Cassidy Laffey, Exploration of Energy and Electrification: Brazil Summer 2024
While being abroad in Brazil, I faced a plethora of challenges I had not even
considered facing before going on the trip. I had never flown by myself before this trip and I unfortunately missed my connecting flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Porto Allegre, Brazil. The trip had not even officially begun, and I already faced a new challenge I did not feel equipped to handle. Luckily for me, there was a group of four of us that were all going on the trip that stuck together, which helped alleviate a lot of my anxiety. It was also a good way to get to know everyone early on. We were able to talk to a Delta employee that spoke English, and he got us a new flight for later that day. I quickly learned how challenging it would be to navigate in Brazil without being able to speak Portuguese, and it was at that moment I downloaded Google Translate. To future students that may face this challenge, I have one piece of advice: do not book flights with Expedia. This is because Delta would not have been able to easily book me a new flight free of charge if we did not book with them directly, and this was enough of a challenge without that level of added difficulty.
Once we finally made it to our hotel, a group of us decided to go to the grocery store to get snacks, and that offered an array of new challenges. In Brazil when you check out somewhere, they will ask for your government officiated number, similar to an American’s Social Security number. Not being from Brazil made this difficult because not only did I not have the number they were asking me for, but I could not understand what they were even asking me for. I was confused at the checkout and I could sense the employee was getting frustrated with me which began to make me feel overwhelmed. Luckily, one of the students I was with used google translate and asked the employee to write down what she was looking for into the phone. The cashier wrote it in Portuguese and Google Translate showed us in English what she was asking. We told her we did not have that number to give her and she had to call her manager over. The manager spoke some English and asked us for our passport numbers. The passport number was a substitute we were able to give them and buy the groceries, so we made sure to have that ready next time we went to the store. This was a challenge we had to navigate using Google Translate, and once it happened once we knew we needed our passport numbers anytime we wanted to buy something. I would recommend that a student traveling abroad has a scanned copy of their passport on their phone so they are able to get that number easily if they need it
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