The rest of Bollinger's stay in Brazil as a Rotary Youth Exchange student has not been quite so exotic, but it has been enjoyable. He is the son of Gary and Valerie Bollinger of Northfield.

Bollinger's regular home is in Florianópolis, a large city about 500 miles south of Rio de Janeiro. It is located in part on the large island of Santa Catarina, a place that Bollinger describes as being incredibly beautiful, a mixture of small mountains and many beaches -- more than 40 of them.

One thing that has impressed Bollinger is Brazil's diversity. Even though the father of each of his two host families is a professor of anthropology, the situations have been very different. His first family lived in the city, but not on the island; they had a cottage on one of the island's beaches. He now lives with his new family in a much simpler way on the island away from the city.

The area around Florianópolis does not look like the Amazon forest most people picture when they think of Brazil. It is in the most urbanized and industrialized part of the country. The standard of living is high, though so is poverty. This part of Brazil shows evidence of various waves of European immigration: German, Italian, Polish, and even Portuguese-who speak the state's official language differently from the natives. The weather in Southern Brazil is also different from what one might expect. Although it does gets very warm, it was cool when Bollinger arrived last fall.

Brazil's diversity was brought home to Bollinger when he visited an isolated community of kafuzos, a people who descend from both slaves and native Indians. There, at the home of three elderly sisters, a home of wooden planks and a dirt floors, Bollinger said he had possibly the best meal of his life, a mixture of sweet potatoes, corn, lettuce, chicken, and palmita (something like cornbread) on the normal Brazilian base of beans and rice. Bollinger likes Brazilian food a lot, from simple meals like that to fresh seafood.

Although Bollinger does not find his high school very challenging, through his host fathers he has built up connections at local universities. These have been successful because he has had time to study Portuguese. He is now "really comfortable" with it. He reads many books in the language and is helped by listening to Brazilian music.

He has made friends, not only with other exchange students but with Brazilians from his high school. He has joined a rowing club and has taken up a uniquely Brazilian sport, capoeira. This is a mix of musical dance and martial arts, originally brought to Brazil by slaves from Angola as a way of fighting. Different groups have different emphases. Some are more martial, others more dance-like and acrobatic.

Bollinger has also traveled to a place other Northfield Rotary Youth Exchange students have been: the spectacular falls of Iguazzu, located where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet. He looks forward to a trip up the Amazon soon. In July Bollinger will return home, and this fall he will attend Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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