life changing/not for the faint of heart

I grew up in ultra-rural northern New York state, and had never lived in a city in my life. The obvious choice was Fortaleza, a dangerous city of 3 million people in northeastern brazil... yeah, most people wouldn't say that's the obvious one, and to be completely honest it was a HARD semester in a lot of ways. But that's what i needed, because i sure grew a lot in those four months. This program, headed by the wonderful, thoughtful, kind, friendly, loving, forgetful, scatterbrained, passionate, openminded, brilliant Bill Calhoun, is kind of a wild one. please don't sign up for this thing if you aren't adventurous. you'll get the most out of it if you are committed to trying, trying, trying to learn portuguese, and starting up as many conversations as you can with as many brazilians as you can. There are random field trips that will tire you out socially, physically, emotionally -- but just think about how likely you are to get to experience such things in a foreign country again, and you'll realize that you're getting to do things no tourist would ever DREAM of doing -- living on a capoeira commune, spending four days on an MST settlement, casual rock-climbing in the serra with hippies, talking about racism with brilliant proud black brazilian university students, meeting government officials involved in land use and zoning for the city... like, those are a few of the things i found myself doing. Oh, touring the city of Salvador with a famous afro-brazilian activist and poet. Getting to take a class in capoeira an african philosophy with a literally world-famous capoeira mestre. I'm getting ahead of myself tho: the big thing with this program is that it's very very weird and different from the way you're probably used to living. Transportation around the city is tough; you will be sweating on buses a TON and you can't stay out late at night (I know; I was mugged) and you need to watch out for your friends at all times cause it's really not the safest place in the world. Your host parents are probably gonna try and micromanage your life because of this. host family experiences vary; mine was pretty great because she loved to talk to me. Try and talk to them as much as you can and remember to keep your MIND AND HEART OPEN because homestays are one of the main components of this program in my opinion. It's not an academic program, really; let's get that straight right now. It's about shifting your worldview. Learning to see this existence in another way, and noticing that people see it way differently from you a lot of the time. one of the biggest ways you'll do that is getting to know your hosts. my host mom and i ended up loving each other even though we REALLY disagree politically about a lot of things. also this is a great program if you're an INDEPENDENT guy or gal, because you will have time to roam and see the city and observe and learn and get to know folks and a LOT of the richness of this program is up to you.