Camille Lavorel

2009-10 Inbound from France

Hometown: Chessy, France

Sponsor: Val de Bussy Rotary Club, District 1770, France

Host: Fort Myers South Rotary Club, District 6960, Florida, USA

School: Fort Myers High School, Fort Myers, Florida

Bio

Camille's Bio

Hello everybody. My name is Camille and I'm 16 years old. I'm from France. I lived at 30 minutes to Paris, next to Disneyland Paris, but it isn't a very big city. I lived with my father, my mother and my brother (which made this experience too).

Now, I live in Fort Myers with Kevin my host dad, Heidi my host mom, Sydnee my host sister (16 years old), Joshua (20 years old) and Aaron (14 years old) my host brothers. And we have also 2 dogs. I go to Fort Myers High School. It's about 30 minutes to my house. As I love dance, I took dance at school so now I'm on the Band. It's so much fun, we are a lot (like 50/70 persons) and we play at football games. I like going to the movies, going to shopping, hanging with friends, going to the beach and travelling.

Everything here is different and new for me but I'm really enjoying this. I’m very happy to be here and thank Rotary for giving me this amazing opportunity. This year will be the best year of my life!!

March 30 Journal

It has been already about 7 months that I am in the USA, and I can tell that it is going to be the best experience of my life. I got two host families. My first host family had the hardest part because I didn't speak English very well and I didn't know a lot of people but my host sister which has the same age as me (actually the same birthday :) ) helped me a lot. The first day of school, I was completely lost but then after a few days you make friends and your year start to be really fun. I am a dancer so I decided to join the Dance team in my school. During the football season, we performed every Friday night for the half time show with the whole band called Marching band. It was really cool, a good experience that I will never forget because it was something that I will never do in my country.

A few months after school start, we had the Homecoming. I have been out with my friends for dinner and stopped by the river to take some pictures and then go to the dance in a limo; it was really fun. For Thanksgiving, my host family and I went in South Carolina for a couple of days. They rented a house by the beach and we visited Charleston, a beautiful city. In December, all exchange students in Florida had a weekend in Disney world for 4 days. We did 4 parks and had a wonderful time together and a lot of fun.

The day after this weekend, I switched host family. I got a little sister, Kobe (10 years old) and a little brother, Griff (8 years old). I had almost unpacked my stuff that I had to pack for our Christmas holidays. First, they took me to a football game and then we went in New Orleans, Louisiana to celebrate Christmas with my host mom's brother. We stayed a week so we had time to visit a lot. I didn't really know my host family yet but we were all the time together so we got close really quick. We were back home for about 2 days and left again for another football game for New Years Day.

The marching band season was over so my dance team start the competition season witch is more like I usually do. One day, I had a competition up to Orlando so my host family decided to stay for the weekend and go to Disney. It was an amazing weekend. My host mom got tickets for the Black Eyed Peas concert for the family Christmas present, so we got the chance to see the The Black Eyed Peas in concert in Tampa.

A few weeks later, we went up to Jacksonville for the Monster truck show (it is a truck competition), it is very loud but very fun. And then we went to two baseball games the same day, my host parents got a suite that we can get food and be inside (because it was cold!).

Every year, my band (dancers and musicians) has a trip which is first go to a parade and then get some fun stuff. This year we went to Tampa for the Saint Patrick parade. We went also to a water park and Busch garden (an amusement park). When I got back, I had to switch family (back to my first host family) for the last time. It was really hard to say Goodbye to them, mostly my little host sister and brother. I got three marvelous months with them and I thanks them so much for everything that they did for me. It has been now 2 weeks that I switched family and we a lot of things coming up like spring break, we are going camping for a couple of days, Prom is coming as well and in May, my host mom invited my host sister and I to go to Washington DC for a week. I am so excited!

As you can see, I got a lot of chance to do a lot of fun things and get a very very good families. Thank you everyone.