BETHEL — “I’m proud to be an American” said Agus Silveira-Galban in a recent interview. “The U.S. embraces me and I embrace the U.S.” Silveira-Galban, who became a U.S. citizen in 2009, has been sponsored by the Bethel Rotary Club and selected by Rotary District 7780 to be in the 2011-2012 Group Study Exchange program to Hamburg, Germany.

Group Study Exchange is a Rotary Foundation program designed to promote peace and understanding by giving young professionals the chance to spend a month in another country experiencing the culture, learning how their profession is performed in another place and living with Rotarians.

Silveira-Galban, who is now the interactive marketing manager for Sunday River Ski Resort, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the age of 18 she became a nun but after nine years, she left the convent to start a new life.

She came to the United States to work at Sunday River Ski Resort and there met her future husband, Jay Boschetti of Steam Mill Antiques. She graduated from college with a technological degree, which led to her profession where she does online marketing, designs and develops websites and is involved in E-commerce and social media for Sunday River.

Silveira-Galban speaks several languages, German being one of them. As a GSE team member, one of the many experiences she looks forward to is meeting and interacting with people in her profession who live in another country. Because she is the only one in her field at Sunday River Ski Resort, the experience will give her the opportunity to communicate with others in her profession.

The team leaves for Hamburg, Germany, at the end of May. Rotarian Lawrence Furbish from the Rotary Club of Sanford-Springvale is the team leader. Other team members are non-Rotarians who live and work in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Silveira-Galban is the first Bethel non-Rotarian GSE team member since 1977 when Stanley Howe, now associate director, Bethel Historical Society spent a month in France represented the club.