West Coast 2014 BUS 2 ends today!

WEST and EAST COAST 2014 Trips are ending today! Wow! We had amazing trips this year! Lots of fun together on the road and on the most famous cities from each coast! We would like to thank Rotary International, Chairmen and Inbound Coordinators, Families and Host Families, also our coordinators, guides, drivers and suppliers! Thanks for all the support!
Our special thanks to you Exchange Student! Thanks for traveling with Terra North America - we do hope you enjoyed this trip so much as we did! Thanks! :)

Terra North America Staff

San Diego - Part 2!!!

Good night everybody!
 My name is Rodolfo, and today me and all my friends who have been travelling around the west coast since june 11th had such a busy and great day in san diego.
 We arrived here yesterday night and today in the morning we headed to the Sea World for another exciting day of our trip.
 Over there we had the opportunity to go to nice rides as the rollercoaster "Manta", we could spend have a good time at the Arcade, and we also could get in touch with many exotic animals as flamingos, dolphins and mantas. The best part of our day at the park, though, was definitively the famous presentation of the whales. It is so impressive what those huge animals can be taught to do: They jump, twist, throw water on us... It is spetacular!
 After having fun we came back to the hotel to get ready for the dinner at Denny's and afterwards come back for our "Secret Santa".
 Our Secret Santa was so funny: our friends were so creative to get nice gifts for each other. Everybody was part of it: Exchange Students and Chaperones. It was such a great idea to make this happen once we found out who we had to give a gift to a long time ago. Having a long time to between the day we found out who was our "Secret Friend" and today gave us the opportunity to get closer to the person and know much more about them than only their names: We were able to get closer to them, find out what they would like to get as a gift and also develop our friendship.
 That was our day. Tomorrow we have a day at the zoo and then we come back to LA. Even though Im really excited to come back to LA it makes me sad as it reminds me that our trip is getting to the end. Please, can we start it all over again?

Rodolfo - Brazil

San Diego: Talent Show, Sea World, and Secret Santa!!!

On Sunday, we spent the whole day in the bus, driving from Williams to San Diego! Once we arrived to the hotel we ordered pizza before our talent show! Bus 2 has a lot of talent so it was a great night! Some groups danced to songs in their native languages while others played the piano and impressed us with magic tricks. Our chaperones even bought a bunch of prizes throughout the trip- a Mickey Mouse watch was the first place prize! 

Today (Monday), we went to Sea World!! We arrived around 9 am- right when the park opens! Debora suggested that we all go to the first ride, Manta, before exploring the rest of the park. This ride was so much fun and some of the guys posed for the cameras set up to capture your face as the ride begins. We went to a few more rides including Wild Artic (a helicopter simulation), Journey to Atlantis where the people in the front row got completely soaked, and Shipwreck Rapids-the ride that left us all drenched from head to toe. The whole group met at 4:30 to watch the One Ocean show at Shamu Stadium, showcasing the huge, magnificent orcas. We chose to sit in the ¨splash zone¨, leaving a bunch of our group sopping wet after the orcas slapped their tails against the water; It was an amazing show! Afterwards, we all went to watch the Blue Horizons show at the Dolphin stadium. This show had people and dolphins- super cool! After the two shows, we headed to dinner and back to the hotel. The last thing we did today was our Secret Santa gift exchange! Someone suggested the idea early on in the trip and everyone thought it was a great idea! Everyone participated: chaperones, coordinators, and students. We had so much fun guessing who each present was for and we each ended up with a really cool gift that will always remind us of this trip.

Tomorrow is the last day of the trip before everyone flies home. It has been a really wonderful two weeks!

Grand Canyon!!!

Hello everybody!

We're Karolina (Finland), Anna and Lena (Germany). We started our day with a bus drive from Williams, Where we are staying in the hotel, to the famous Grand Canyon. There we hiked downwards for about 40 minutes, took a lot of pictures and enjoyed the beautiful view. On our way up we saw squirrels and a troop of mules. We got back up dusty and thirsty and sweaty. As we arrived at the water fountain, we saw a deer that was drinking of it with Kinga (Poland) holding the button.Then we went to eat and watched a movie about the history of the Grand Canyon. During the movie you felt like you were a part of it, because of the great point of view. We took more pictures at another viewpoint and were fascinated by the incredible nature, that the earth has to offer. We drove back to Williams and had some freetime to go through our talent show acts, before we got to see the very typical american cowboy show. And right before the show started we had the best chupeta we had ever done in the middle
  of the crowd. Afterwards we went to a very american retro restaurant and had a lot of good barbecue food. With a full stomach we came back to the hotel and enjoyed our time together. We are so thankful for all the wonderful friendships we made during this amazing trip.

Good night!!!!

Las Vegas! / Henderson!!

Good Evening everyone!

We are here in Henderson, where we are going to spend the night! We just came back from Vegas, where we made a lot of shopping at The World´s Largest Gift Shop,  had Dinner at the delicious Hard Rock Cafe and saw the Famous Belaggio Water show!!

The trip is AMAZING, and the kids are having a LOT OF FUN!!

Tomorrow we are leaving for Williams, and we have a long way ahead!

We´ll send more news soon!

Hugs,

Débora Labarrère

Trip General Coordinator

Terra North America

Yosemite National Park!!

June 19th 2014

Wake up 7:00, fill the bus at 8:00 and (almost) everybody was ready to go at 8:15. We spend approximately 5 hours in the bus so luckily movies and other games were here to help us to fight against boredom. Then we arrived at…(drum roll)…Yosemite!!! The National Park is so beautiful that it should be considered as one of the 7 Wonder. The part we visited was a valley full of sequoia, maples and other kind of trees. It was also surrounded by gigantic cliffs. There was on one of the cliff a long and transparent waterfall, one of the longest in the world. We went there and take some pictures after a nice picnic. After that we walked to a river in which we could swim. The water was a little… really really really cold but exchange students are brave so I am proud to say that almost everybody put his\her feet in the water. But luckily the sun was here to warm us up. Some of us saw Bambi´s mom in the forest also. Finally we came back to the bus, drove to  a “Home Town Buffet¨, had dinner and went to the hotel. We spent some times in the swimming pool, had the meeting, did “chupetta” and everybody went to bed.

-Written by Melanie from France