Whatever you do, when the homesickness sets in — just remember to eat peanut butter.

That’s some of the advice Reed High School graduate Sarah Wilson received while preparing to embark on a year-long trip to Brazil as a Rotary International Youth Exchange Student.

Selected by the Truckee Meadows Rotary Youth Exchange Committee last year along with four other area youths, Wilson’s trip is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Sparks. Last week, she boarded a plane bound for Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Brazil, a city of over 350,000 people.

“I’ve heard from other Brazilians that it’s a metropolitan center like Reno, and then surrounded by rural areas like Fallon,” said Sarah, the second of three daughters of Jamie and Dennis Wilson. “So it’s like Reno meets Fallon.”

Except, Brazil will surely be unlike anything Sarah has experienced so far.

The 18-year-old homecoming queen, who loves acting and anatomy, said she’s traveled as far as the East Coast on a school trip but has never ventured so many miles from home. In Brazil, she will live with three different host families, explore the Amazon Forest, and witness the spectacular Iguazu Waterfalls.

“I’ve never left the country so that’s why I’m like, let me free! I want to travel!” she said, throwing her arms in the air.

During the year, she’ll repeat her senior year of high school, and while traveling she’ll wear the classic navy blazer covered with pins worn by American Rotary exchange students. She’ll add more pins with each place she visits and exchange pins with other students she meets.

In her suitcases she carries — in addition to clothes and her favorite brand of peanut butter — cans of Campbell soup, boxes of fudge brownie mix, and jars of grape jelly — all items she plans to share with her new host families as examples of American fare.

That idea came from Sarah’s mother, who traveled to Denmark as a Rotary Youth Exchange student in 1979. Sarah’s mother always regretted having to tell the Danish families she stayed with that she couldn’t share American foods with them because she didn’t know how to cook.

“I was clueless,” Jamie Wilson said. “I couldn’t do anything for them.”

Luckily, her failure as a chef was one of the few bad memories Wilson brought home, and her colorful stories inspired Sarah to follow in her footsteps.

“She still talks about it,” Sarah said of her mother’s year abroad. “She just talks about how much fun she had, (and) she still stays in contact with some of her (Danish) friends.”

So what is Sarah looking forward to the most?

“To be honest, the boys!” she said. “All the girls, I talk to say the Brazilian boys are so hot, and they’re not shy like American boys,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Yes!’”

Still, Brazil was not the first country Sarah would have picked to visit.

With no knowledge of Portuguese and four years of French under her belt, Sarah pined to go to France, but later found out their Rotary clubs don’t accept students over 16 years of age. Brazil, Chile, and Argentina were among her remaining choices, and after selecting Chile, she was assigned her second choice, Brazil.

“It never even occurred to me,” she said of the country, though she admits that after meeting some of the female Brazilian exchange students, she hopes some of their habits rub off on her. “They’re really nice, and they’re very fashion conscious. They’re always dressed to a tee. I think that’s way cool.”

What worries her about the trip are the same thoughts that plague any student attending a new school for the first time.

“Am I going to fit in? Am I going to be accepted?” she asked. “All those little things just sit in the back of my mind and torment you.”

The thought of missing some big event at home, like the Waterfall Fire in Carson that consumed her grandmother’s home, also scares her.

“It would have probably ruined my exchange had I been there and that happened,” she said. “I’m glad I was here for it.”

When she returns to Sparks in the summer of 2005, she’ll be ready to attend the University of Nevada, Reno with a Millennium Scholarship and plans to study languages. She plans someday she’ll tell her own children about her exciting year abroad, and hasn’t given up on her dream of visiting France.

“I’m going to go to Europe someday,” she said. “I know that I’ll get there eventually.”