Then I thought to myself, when have my preconceived notions of anything ever been correct? When I found out in sophomore year of high school that I was going to live in Brazil for a while, I began to imagine what those years away from home would be like. Having been raised in the States almost my entire life, my thoughts of Rio and OLM were obviously not what it actually turned out to be. I began to worry. If I got the picture of the city I’ll be living in and the school I’ll be studying in wrong, did that mean the image of me being happy in Brazil was wrong too?

Brazil wasn’t at all what I expected it to be. In fact, it happened to be much better than I imagined. Never in a million years would I have been able to picture how happy I would be, or how many great friends and teachers I would make at Our Lady of Mercy. The day I arrived in Rio I saw it as a temporary spot I would soon move out of. The day I moved away I couldn’t stop crying because I was leaving what had become my home.

And so with that thought I was able to calm down a lot. So what if college isn’t what I expected it to be? That probably isn’t a bad thing at all! It’s turns out that merely a week later I am able to say that my worries were very premature. I have already made many new friends with who I go out with every weekend. My classes are very interesting and my teachers are as passionate and caring as my old teachers from OLM. I have the luxury of going to a big school with thousands of very nice people while being able to study in classes as big as they were at Our Lady of Mercy. I’ve already found many clubs and activities to do and I’ve even taken up rock climbing! I’m beginning to really love CU Boulder, and maybe someday, I will feel as home here as I did at OLM.