Last dinner!!!

Today was an intense for us all here in the United States. Early in the morning we packed all our things up and went to The Community School in Sun Valley for the farewell with all our friends. Even though we spent just five days there, they were full of activities together and we really got close to the amazing people from the school. About noon we arrived in Boise and went straight to Riverstone, where we met the other friends again. Time to hug a lot, and tell all the adventures up in Sun Valley. We spent the afternoon in the school, and by 5.30 we had dinner together in a Chinese restaurant. What a great time!
We are feeling a bit strange, because we are looking forward to arriving and talking to you all soon, but we are extremely sad about leaving the US. Our hearts are full of feelings, and I think words can`t take their meaning or explain. It is just how it is. It`s the life: welcome to the world!

So, at the end of these amazing three weeks, we all want to register here our deepest thanks to all the host familes, for opening their houses and hearts for us, to all the staff and students from the Riverstone International School and The Community School, for offering us incredible moments of fun and learning, to Gloria and Reynaldo, our greatests advisers during the trip, and to all the communtiy of Escola SESC de Ensino Medio, for making this dream come true. We also want to thank everyone who followed thoroughly our blog: despite our busy days here, we tried to post at least every other day to share with you our experience.
Once more, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!

Geraldo, and The Exchange Group

:D
See u all soon!!

Hugs from Boise

Hosts!!! In our hearts 4ver

Oh, we gonna miss u all so much!

Saying goodbye at The Community School!

2nd day in Sun Valley!!!

Today was a cold and rainy morning here in the United States. Our second day at the community school was as great as the first one. We had some new classes like The Environmental Club, where we showed them the Flash Mob we organized last year for the Senac Graduation. They are planning one here as we are in the Earth Week. All the students at TCS has been so kind with us, everybody really curious about our school and Brazil.
This evening all the host families will go to the Pionner, one of the most traditional restaurants here in Sun Valley. Surely we will all have a great time and soon we gonna post more pics of the dinner together.

Emilly!!

Dinner together!

The awesome parents!

Girls... Morgan and Reta

Everybody!

After dinner...

First Day at Community!

Working!

Hey everyone:

I`m writing to talk about our work at Community School which is a little bit difference from Riverstone, not bad, not better, just different! The Community`s Students may choose some subjects that They want. It`s like our university model, so there isn`t unique class for each grade. The teachers are like our teachers in Brazil and Riverstone`s teachers, because the spot of discuss is so essential for us and for them. I won`t describe in words what I`m learning. For example I arrived at Boise I could understand the idea so bad, now I can hear and talk well. So I`m very happy and I can say for everybody that is here with me: we`re trying hard to represent you with the best way we can.
Yesterday my host new Mom invited me to check the newspaper around the world so I thought its a good idea to do in our school. Her computer there is a list with the a great number of newspaper that she likes so she can see it every time. Just to need a click. But its only one idea to implement in our school. I`m missing you all so much and very anxious to see you again. I hope that you have been fine.

Thanks for everything,

Judas Tadeu

Sun Valley!

Hey people, now we're in Sun Valley, with a new host family and we're attending to classes in Community School.
Yesterday I went with my new "sister" Reta to a Botanica Garden, because there was an event for children happening and we went there to work as volunteers making activities with the kids.
In one of the pictures you can see that I'm painting a beautiful girl's face! I had a great time! Then, Reta took me to the Bugs Zo and it was great.

After that, we met with the other brazilians and their brothers and sister to ice skate! It was very funny, we fell so many times!

At night, my host family cooked a special Thanks Giving dinner, just to show me how they celebrate this date in the United States and it was wonderful.

Today was our first they at Community School and our classes were very nice, because in some of them we're learning exactly the same thing in our school!

Bye guys, I LOVE YOU ALL! miss you so much!

Nati

1st day at The Community School, Sun Valley

Our first day at The Community School was fantastic! It is a really pleasant place, with some brand new buildings and amazing teachers and students. We knew almost all of classmates from the dinner on Saturday and the Pot Luck on Sunday, so we weren`t completely lost at the new school. For the classes we followed our `ambassador`, our brothers and sisters here in Sun Valley. They all were great, specially French, when I had the opportunity the teach some Portuguese to my classmates. Though their pronunciation was really funny, they all did really well! :D

Every Monday at The Community School the whole school get together for the Assembly, when there are some announcements, presentation of works, like videos, and sometimes the Seniors give a speech. At the Assembly the exchange group sang a song written by Natalia, and it seems that they all really liked it although they didn`t understand.

At the lunch time we had the opportunity to talk more to everybody and 4 sure we are all already really good friends. To sum up, a perfect day!

PS- Here in Sun Valley in the morning the temperature is about 0 celsius and for the following days it is forecast some snowfall. You can all guess how we are feeling, don`t you?

Geraldo

Tim, Ben, Judas and Randi

David, John and Randi

Averell, Geraldo and Moyo

Geraldo

Back: Isobel, Sophia.      Emilly, Reta, Natalia and Geraldo

Reta looking!

Averell, Tom, Collins, Tim, Reta, Natalia, Andrea, Luiz, Morgan, Brunna, Isobel, Emilly, Sophia, Moyo and Geraldo

In Sun Valley! New families...

Yesterday we all left Boise and headed to Sun Valley to meet our new host families in the evening. Saying good bye to our new friends in Boise was really hard because in such a short time we got really close to them all, so we cried a little bit! But even a bit sad we were very excited about meeting new people in Sun Valley and going to the Community School on Monday. As soon as we arrived in Sun Valley we had a wonderful dinner with our new brothers and sister at the house of one the directors of the community school. We laughed a lot and realized our time here will be really amazing. Right now we are preparing to go to an Ice Show at the Ski Resort, and maybe we will go ice skating (we just hope we don`t fall too many times!!).

For tomorrow we will have to prepare a musical presentation to the whole community school so we`re figuring out which is the best song to play (Of course it will be in Portuguese, and nobody will understand, but that`s ok!

Warm hugs to you all, and thanks so much for following our dear blog!

Geraldo

Bruneau Sand Dunes

On Friday, just after school we all headed to the Bruneau Sand Dunes, which are about one hour from Boise. We didn`t know Boise had such huge sand dunes and we were very impressed. Stunning overview from up there! It was quite tiring going up and rolling down was the best part. When we arrived at the botton of the dunes we were kind of dead!

It was a great time with the host families. After leaving the dunes we stopped to have dinner: lot of Pizza and laughs with the silly american jokes! :D

Friday at Riverstone! :D

Friday was a very different day for us at Riverstone. We spent the whole morning preparing our presentation for you guys, having a really hard work to remember to get everything we`ve done here so far. After lunch we went to our last class, English. By then all our new friends were writing on our journals, and a bit strange feeling came up on our hearts. Sad time to say goodbye!!

But instead of tears we got lot of paint helping our friends painting one of the classrooms at Riverstone.