Luis from Spain

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Luis Rioja Martinez

2009-10 Inbound from Spain

Hometown: Barcelona, Spain

Sponsor: Barcelona Condal Rotary Club, District 2202, Spain

Host: Orlando Rotary Club, District 6980, Florida, USA

School: Workforce Academy, Orlando, Florida

Bio

March 30 Journal - "The days are passing real quick and every time is less time to finish this wonderful experience, but I'm looking forward to do lots of more things while I'm here."

Luis' Bio

Hello, my name is Luis Rioja, Im from Barcelona in Spain and I am 16 years old. Barcelona is the capital, most populous city of the Autonomous Community of Catalunya and the second largest city in Spain. It is located on the Mediterranean coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besos and is bounded to the west by the Serra de Collserola. I live in Barcelona with my parents and my younger brother. I have also lived two wonderful years of my live in Madrid, when I was 11. I had to move because of my father's job. I had there a very good time and met new people with who I still have contact though now I live in Barcelona again. Madrid is the capital of Spain and the largest city also.

When I was only one year old I went to a preschool in Barcelona and when I turned 3 I started attending Elementary school, those years in that school passed very fast for me, and I started to change from a baby to a child. At 8 I was already in a soccer (football) team and we won Barcelona's cup.

I was having lot of fun at school with my friends until one of our most difficult decisions came to my house, move from the city where we had lived all our lives to Madrid, a bigger city with lots of new things to discover about it. This big step changed me from a child to a teenager. I moved there as I said before when I was 11 and I lived there 2 years, and then we moved back to Barcelona again where I had my old friends.

Now at 16 years old I am in Orlando, Florida and thanks to the opportunity that Rotary is giving to me I will hopefully change from a teenager to a man with responsibilities, and this year I have to man responsibilities, have as much fun as I can, and have study and as result have very good grades. So with this opportunity i will have a very good experience, and I will have a year that I will never forget and will stay all my life in my heart.

To finish I would like to say thanks to Rotary and all those people that make this journey of my new life here, such as Al Kalter that helped me before coming here and John Siegel my host district chairman, that is making sure that everyone of us has as much fun as we can and taking care of every one of us.

March 30 Journal

I'm having a great time here, I have switched families and I'm enjoying my experience, I have visited lots of places, such as theme parks like Wet n Wild, Disney (which I went with the other exchange students in Florida and has a great time together). I also have gone to Universal. I also have visited other places in south Florida end enjoyed the beach. I have also went to RYLA, a leadership conference with other kids from all the counties in Orlando, we had lots of fun learning from leaders and being creative doing our speeches and our performances.

The days are passing real quick and every time is less time to finish this wonderful experience, but I'm looking forward to do lots of more things while I'm here, like visit new places and meeting more people, I hope I can accomplish these objectives. I have wonderful friends here at school that they are teaching me a lot about this country and about American society.

I'm in the tennis team in my school, and they named me the captain, I'm playing lots of sports including the tennis games which by the way we are undefeated. My experience at my high school (Dr. Phillips) is being awesome.