Since I was a little girl I have always loved to travel, the excitement of a new place and new culture always excited me. I have always had a connection with my culture and passion for the language of Portuguese.  I realized this at a very young age. Till this day I remember looking at my dad while we were watching Brazilian novellas and telling him that with or without him I was going to end up in Brazil at some point in my life. Even though I didn’t speak it well, I always tried. It is honestly an unexplainable feeling because I didn’t know why I was so interested, but simply being able to communicate with other people in a different language and create a bond, made me feel as if I was a part of another group. For example, the point of realization for me was when I went to the director of the Portuguese department Luis Amaral, to speak about taking another Portuguese class since the class I was in was too easy. After the conversation with him, I felt relieved and excited to see where this would take me. The following semester I took two Portuguese classes, a morphology course and junior year writing course in Portuguese, where we learned more about the culture. Never in my life did I enjoy a class as much as I did these, not only did I have an interest, but I was more invested and motivated to do my work. I was also able to relate what I was learning back to my own culture and present a project on the similarities and differences. It was simply fascinating to me to realize how similar they are. Continue reading →