All you can do is take in every bit of information and on your own time sift through it, figuring what to believe in or not. Being in a different country where you start off not know the language or understanding how the people live, you are often left lost and confused. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourselfĭuring this bridge year there have been many days where I have felt completely vulnerable. I appreciate the small things like being able to walk to places, and to meet people I can call friends. Being here has shown me that everything I went through was for a reason. Five months into my bridge year I was moved to Lençóis–yes, the same small, alternative town I previously thought I had no place in. While things did go wrong, now they are right. I will not go into detail of all the things that went wrong: I refuse to write a blog solely filled with complaints. There were times I felt like everything that could go wrong was going wrong. Looking back on the past five months, I must say they have been the most difficult five months of my life. Things go wrong so that you can appreciate them when they’re right Today, unfortunately, I can’t say she and I have a good relationship however, that does not take away the fact that we had some amazing days and I walked away from Feira learning so much from her. I understood that I had to let go and let her fix things on her own. Unfortunately, after a while it became clear to me that my host mom had issues of her own she had not dealt with which lead to her changing, becoming more distant and often being upset. We have to stop and remember that before we came, our host families lived lives of their own filled with laughter, tears, fights, arguments, good days and bad days, and just because we come along does not mean their problems go away. It is naïve to think that when taking a bridge year everyone is going to have a perfect host family experience. People change so that you can learn to let go. I grew to have a great bond with this woman until one day things began to change. I was bonding so well with my host mom I would wait for her to get home from work every night and greet her with a “ Oi, como foi seu dia?” (Hello, how was your day?) we would spend hours sharing details of our days over dinner, taking about what we believed in, what we liked, and who we were. Things were great for the first two weeks. She goes, “Hi, I’m your mom.” I’m given a warm embrace then proceed to quickly pick up my bags say goodbye to the remaining Fellows and be on my way. I was greeted by a beautiful woman holding a beautiful bouquet of pink flowers. I arrived in the evening, and I remember my heart beating really fast all I could think is, this is it there is no going back now from here on out im on my own. I would not be in the bustling, hectic city of Salvador or the more alternative Lençóis–it was perfect for me. It was advertised to me as a mid-sized city with promise. ![]() After leaving In-Country-Orientation in Capão, in Bahia’s deep Interior, I took a 7-hour bus ride that would leave me in my new home, Feira de Santana. Incidentally my favorite quote does a great job of explaining how things have been going the past 5 months. Achebe continued to publish and held a faculty position at Brown University from 2009 until his death in 2013.“People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” Over the next several decades, Achebe was involved in a mix of academia and Nigerian politics, publishing a number of short stories, children's books, and essay collections and splitting his time between Nigeria and the United States until 1990, when he returned to the US after a car accident left him partially disabled. He published and gained worldwide attention for Things Fall Apart in 1958. Later, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) in the metropolis of Lagos. After graduation, he worked first as an English teacher in the town of Oba. Achebe excelled in school and began writing stories as a university student. Although his parents were Protestant and practiced the Christian faith, Achebe and his siblings were also exposed to traditional Igbo culture, which included a heavy emphasis on storytelling. Achebe was raised by his parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria.
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