My name is Karen, I live in Brasilia that is the capital of Brazil.

I'm studying at Merrimack State High School at the Gold Coast. I never thought to do an exchange and one day I just woke up and I said "Mum, I think i'm going to to do an exchange" and she said "let's go to the agency!"

So me and my mum, we were going to my agency to decide where I was supposed to go, and in the middle of the road she stopped the car and said "you have to go to Australia!".

I said "mum, go, we're in the middle of the street!", she said "no, I'm feeling you have to go to Australia you have this great lifestyle and everything like that" and when I got there I saw a Surfer's Paradise sign in a magazine or something like that and I said "oh my god, that's it, the Gold Coast - I have to go there!".

Making friends at Merrimack State High School at the beginning was a little bit hard because everyone is like shy and you are different from everyone, but at the end it was so nice, I got to know so many people.

The most Aussie experience that I enjoyed the most was probably the barbecues it was awesome because we get to know how they cook because it's so different. 

At the beach they have the the place that you do barbies with your friends there it's so nice.

I bought a ukulele like a little instrument like yeah and me and my friends we just fall in love with the ukulele so everyone bought one and we started to like learn together so today we go to the beach with all the ukuleles together and like we play together and we sing along it's so nice.

I enjoyed the most about my home stay was our relationship, because she don't treat me as a exchange student she treat me as a family, so me and the dogs like we are so important to her and our relationship is like so funny because she we sat down at the dinner and we talked a lot and she teach me a lot of stuff about life and it's so funny because we are so different but at the same time we are so similar because we are happy and everything like that.

When i go back to Brazil i want to study law and become a judge.

When you live in another country you grow as a person you change a lot because you give values about other things in life, family, friends, everything because you change a lot.