Apresentando-me: A student from Brazil.

by Paulina Valamiel Lopes

Oi! I am an exchange student from Brazil that arrived in America on August 6, to spend the school year at Lake Hamilton High School in Pearcy, AR. As any person that comes from a different culture to another, many things impressed me. Before I came to America, I already had a small impression about the things that are at Americans school, in families and the people, but knowing about a culture and then live this culture, are really different things. I would never imagine that I would be so confused by changing classrooms, using a locker, using a password to buy a lunch, and a lot of other things.

As I already said, I am an exchange student from Brazil, and I will let you know a little bit about my country: Our language is Portuguese, and although many people don’t know about the existence of this language, Portuguese is the official language in seven countries and the eighth most spoken language in the world. Brazil also has the third largest capital, Sao Paulo, which has 11,037,593 inhabitants and the worst traffic in the world (haha, trust me). We also have really beautiful beaches, and one of the new wonders of the world: The Corcovado, with the huge statue of Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer), located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Our houses are kind of different.  All of our houses are made out of concrete, where as in America many houses are made of brick or siding.  Also, our floors are made of wood or tile, never carpet like American houses. On the topic of food, we also have McDonald’s, Subway, but they are not as common as they are here. Our principal meal is lunch, and we eat lots of fruit, salads, and rice and beans almost everyday. One curiosity that I had when I arrived here, my first lunch was pizza, and we never ate things like that for lunch, just dinner; but anyway, when we eat pizza, we use forks, not hands, so it was a little bit weird to use my hands to eat this, but now it doesn’t sound so strange anymore. It is not common for me to eat fast food almost everyday.

Brazil also has the major tropical forest of the world: Amazonia, at the North of the country. At the south (the coldest part), the population is more composed of Germans and Italians. It is good to remember that Brazil is a tropical country, and our coldest winter is around 35F, so it doesn’t seem so cold for Americans.

            Many things in America didn’t reach my expectations. For instance, the state of Arkansas with nothing to do and places so far one another and a very small mall.  But, Lake Hamilton School really surprised me! I never imagined a school so big, with many different classes from which to choose, or the people and their styles. My school in Brazil is not this big, it’s almost the size of this cafeteria, and just that. There are some big schools in Brazil, but only the private ones, and even being private, it doesn’t have the infrastructure that Lake Hamilton has. For me, English is kind of hard, but before I got here, I already had a notion of this language, because since the first grade, we have studied English in Brazil. I would never imagine classes like Journalism, German, Drama, Psychology, and Economics; because these are classes that we Brazilians just have in college. For me, Math here is very easy, because we have the help of calculators, and at schools in Brazil, we have to learn to calculate everything ourselves. At Brazilian schools, we just have four hours of school per day, but it seems more tiring because we never get out of the classroom, the teachers move, not us. But over all, we study more about the world, countries, cultural movements, and social groups; and I miss that here, because most of the things here are just about America, and some people don’t have open minds to know about other cultures.

            I already have some friends that I am sure I will miss when I go back to Brazil, but I would love to have people here visit my country. It will be great to see some of you all at the World Cup and/or Olympics, or even for a visit. Brazil is a really beautiful country and I am sure that you all would love it.