What being Brazilian Means to Me

Hello and welcome to the final blog post of the year. I hope you guys have enjoyed reading about my culture and learning new facts and stories about Brazilian culture and what it is like growing up Brazilian. Since this is the last post, I wanted to use this post as a way to wrap everything up and show my appreciation for my culture and my country. Today I am going to write about why being Brazilian is so important to me and why I appreciate the culture so much.

Growing up in a very diverse city, I was always surrounded by other people of my culture, including a lot of family members, so it would be easy to stay up to date with my culture including the language, the holidays, and the food. Once I moved out to State College, all of that disappeared, I had no one to relate to in terms of culture and this became hard for me. I struggled to keep up with the language and I was forgetting basic traditions and I felt like some sort of outcast. All of this combined made me feel almost embarrassed to be Brazilian and be different than everyone else. I would call my mom every Sunday, which were the hardest days for me because at home these days were family days where everyone would stay home and there was no work or school and we would just spend time together. I would call her and express my feelings and she would remind me that my culture is beautiful and being Brazilian is something people typically envy, and I should not be embarrassed about it, I should be proud.  I listened to her and tried to teach my friends the language, bring them food from home so they could try it, and talk about future plans for us to all go to Brazil together one day.

I chose this topic for my blog so I can gain and share more ideas and information about my culture with my peers, hoping to receive positive feedback to see what my classmates felt about the culture, hoping this would also allow me to gain some confidence back about my culture. Throughout the semester, everyone has been so interested and eager to learn about the different things about Brazil and this has made me so happy.  Seeing comments where people ask questions about things such as where they can try Brazilian food and how they think the way I grew up was similar to how I grew up is so amazing. This all allowed me to be proud of my culture and recognize that not everyone was able to gain the experience I had growing up being Brazilian, and that is something special to me. This blog meant a lot to me, and those who read and put comments only added to that. I have learned to embrace my culture and understand that it does make me different but it is not a bad thing. I keep up to date with the language by calling my family daily, and reading and watching Brazilain news, social media, and tv shows/movies. Educating those who are curious about my culture is such a heart filling experience and something I am ecstatic that people, especially my peers, are also ecstatic to learn.