Alexandra Mejia of San Salvador, El Salvador was the guest speaker at the Bainbridge Rotary Club meeting this week.
Miss Mejia is the Georgia Rotary Student Program (GRSP) student for 2013 and came to the club as guest of Bainbridge host family Woody and Cile Warr, who share Alexandra with the host family from the Camilla Rotary Club.
She came to the United States in July and attends Valdosta State University, where she is a freshman.
She began with the greeting,  “Hello, y’all,” in perfect English, a phrase she at first thought odd, but now uses daily.
Her presentation included photos of her family, her school and her friends back home. She also explained a bit about her schooling, her culture, and especially about her love of and participation in sports.
Describing herself as a “sports girl” she said her older brother, who is now 24, was an athlete and she would look at him and think, ”I want to do that.” She took up volleyball her senior year of high school and her team ended the year ranked number 4 out of 20 teams. Her real sport, though, is track and field, at which she has excelled, winning several championships.
She said it was fun to do 5K runs around the volcano that is near her school.
Her principal and Spanish teacher were both American, which may partially explain her excellent command of the English language.
She was very active in school, serving as president and secretary of several organizations and also took on several charitable activities, especially with an orphanage called Hogar Guicola.
After recruiting five volunteers from the audience, she began giving them a small Spanish lesson, asking each person to repeat a word and finally a whole sentence, which translated to, “The red cars run really fast.”