MATTAWA – Wahluke High School foreign exchange student Joao Oliveira of Brazil considers Mattawa “the middle of nowhere,” and he is just fine with that.

“I knew I wouldn't be in a place like New York,” he said recently.

Oliveira hails from Piracicaba, a city larger than Tri-Cities, in the state of Sao Paulo.

“I knew Mattawa would be small, maybe not this small, but small,” he said.

In Brazil it took Oliveira an hour to walk downtown. Here it takes two minutes.

Oliveira arrived in Mattawa after school started this fall. One of his first experiences was a football game to which he was taken by his host sister.

“I loved the school spirit. We don't have that back home,” he said, explaining that, in Brazil, youngsters go to school, study and go home.

Not only did Oliveira like football. He wanted to be a part of it and joined the C squad, which is not as rough as varsity – supposedly.

“On my first hit in a game, I was getting ready to tackle a guy, and I got him from the blind side, and I flipped. I didn't see that one coming,” he said.

Oliveira liked the physicality and went back for more, finishing the season.

Later, Oliveira thought, if football was fun, then wrestling surely would be. He turned out for that sport too. The two-hour daily workouts were tough, but he survived – for a while.

“I was competing with three guys for the 145-pound spot on the varsity,” Oliveira recalled. “In my first match, the other guy threw me and I landed wrong on my elbow and injured my shoulder. Oh it hurt. My father forbade me to continue wrestling. So now I'm the manager.”

Oliveira spent the first wrestling meet, an invitational tournament, mostly drinking coffee. He walked to a nearby shop repeatedly and downed seven containers.

“I have a coffee problem,” he said. “I drink coffee non-stop.”

Culturally, that's not bad in Brazil. Everybody drinks coffee. As a matter of fact, coffee here leaves something to be desired.

“It's too much water,” Oliveira said.

Oliveira's desire to experience the U.S. was born mostly of American movies he's seen. They made life in America seem like a lot of fun.

“I wanted to have pancakes for breakfast,” he said. “In every movie about high school, the kids have pancakes for breakfast. And they have American barbecues.”

Oliveira's breakfast back home is coffee. Lunch and dinner involve meat – usually beef – rice, beans and salad.

“Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to see what it was like to live away from home,” he said.

Oliveira is in 11th grade. He's taking physics, shop, PE, contemporary literature, algebra II and Washington State History.

“Shop is awesome,” he said. “Back home you have to go to a technical school for that.”

Oliveira is going over old ground in some of his classes, and he's knocking down A and B grades. Back home he's a D and C student at the private school Liceu.

“If you can, you go to a private school. That's where you learn,” he said.

Oliveira made one other trip to the U.S., last year. He studied English for two months at Approach USA in Boston.

Boston is in Oliveira's future plans. He hopes to attend Boston University and study toward a career in medicine. His father is an optometrist, and his mother is a nurse.

One thing Oliveira especially likes about Wahluke is the style of teaching. It's not like the lectures back home that put him to sleep.

“Here the teacher uses the whole room, moving around and keeping your attention,” he said. “They use the board, electronic media and drama. You can be George Washington.”

“The way they explain it is awesome,” he added.