Cassidy Laffey, Exploration of Energy and Electrification: Brazil Summer 2024
Everyone in Brazil that I met was super friendly and I found it very easy to make friends with them. One of the first nights, the group of Pitt students went to a little restaurant within walking distance from the hotel, and there was a group similar in size already there. This restaurant had music playing and everyone was dancing, and we went up to the group and started to dance with them. A few members of my group spoke Spanish (which Brazilians can pretty much understand) and one of the students with us spoke Portuguese. This was extremely helpful in making friends because we were able to talk to them without Google Translate. We soon learned that the group was from the University across the street, Unisinos, which we would be doing work with later in the week. Two of the girls were able to speak English and they all seemed really excited to talk to us. We all sang and danced together to both Brazilian and American music. They were really big fans of Lady Gaga and it was fun when we all could sing the songs together. They taught us to do some common Brazilian dances and it was such a blast. When it was time to leave for the night, I got the Instagram of a lot of the people there so we could keep in touch.
We had the opportunity to volunteer at Unisinos later in the week due to families getting displaced because of flooding. We were organizing clothes and it was challenging to understand what the supervisor wanted us to do, but luckily we had our wonderful tour guide/translator, Lorenna, at this point and she was able to translate for us. The people seemed really appreciative that we were there and it was heartwarming to see everyone stepping up to help. Even though I could not speak with a lot of the volunteers on my own, I still felt connected to them through the service work we were doing together. A girl asked me a question in Portuguese so I got out Google Translate to let her know that I couldn’t understand her, and instead of just nodding her head and moving on, she typed her question into Google Translate. Her and I spent some time passing my
phone back and forth, getting to know each other. She was a business student at Unisinos and we exchanged Instagram as well.
Everyone I met was super welcoming and patient with me while I typed away on Google Translate. That app was truly a life-saver and very cool to use. I am really grateful for that technology because without it I would not have been able to communicate with anyone without the translator. It was interesting telling them I am from the United States rather than Pennsylvania or Pittsburgh. It made me realize how much bigger the world is than just my hometown
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