Today was a day filled with learning. While initially I was not excited to be sitting in a classroom for most of the day, a valuable theme emerged from these classes - the importance of keeping an open mind. We started our day with Portuguese lessons, which I had not particularly enjoyed doing over the course of this last semester. I was not excited to start my day in this way, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was having fun in class. We learned useful words like numbers and months, and this gave me some more motivation to keep learning and attempting to speak Portuguese. After Portuguese lessons, we had a class on sustainability, a topic that did not interest me at all. However, the professor talked about how a variety of careers can contribute to sustainability, and it caught my attention that chemistry and physics were part of that list, as I am interested in those subjects. This experience taught me that not everything is how it seems, and that I need to be more willing to give things a try before I form my opinions about them.

We took a class on Brazilian history after lunch, which I had also assumed would be boring. To my surprise, the history of Brazil was fascinating, and I thought it was a nice change of pace from the history of the United States that we spend years learning about in school. This was again showing me that I should be willing to give more things a chance and be slower to judge. Our last class of the day was odontology, which I thought was kind of random when I saw it on the schedule. I was again proven wrong in my mindset once this class began, as it was really interesting to hear about how dental schooling and dentistry in general work differently in Brazil compared to the United States. A class I had assumed to be boring had actually really intrigued me due to the cultural differences I was previously unaware of.

Staying on theme, my host mom served us pastel for dinner, which I had never tried before. I am usually a pretty picky eater, so I do not often jump at the opportunity to try new foods. I found that I really like pastel, both with meat and just cheese, and it was nice to again be able to take part in a piece of Brazilian culture.

Overall, today continually showed me reasons to approach everything with an open mind. Forming judgements about things before trying them will only set you back, and it could prevent you from discovering something you really enjoy, like pastel, or learning something interesting and unique, like how the monarch of Portugal’s son was actually the person who declared Brazil’s independence. From what I expected to be a boring day of classes, I discovered that there is much more to be explored in life than what we know in the United States, and keeping an open mind will allow us to accomplish this.