Never Expect What You Have Been Expecting

With the help of the AFS BP Global Citizens Scholarship, I was able to spend an entire year in the exciting and hot country of Brazil! Like many think before arriving in Brazil, I believed I would walk the boastful streets of Rio everyday, see the giant Amazon Rainforst, catch a parahna or two, and make friends along the way. Well, after landing in my designated state of Rio Grande do Norte my thoughts immediately changed. Brazil was at the peak of its dry season when I arrived and along the two hour drive to my host families house nothing but dessert and rocks was all the scenery I was greeted with. I remember when I first met my host family; they met me at the door with balloons and hugs. She invited me and my abroad councilor inside and gave us baloney on white bread. I couldn’t eat it! Everything smelled awedul but I did not want to be rude on my first day so I forced myself to eat it calmly. From that first day on I continued to meet different kinds of issues. Some of those issues included, not having anyone to help me learn the local language, being the only AFS student during orientations that had never traveled the world before, making friends, and having financial issues. Many times I had to learn how to adapt on my own because I had no one who could understand me. I wanted to shut myself in my room so many times while I was in Brazil. Things got so bad at my host families house between me and my host sister that I decided to change families. From this day I do beleive that was the best decision I had made that entire year. Better things began to happen to me; my new host family were much easier to communicate with, I joined a gym for an extracurricular activity, and I was able to take a trip to Rio de Janeiro for a week! I enjoyed my trip to Rio so much that I plan to return with my sister so I can give her the same experience there that I had. The plans I had made before arriving in Brazil did not go at all like I had imagined. The cultural adjustment was not easy and neither was the language barrier. However,the trip gave me many life lessons that I learned discovering things in my own. Probably, my biggest regret was not becoming fully fluent in Portuguese yet I am still very happy with myself for learning more than the basics of the language. I to this day recommend other student in high school and in college to take the oppurtunity to go abroad. I learned that it does change your life and that everyone should have that experience of a lifetime.