This is my blog where I will be posting about my year abroad in Brazil. Thanks to the generous Boren scholarship I was awarded by the National Security Education Program, I am able to take an extra year of college to study Portuguese at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and I will be there from July 2013 to July 2014.
The Boren scholarship is funded by the federal government and is intended for study of critical languages in non-traditional study abroad destinations. Basically, any country outside of Western Europe and the anglophone world is an acceptable destination, and every study abroad program must be coupled with intensive language study. I recently returned from Washington D.C. for the Boren scholarship convocation and orientation where I learned more about the service requirement that is part of the scholarship and I got to meet many other scholarship recipients who were from all over the country. I had a wonderful time chatting with Boren alumni and other language nerds like me :) There were just five of us going to Brazil, as the most scholarship recipients were headed to China, Russia, and Arabic-speaking countries such as Egypt and Jordan.
Me in D.C. after visiting the offices of Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Anna Eshoo.
I leave to Rio a week from today. July will be a busy month as I get settled into Rio while I do an intensive language program at PUC before actual classes start there in August. Also, the pope is coming for World Youth Day at the end of the month! I can't wait to get there.
Tchau for now!
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