An Experience of a Lifetime

On Saturday, last week, I was watching a football game with some friends. While watching the game, something made me remember the times I used to watch soccer games with my exchange parents. My brother shouting and jumping as his team scored a goal and my father clapping in a more relaxed manner. That get-together brought back all the memories as an exchange student in Brazil.

My mom always encouraged me to learn different activities but I was never interested in learning new things. She encouraged me to learn the dance and music of St. Vincent, in which I was never interested. My dad, he wanted me to see the world and understand that there were different ways to life, different to those in which I was brought up under. He wanted me to understand that cultures could be very different from the place to place. Some practices could seem outrageous to me, while others have me wishing I were born in that culture. I think all these experiences add up to make you a more complete person. They thought that sending me to Brazil was a good opportunity, one that could push me out of the hardened Brooklyn lifestyle that I loved so much. The hype of seeing a new country along with pictures of Brazil had me eager about the entire move.

This experience was going to affect me not for the year that I spent in Brazil, but to change me as a person. My dad surprisingly didn't change his mind as he usually did and I'll always be grateful to him for allowing me to go. The thing that excited me the

most about the entire exchange program was to travel to another part of the world. However, my excitement had switched to misery as soon as the plane reached the airport in Brazil. As usual I had taken things for granted and didn't take the trouble of learning Portuguese before I left home. I had expected to hear a lot of Portuguese but after spending a few minutes at the airport, I realized that people there didn't speak English at all. All I wanted was to catch the first flight