotary Club, District 4550, Brazil

Host: Lehigh Acres Rotary Club, District 6960, Florida, USA

School: Fort Myers High School, Fort Myers, FL

Bio

Bianca's Bio

Hey!

I’m Bianca Santos, I’m Brazilian and just turned 16 years old. It feels very good to say that I’m an exchange student. This is a real dream… I can’t even remember when I decided that I wanted to be on an exchange program.

I was born in Salvador –Bahia, and I absolutely love it! It’s a hot and really big city with lots of great beaches! My house is not soooooo big, but there’s more than enough room for my parents, my little brother, my cousin and I.

I come from a very big family and we do almost everything together. Every Sunday, for example, my aunts, uncles, and us (people from my house) go to my grandparent’s home for lunch. So, hanging or going out with my family is one of the things that I like to do.

I also enjoy reading and watching movies. TV, movies, that’s really something I love! I also try to spend as much time as I can with my friends. Well, of course all this was in Brazil…

This year’s been pretty busy for me. I just moved to a new school, got into High School, and now I’m in Florida!!!

Here in Florida, I also like movies, reading… And gladly I still get to hang with my family, my new family, and that’s something I really like. I can also say that I went out a few times with my host brothers’ friends (which are kinda my friends now), and it was really fun.

I hope I can show a little bit of Brazil to people around here… They have so much to offer me, I just hope I can give back as much as I’m taking. This will for sure be a really fun year! I’m already loving it.

August 30 Journal

It was the second last week of July, I was leaving school and I got a call from my mom. She was crying and saying that she made a mistake at the agency and bought the tickets to USA for August 3rd (when we had everything planned for August 9th). So there was I completely fricked! I only had 13 days left in Brazil. I just wasn’t ready to go yet! Things to shop, places to go, people to see! So I just stopped going to school so I could get everything ready in time. I planned a very busy schedule for every single day of the last week. I had to go shopping for clothes for me, gifts for my hosts, I didn’t even have a bag to travel! Hahahahaha. Anyway, my boyfriend and I went all over the city doing all kinds of things (by bus, of course!) and saying goodbye to all the places I wouldn’t see for a year.

August the 1st (Friday) was my birthday. The party would be on the next day, so…… My parents forgot my birthday. Yeah, that was bad. I didn’t say anything just to see how long it would take for them to remember it. I went to the school to say goodbye to my friends and to pick up my boyfriend. We both went to my house, and my parents still didn’t remember anything! So I went to my friend’s house, Amanda, (with my boyfriend) and other 3 friends of mine were there cooking a cake and brigadeiro (Brazilian candy) for my birthday! It was REALLY fun! It was a really good birthday, after all. Finally, at the end of the day both of my parents had remembered and were feeling very guilty, which was great, cause now I could ask for more stuff! That night my father’s side of family arrived at my home for the party on the next day, they live in another city.

The party was really nice! I had a great time. All my friends and family were there, and it was just a very simple thing, just so I could say goodbye to everybody. I couldn’t believe I was leaving on the next day! I couldn’t believe my life was about to change for ever.

I woke up early on the next day. Finished packing, and soon we were at the airport. There were so many people there to take me! First my family and boyfriend (20 people), and then 10 of my friends arrived at the airport! Even my old teacher was there. So, there were 30 people, just to take ONE person! My friends, of course, had something planned for me: They put me on the luggage car and threw all this colorful stuff on my head, and took me all around the airport, dressed like that, screaming and laughing. It was really funny! Then the time was up. I had to go. Everybody started crying, and, for the first time, I cried too. As I walked toward the gate, my friends yelled at me and when I turned back at them they had all those posters with all kinds of sweet things written on them. I cried soooooooooooooo hard! I didn’t think I could do that. I ran into the gate as fast as I could, so I wouldn’t give up. I just wanted more time with them. I still cried for a while on the other side of the gate.

Then, I realized that I should be on the plane minutes ago, and the line just wasn’t moving. So they announced that my flight was late. We only flied four hours later!!! That flight was until Sao Paulo, my father was waiting for me there, he wanted to take me all the way to Florida, but gladly Rotary said no! So he just got satisfied when he required the accompany service. Thanks to that when I got to Miami I had to stay in a room with cartoon paintings on the walls and toys all over the floor… and MOUSES! Yeah… pretty boring! But I didn’t stay there for too long. Anyway, hours later I was in Fort Myers.

