While many college students dream of spending their summer
sitting on the beach, partying with friends and forgetting about
school, Hollister resident Ashley Nunes got an education, and
partied with the best of them in Brazil.
While many college students dream of spending their summer sitting on the beach, partying with friends and forgetting about school, Hollister resident Ashley Nunes got an education, and partied with the best of them in Brazil.
“My favorite things about Brazil are the music, the friendly people and the drinks,” Nunes said.
While she did spend her mornings walking on the beach, and eating some of the sweetest fruit in the world, Nunes, 22, was also in the city of Salvador to learn. A student at California State University Monterey Bay, Nunes has to fulfill a foreign language requirement, and having been to Brazil three times before, she thought to herself
“why not go back for the summer and learn Portuguese?”
For two months, Nunes studied at the University Federal of Bahia, but this wasn’t her first time speaking Portuguese. When she was 11-years-old, she made her first trip to Brazil, and experienced a major culture shock.
“The poverty was just awful,” she said. “I remember my brothers and I felt bad because we were sporting our Nikes, and the street children had nothing. By the time we left, we had given them almost all of our clothes.”
Another one of her visits down south included a spur of the moment flight for the millennium New Year’s celebration in Rio de Janeiro.
“I was having such a good time, I ended up extending my trip by two weeks,” Nunes said.
Her interest in the country has to do with her heritage. Nunes’ grandmother, Olindina, escaped poverty in Brazil and moved to the United States in the 1940s. Since they were young, Nunes and her siblings have made several trips to the country to meet their relatives from a different land.
“It was quite overwhelming at first because no one in my family spoke English, but after a while, you just grow accustom to it,” she said.
After her recent arrival back in the states, Nunes is getting back into school and said even though she had a blast, she didn’t get the tan she’d hoped for, and she’s happy to be home.
“It’s nice to be back and have the luxury of living in my own home, but I know one day I’ll retire in Brazil,” she said.
