Living Abroad in Another Language

Forced to speak up In the fall of her junior year, Kristen ’19 spent a semester abroad living in Costa Rica. Before even arriving to Valpo, Kristen lived with a host family during a gap year abroad in Brazil, with minimal preparation in Portuguese. Both experiences in these open cultures, relative to her cultural background growing up in rural New York state, lead to a “very large personality change.” Listen to Kristen’s story as she describes this shift from a shy and quiet person to someone who learned to express herself (and in Portuguese and Spanish, no less!).  Transcript

Over time, you do realize [the members of your host family] have their own lives — you’re becoming a part of it and they’re not becoming a part of you …it did force me to be a little more outgoing, which was totally the opposite of what I was before in the US. I was always very quiet, shy person, afraid to speak up, to give my opinion…but, when you are in another country, and you can’t necessarily always communicate, you kind of just have to. So, during my time abroad, not only was I forced to speak up and communicate in English, but in a language that I was only beginning to learn how to express myself in… definitely underwent a very large personality change. When I came back to the US, I was more outspoken, more outgoing, less afraid to speak up for sure and just more comfortable interacting with people. Not that I wasn’t before, but being in such an open culture and where you have to express yourself in order to be part of the world, it’s important.