My host family was waiting for me there with balloons and posters to welcome me. I felt so good to see them! My host parents, two of my host brothers and my counselor and Mrs. Cindy Doragh the district chairperson and other people… After a few minutes taking care of papers at the airport I went home with my new mom, and my new brothers.

I love my room!!!!!!!!!! I have my own computer and a TV! Actually I have a whole floor, cause my ‘brother’ Stephan is going to college and it’s gonna be just me in the floor. It was a great first day, I was tired from the flight but it felt so good to be with them. I tried peanut butter! And I watched my host brothers playing ping pong. Later my host dad came home and we had a nice dinner. And after dinner, my host mom got a giant cookie that said “Welcome and Happy Birthday Bianca”. It was sooooo nice of them! And it tasted really good too. And that’s how my adventure began.

December 21 Journal

It’s Christmas week… I can’t believe I stayed so long without writing, I thought I’d be keeping every detail and every second of my days written somewhere, so I wouldn’t forget anything. And now I begin to understand that the things that I’ll always remember can’t be written, can’t be kept or expressed in words.

I’ll try to give you at least a quick update on the last four months, there are so many things that is my duty to share.

School started in August, The first two days I decided that I wanted to kill myself. Or a least crawl under my bed and only come out when I could go home. My host parents traveled to Canada after my first day, and I had to go my counselor’s family for the next ten days. On the second day, as my counselor picked me up after school, I got in the car, looked at him and started crying. I sobbed like a baby and the poor guy had no idea what to do or what was going on. I felt so ashamed, I felt so weak.

Very nicely, he took me to have some Milk Shake! Heheheheh I washed my face and controlled myself until the end of the day when I was safe in my room and didn’t need to worry about hurting anyone’s feeling. And then I cried again!

After a while, I started to get mad at myself as I realized how easily I was giving up on something that I dreamed of my whole life! I saw that there was no reason for me to be so shaken, so vulnerable after two days. I thought of my family, of my friends, of all the things I left behind, all the things I’ve been through so that I would be here now, so that I would accomplish my dream. Those thoughts gave me strength and I kept trying, kept going.

On that weekend we had the Orientation with all the other exchange students. That was all I needed to be “five by five” again… Because, guess what? Not one of them was happy about school. They had the exact same impression I did, and nothing in the world could comfort me more.

On that Monday, I finally found someone to sit with at lunch. Believe it or not, the girl I found was Brazilian! And conveniently couldn’t speak Portuguese for she had moved to the US when she was 2.

School went well for most of the time… I made some friends. But a different concept of “friends”. People I could “hang out” with at school, people I’d talk to during class, people I’d say “hello” to, or “good morning”, people that would recognize me on the hallways, but nothing beyond that.

Thanks to my host brother and parents, that persuaded me to go to their church every Sunday, I made friends closer to “real friends”. They are Michel’s friends (my host brother), and they’ll always be his friends first, but I think that with time they’ll be my friends too.

My routine revolves around my host brother’s… pretty much everything I do, I do it with him. That is good, because I really love him already. But it can also be very frustrating sometimes. I feel I’m on his shadow… I feel like nothing I do has credit or counts, I feel that I’m just following him around.

I’m not sure if I’m explaining it right, it gets confusing sometimes. It’s not that I’m forced to be with him or that I’m not allowed to do anything without him… It isn’t like that at all. I’m the one who can’t find anything to do or anyone else to be with.

I think of him as my brother, as my best friend here, but I don’t think he sees me that way. I keep having the feeling that he’s only with me because he has nothing else to do or no one else to be with. I have the feeling that he would choose to be with anyone else but me. That makes me sad sometimes… I just wish I had other friends, my own friends, people that I could talk to, that I could be with, that I could hang out with. So I wouldn’t depend on my brother so much.

