What is Rotary Youth Exchange?

From the Rotary International website:

"Rotary clubs are service organizations that strive to improve the quality of life in their communities, promote high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace."

Every year, Rotary clubs sponsors people like myself to travel to another country and live there for about ten months, completely immersed in the culture. I will be spending my junior year of high school in Spain, as I found out yesterday, living with up to three host families and serving as an ambassador from the US. When I tell people about my plans, to leave next August and spend ten months away from my friends, school and family, some people understand immediately my passion to experience something completely new. Others just look at me and say, "Why? Are you insane?" which is a difficult question to answer. A typical exchange answer is, "Why not?" but that never seems to really placate them. Rotary attempts to describe the many benefits of the exchange:

• Serving as an ambassador for their country and community
• Benefiting from immersion in another culture while adapting to a new
way of life
• Making lifelong friends, not only within the host country but also with
other students from around the world
• Learning about the practices and accomplishments of people in other
countries
• Returning home with a greater sense of the world and a deeper
understanding of themselves and their culture
• Assuming leadership roles shaped by lessons from the experience
• Building memories that will be with them forever

It has taken one very strong belief to keep me going for the past year and a half to search for a sponsor club, move through interviews and applications and the constant anxiety of not knowing what the next year would bring. I believe that our world is separated by stereotypes and misconceptions of other cultures, that prevent different countries from ever accepting each other. While it is easy to say something like that, the only way things will ever change is if someone - like me, or any of you - decides to change it. Progress is made by actions like traveling, talking and sharing: who we are, what we believe and why we are not so different. If I can convince one person that not all Americans own guns, attend rodeos or are loud and obnoxious, this exchange will have made a difference in the world. I also know that RYE will change me, irrevocably, but for the better. One of my favorite books, The Alchemist by Paulo Cuelho, follows a shepherd from Andalucía as he attempts to find his destiny but also focuses on the effect of one motivated person on the world:

"When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too."

I am starting this blog now so that I will have a record of the months leading up to and during my exchange to Spain, and so that I can share my experiences (and lots of pictures) with anyone interested. I also plan on translating or writing some entries in Spanish, so that I will have something to look back on as my comprehension improves.

And so it begins!