Bem-vindo To Brazil

February 05, 2012

Two days until take off!

So time has completely flown by. Tuesday morning at 6am I will be leaving my comfy home in Medina, OH and heading for Miami. Wednesday is the gateway orientation and then Thursday at 6pm I'll be leaving for Sao Paulo, Brazil! I have almost finished packing. It's really hard to plan for a year but so far so good. I have said goodbye to so many people and it makes me sad to have to leave them all behind but I'm excited to make new friends and meet my host family. I'm still curious about Brazilian school. I still worry about fitting in even though I have been told over and over not to worry about that. I'm also worried about speaking Portuguese all the time. I hope I catch on fast to the language but there might be a lot of crazy motions in hopes of getting what I mean across in the beginning of my time in Brazil. Thanks for reading.

Cori

January 20, 2012

So much to do, so little time...

So 18 days left before I leave. It's pretty scary! I finally applied for my visa today. I'll receive it on the First of February. Plus I still have to pack and say good bye to everyone and go to Arizona and Pittsburgh and wow life is busy. Packing will be interesting. I'm very bad at time management when it comes down to stuff such as this and not very good and making clothes fit nice and neat into a small suitcase. Hopefully my mom will be able to assist me so there won't be a mental breakdown. Other than that I have also had my predeparture orientation tonight. I just made it back in time to get the papers finished and get into the call. I learned a lot and met other people going abroad soon to a few other countries. It was cool to see how other people thought of their exchange time and what theirs hopes and worries were as well. I have been listening to my Portuguese CDs a lot lately in hopes that it will prepare me enough to get basic information across until I learn more words and phrases. School will probably be the most different part. School in many other countries is very different than school in the United States and I'm excited to compare and contrast the two. This is going to be an interesting experience and I'm going to take it full stride.

Cori