Like I said before, school went on and on, faster than I imagined… And now I can say have a few more friends. I even spent the weekend at one of my friend’s house. But I’m more her friend than she is mine. I mean, she talks to me about her problems, and I listen and I try to help her, but every time I try to tell her what’s wrong with me, she won’t listen or she’ll change the subject.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, I’m making such a mess! I’m not even making sense any more, am I? Sorry, it’s just that I have so much to say, in so many different occasions that the memories get lost and confused, and I lose my track on these stories… Let’s give it one more try, now talking about what really matters:

HOMECOMING

I was very excited to go to homecoming… I was supposed to go with Michel, but on the last week he said he didn’t want to go. So I ran around the school to find someone to go with. I had my dress and shoes already! So I was definitely going. Katy, my Brazilian friend, didn’t have anyone to go with either, so we went together… It was very fun! The DJ was terrible, the girls dancing were scary, but for some crazy reason, I had a lot of fun!

HALLOWEEN!

Two or three weeks before Halloween, I had a bad argument with my host brother. I wanted to go to Halloween Horror Nights and I told him I wanted to, and he said it was stupid and that he didn’t really like it and he didn’t really want to go. So I forgot about it, but that same week he and his friend won two tickets each to go to Halloween HN, in Orlando. I was a fool to think that he would take me, I see now that I had no reason to think that. But I trusted that he would so much that I didn’t even consider the possibility that he wouldn’t. Until I heard him telling his mother that he and his friends would go on the next weekend (a weekend that I’d be away with HIS parents)

I pretended I didn’t care, and the thing is I didn’t care that much about going to Orlando… What really made me upset was the fact that he didn’t even bother to come to me and say that he was taking his friend, or that I couldn’t go for some reason… Any reason.

I finally told him I was upset (through Facebook), and he apologized and said that the reason he wasn’t taking me was because his friends didn’t like me.

That was a long time ago, at least it feels like it. His friends still don’t like me, and honestly, I’m not in love with them either. But I got really sad that night, but I also realized that I wasn’t going to let the opinion of people who never even bothered to talk to me affect me so much.

I decided to forget all about that and not waste time being upset with my host brother or myself, or his friends, and just enjoy my time here. On Halloween I dressed up and went trick or treating with my brother and “our” friends from church. I had fun, but not as much as I expected. We walked for too long. My feet started to hurt.

The next day I had a Rotary Halloween Party at Shinobu’s house (Shinobu is an exchange student from Japan). That was REALLY FUN, I slept over, so did Vivian, the exchange student from Taiwan. We stayed up all night talking and taking pictures and Shinobu showed us her Japanese stuff and made or make up and dressed us like Japanese girls. Of course Vivian looked a lot more convincing as a Japanese than I did.

THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving was VERY good. All the “boys” came home from college, and also Martin’s girlfriend. I really enjoy having them all around… It’s just so funny to watch them, they are like four pieces of a same thing. On Thanksgiving Day I went to the Rotary Thanksgiving Project, we offered a Thanksgiving Lunch to the poor. It felt good help people, to do at least a little bit.

At dinner, we all sat together, and I actually felt like I was a part of their family… It felt really good. We prayed, and thanked for all the blessings we had (they can be very religious sometimes). My host dad spoke first, than Michel thanked for me being there, saying that he would be very lonely if I wasn’t there. That made me feel so good… Even though I don’t think he meant it; and than I also thanked for being here, for being a part of their family… It was very “family like” and it all seemed so familiar to me, so much like home.

Somewhere in the middle of all those things, I broke up with my boyfriend. No details necessary. If you’re reading this and want to be an exchange student and have a boyfriend… I will not give you any advice, since I’m no one to do that. But I need to say that even though it didn’t work, and it’s over, I don’t regret trying.

I also did my play: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for Middle School students. If you know me, you know that I was obviously a Dwarf! Hehehehehe. Our teacher figured I’d be a good “Bashful”. The play was terrible! It was the worst play I’ve ever been in, and I’ve done some pretty bad plays. It was really, really, bad. Anyways, it was fun! Hehehehehehehe.

I also made it to Thespians, the drama club thingie… But we never do anything. It’s a big disappointment.

Okay, this is going too far and is getting too crazy. On the next journal: DISNEY & CHRISTMAS.

Bye, bye