Category: Latin America
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Celebrating 3 years of living abroad
Quitting my job and moving abroad It’s been three years since I quit my job in Austin and started working abroad. It’s been a wild and wonderful three years. I have lived in the south of Spain, Northern Spain and Minas Gerais, Brazil. I was able to visit 11 countries and 17 autonomous Spanish communities.…
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Saudade and coming home
Portugeuse has a brilliant word that can’t be translated. Saudade. It’s my favorite word in Portuguese and perfectly sums up my time in Brazil.
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Quarantining Alone in New Country
Can you know a place when you cannot physically explore it? When you and everyone around you are locked within?
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Carnaval in Brazil!
Carnaval in Brazil is an experience everyone should try at least twice in life.
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Why you should move to Minas Gerais, Brazil
Why you should move to a small city in Minas, Gerais, Brazil
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Where to go in São Paulo, Brazil
Although many tourists skip São Paulo and head right to Rio, it’s a city that’s worth your time.
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I’m moving to Brazil!
I am learning to get better at plans. Mainly letting go of them and allowing them to fail and change. Since my trip to Morocco in April 2018, I had a fixated goal. I would move to an Arabic-speaking country in the Middle East and teach English at a school there. I spent months researching,…
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Texans protest family separation at U.S.-Mexico border
This story was originally printed in the fall 2018 version of Fellowship! Magazine. By Ashleigh Bugg The children’s detention center is housed in an old Walmart building in Brownsville, Texas. The former big box retailer can hold roughly 1,500 children who have been separated from their parents, many against their will. “The detention centers have…
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Lessons from Spain: helping new neighbors
Moving to Spain has been different from when I stayed in Costa Rica or Slovakia. During those visits (which were two to four months), I had a specific program and personnel who helped me understand the rules of how to live in another country. In Spain, I am largely on my own, being helped along…
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Learning Spanish through Netflix
My favorite Spanish language films streaming on Netflix When I was translating for Latino immigrants, I practiced my rusty Spanish by watching movies. I learned different slang and dialects based on the time period or location of films set in Mexico, Spain, Colombia, Bolivia and Argentina. I’ve heard what life might sound like in rural…
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The Color of Hunger: El Salvador reflections
Donate to Elmer and his family here! Earlier in the semester of my study abroad program in Costa Rica, we heard a lecture from Elmer, a painter, artist, poet, and teacher who grew up in a trash dump in El Salvador. Our program did not invite statisticians or economics professors to present facts about food…
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Why I stopped buying clothing
One year and four months ago, I made the New Year’s resolution to stop buying clothes for a year. This decision came after several years of struggling with the idea of fair trade and ethically-sourced clothing. I’d heard the horror stories of child slaves in Bangladesh and Uzbekistan, but cognitive dissonance and cute sales at…