Corey Koscielniak is a 2007 Point Scholar, a program of the Point Foundation, and a student at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. This semester, he is studying abroad in Brasil. He'll check in at the Campus PRide Blog with occassional updates from his learning and experiences there. His first installment in this "Studying Abroad" series is below. Let's give Corey a big, Campus Pride welcome!

Are we any different? Can You be a Global Citizen?

So I’ve been in Brasil for about three months now; my feelings and sentiments about Brasil haven’t changed much, nor have they changed about the US. It’s easy to point out differences in the ways that Brazilians do things and they way that Americans do things, but I always wonder how much that really helps anybody think about anything.

My name is Corey Koscielniak; I was planning on starting this blog in mid July, when I had freshly arrived in Salvador and had begun the process of my life in Brasil. But things seemed to be much harder than I had imagined – but those hard things weren’t what I was expecting to be hard. In fact, the hardest part about being here is realizing that I’m not any different at all. I’m still in a city; I still like to take photos of whatever I think is structurally interesting; I still gossip about everyone that comes into my life – Brazilian or American or other; I still have to go to school; I still have a financial troubles, etc. I had trouble realizing what was so different about being in Brasil than being in the US. My life isn’t anymore interesting than it is in the US so why did I come here in the first place?

Read the rest after the jump...