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Chegando na Cidade Maravilhosa

Well, coisas aconteceram (things happen). While I was supposed to post this a week ago, I was attending a conference in D.C., and things got away from me. But here I am in a café in Rio de Janeiro getting excited to speak Portuguese in my day-to-day interactions and to continue reading, writing, and listening in Portuguese. While this is my second immersion program in Portuguese, it is my first time in Brazil. In reality, it is also my first time outside the country in over 10 years. As such, this trip and preparing for it was quite the endeavor. But landing in Rio after a 20-hour flight was—for lack of a better word, enervating. Seeing o Pão de açúcar and Urca as I landed and Corcovado in the distance was one of the most exciting moments so far.

            Being here is a bit of a revelation in multiple ways. In one regard while this is my first time in Brazil, it will also be my first time living in a major city for an extended period. This has already been a bit of a learning curve. For most of my life, I have lived in Texas and to the extent I’ve lived outside of Texas, it was primarily for language study up in Middlebury where I first learned Portuguese, Villanova where I got my MA in history, or—currently-notre dame. As such, none of my experiences have prepared me for living abroad. As such I am very aware of both where my vision is limited and where I may be prone to make universalistic claims. As such, I hope to learn both more about myself, my resilience, and how I Interact in the world in a vastly different environment, while striving to understand the cultural differences between myself and Cariocas—or residents of Rio de Janeiro.

Living in Rio—the former capital of Brazil will prepare me well for my future academic work and I am excited to engage with its history,  sights, sounds, archives, and jeito while I live here.

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Critical Incident in Leipzig – Blog #2

Hey everyone,

After just a few weeks in Germany, I have experienced a lot of culture shocks in many facets of life. School is different, expectations are different, and even public transportation is different. All of these could be their own critical incident blog, but I believe that the age difference in both my school and the University near me was a big critical incident. I am in class with people aged 16-38. In America, I haven’t been in a class with someone double my age. However, according to my German roommate, it is common for people to study at the University at any age because there doesn’t exist a “educational track” like there is in America.

When I learned how old the people were studying with me at the language school, I was first very curious as to why there were here and then tried to think of reasons why they would be in this school at such a “late” age. However, I failed to realize that this school taught people coming from other countries to live here. These people need to be at a C1-C2 level in order to study at a German University or work in a certain job. They are people trying to advance their lives like myself, just with a different background, different choices, and different goals. After learning about them and being more acceptant and understanding of their situations, I became more comfortable around them and learned to learn with them as I would my peers at Notre Dame.

I think my implicit understanding of America’s educational system created what would be the shock about age and education here. Although I don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone outside their twenties getting a degree, it seems different to me because of where I grew up. If I had to use a metaphor for this situation, it would be like a camera lens looking at a society. I’m looking through an American lens, taking a picture of a German/European society. Obviously, the picture will turn out differently because they’re two different cultures. However, I think removing the camera lens and looking at it without the camera creates new understanding and the formation of a new lens. Overall, I believe this new camera lens will show growth and development as my trip goes on.

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Pre-Departure Expectations to Amman! -June 2nd, 2023

As I begin to pack and create a check-list for my luggage for this upcoming summer abroad in one week, I also am trying to finalize my expectations for the city of Amman. I am eternally grateful for this opportunity, but as for any other trip that I take alone I am extremely nervous of what to expect. I have heard many great things about the nation of Jordan and the Jordanian people as a whole from family friends and from others who have made the trip in the past. I have begun to check often the weather and the news in Jordan in order to prepare myself for the ultimate culture shock that will occur once I arrive there. I have reached out to both a colleague of my father’s and a friend of mine from school that lives in Amman. Both have told me that I have nothing to worry about and that I am sure to love my journey. 

Through this summer, I hope to truly learn and broaden my perspective of Arab culture. I wish to be exposed to all that Jordan has to offer and to let it impact myself in order to allow me to develop my own beliefs further. Learning about languages and cultures has always been something that I find very important in my life and I wish to pursue Arabic to my full potential. Coming from America, “the melting pot of cultures,” it becomes difficult to truly develop a rounded perspective about any one particular culture. Of the cultures we are exposed to, we only get to experience bits and pieces of many different parts of the world, but never truly are able to understand fully what it is like to be a Jordanian for example. I hope to be able to come closer to answering this question in the future. 

I am glad that I am coming from a climate akin to that of Jordan which in all honesty is less hospitable than the hills that Amman is located in because I believe that my own upbringing allows me to understand that extremes are not reality. Some of the preconceived notions that I have of Jordan or the city of Amman are obviously not going to be true and I am grateful that I will get to destroy these notions. I hope that this trip to Amman will allow me to become more comfortable traveling to new places and enhance my Arabic skills to propel me to more opportunities like this in my academic journey and in my future career.

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Blog Post #3 – Reconciling New Perspectives

Before this blog post I interviewed the man who was leading our a wildlife tour. When I first asked him about stereotypes he holds about Americans, he struggled to answer. He told me it’s important to distinguish between North Americans/US Americans/inhabitants of all the Americas. We are all Americans. But the real reason he struggled is because he thought we are all just people. He doesn’t like to have a preconception of someone based on where they’re from. When I dug more, and asked him for three words that come to mind, regarding US Americans, he told me missiles, colonizing, and business.

The stereotypes that he quickly identified were disheartening but not surprising. These words represent parts of America’s identity that I dissociate with. However, I can’t help but feel some trace of culpability just because I am part of this group called “US Americans.”

Looking forward (and also a bit backward), a lot of my motivation from my career comes sentiments like Fernando’s; other encounters in conversation or international perspectives on US history from college classes. This is how the world see us. If I choose to pursue the path of foreign service, that will be a primary goal: to right some of the wrongs the US has committed towards other countries and to spark new narratives of power, new narratives of peace.