The complete story.
I studied abroad my junior year of college in the Dominican Republic and Argentina, and fell in love with living abroad.
While I was in Argentina, I got really irritated by Argentine culture and actually became fascinated by Brazilian culture, and made friends with Brazilians and went to a lot of Brazilian places in Buenos Aires, and took a Portuguese class.
Then after my semester ended in Argentina, I traveled for 2 weeks in Brazil with friends, to Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Salvador. I fell in love with the country -- and a Brazilian.
After that, I went back to the US to finish by senior year of college and started a long-distance relationship with my now boyfriend. I visited him twice and we traveled around Rio to its many beautiful beaches and coastal cities.
During my senior year, I decided I wanted to go back abroad, and chose to shoot for Brazil. I applied to two fellowships to create a community service project, and poured my energy into designing a dance program in Rio's largest favela (slum), Rocinha, where I had an American contact working at an NGO. I made it to the final round of both, but was then eliminated, I believe because they deemed it too dangerous a setting and me not experienced enough to start my own program. I was devastated, but didn't give up.
I decided to go anyway, so I took a TEFL course so that I could teach English and be able to make a (small) living while in Brazil, and searched for NGOs to volunteer at to do what I had initially wanted to do.
So a month after I graduated, I came down to Rio, moved in, started teaching English, and volunteering as a ballet teacher. Since then, I moved on to a number of different endeavors, and continued to teach ballet. I moved back to New York in May 2009.
The rest is history!
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