Supas Sheth

2008-09 Inbound from India

Hometown: Bharuch, India

Sponsor: Bharuch Rotary Club, District 3060, India

Host: Miami Rotary Club, District 6990, Florida, USA

School: Coral Gables Senior High School, Coral Gables, FL

Bio

Supas' Bio

Namaste!

My name is Supas and I am from India. I live in a town named Bharuch, it is in the west of India. I live in a joint family with 8 other family members which includes my grandpa, my uncle and aunt and their two daughters, my mom dad and my elder brother. My elder brother who is 19 was an exchange to Long Island, N.Y. I have two cousins sisters whom I live with, one is 18 and the other is 25. They were also exchange students to Denmark and Belgium. My family is big on sending their kids on an exchange. Exchange is now a family thing. I have other 2 cousins who were exchange students and one is right now in Japan as an exchange.

In America I am going to Coral Gables Sr. High School. It is really good and big school. I am in 11th grade. I have taken part in badminton and swimming. I have joined clubs in school so that I can make friends. In my free time in India I play cricket, football (not American football) and table tennis with my friends.

I wanted to become an exchange student because I was always surrounded by exchange students. I had seen them change, from how they came and how they left, in a really positive way. I always found them really cool and wanted be one of them. My brothers and sisters were of course my biggest inspiration.

Now I am in love with Miami and hope it stays wonderful in real future.

October 29 Journal

Hi! It has been almost three months I have been in America. Things are going really good. I am in my school badminton team. I went to my first football game on the 21st, and it was great. Football is all new to me because we don't have football in India, so my friends were helping me understand the game. I am the board member of my Interact club. It's a great club, we do really cool thing, and I totally enjoy it. I am learning drum in my school, so it's good. And teachers in my school are really friendly.

My host mom is Diane, she is the only person in my host family. She is so nice to me, we are like the beat friends. I am a vegetarian so she makes me vegetarian food. I really thank her for that.

I went to 1st Rotary meeting about a week after I arrived here. The Rotary meetings are totally different from the meetings in India. I really liked the happy dollar tradition - it is a really good way to share your happiness with others in a really good way.

My host mom is with the Non-Violence Project so she took me to a peace march. It was really good - people were honking in our support.

Then I had the best weekend ever. It was the orientation, where I met my other 67 friends from all over the world and the Rotex. We had fun together.

Then later the Rotary district 6990 organized a weekend at my house (actually my host mom's house). There were 12 exchange students, and we had a great time. We have a pool so it added up the fun. We went to the everglades park where we saw wild gators and then to the gator farm were we saw thousands of gators real close and we saw the show, it was really cool. And then we went in Todd Lary's boat out in the ocean, and we saw dolphins and we had a dip in the ocean. It was really cool.

April 19 Journal

Starting with the festival Halloween was really unique. I was all dressed up like a vampire and I had my face painted, I was looking pretty terrifying and I and bunch of my friends went trick or treating so I got a lot of candies.

After Halloween the Turkey Day aka Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was really awesome - my host mom Diane had a big party at her house and there were like 30 people here that night. But the thing I like about this holiday is everyone in the family comes and eats together, so it's like a gathering with a big feast. Christmas is like the biggest festival in here in America, you get like 15 days of holiday and from school. And the best part is you get so many presents on Christmas morning. I thing I am going to introduce this festival to my family in India so I get gifts from them every year besides my birthday.

School is the most happening place for me because I meet all my friends there. I am loving this school year. I am also doing badminton for the school and I am going to districts. I went to the senior prom even though I am a junior - my counselor gave me permission to attend prom since I am an exchange. It was really fun, and I danced a lot.

The other thing - Rotary took us to the Keys and to Disney World. It was so much fun meeting my exchange friends again. I had the best time there. Disney was great. I loved the shows and the rides there. Keys we went snorkeling and we went to Duvall street and roamed around there.

Oh I also went a Cuban festival since I live in Miami its called kia ocho. It was really crazy out there but I had a lot of fun.

Thank you Rotary for giving me this opportunity ... this is like the golden year of my life.