First Impressions

Oí!
Today was my first day in Rio de Janeiro.  After 15 hours between two flights from New York to Rio I finally made it!  And can I ever be able to put into words how happy I am?  It just so happened that five other people from my CIEE program were on my flight, including Emily Hornsby from Princeton, so I was able to meet some of the other Gringos I would be spending my first few days with.  We arrived, and immediately I was swarmed with a sweltering heat and a confusing chatter of portuguese all around me.  But it was great because I realized that I could actually understand it pretty well.  And the heat? Well I would choose sun over Princeton's white tundra any day.

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Meet Chidalu!

Hi Everyone!
My name is Chidalu Onyenso, or ChiChi as some of my friends call me.  I am a junior in the Politics Department  at Princeton and a getting a certificate in Political Economy and Portuguese Language and Culture.  I was born and raised in New Jersey and am a citizen of both the United States and Nigeria.  I studied Spanish almost all of my life, and even studied abroad in Mexico and Spain in my High School years.  When I got to college, I wanted to try something a bit different so I enrolled inthe Accelerated Portuguese course.  Along with my love for Portuguese, my interest in development and multiculturalism makes Brazil a perfect place for me to spend a semester abroad.  Along with expanding my vocabulary and increasing my fluency in Portuguese, I hope to learn more about the history and mechanisms behind Brazil's astonishing economic development and complex, multicultural society.  It's going to be a very interesting six months, but I am so excited!

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