When I read that the media had finally started acknowledging the hundreds of teens that struggle with their sexuality and result to suicide every year, I was bittersweet. I wasn’t sure how to react – should I be thankful that the U.S. media is reporting on this, or should I be angry with them for not having realized the seriousness of the issue in the past since kids and teenagers have been bullied since before I was born?

Whatever I was thinking didn’t matter though – I started to see GLBT communities from across the U.S. come together to broach the seriousness of this once invisible problem. Celebrities, parents, teachers, principals, journalists, bankers, executives and everyone in between started a campaign to show youth in America that life moves on from high school – that, to quote: It gets better.

The transition from high school to college is a marvelous thing. Finally you get the freedom from your parents, from work that you never wanted to do. You get to take classes that interest you, join clubs /causes that you care about, meet people that are similar to you from all over the world; people who share a passion for learning just like you. It’s a wonderful opportunity to grow from the inside out, and vice-versa. For me, it has always been a learning experience and continues to be even from my desk in São Paulo.

Studying abroad is just one of the many options you have available to you at college. I am fortunate to go to a school that encourages these types of intercultural exchanges and not a day goes by that I don’t feel grateful for having this experience. I’ve been learning so much about myself in a new setting at the same time I’ve been learning that the more I learn, the less I know. Living in the U.S., it’s easy to forget that people all over the world live in places that they love just as much as some people love America, and maybe even more. People speak various languages in every corner of this city – something you rarely see in the interior of the U.S.

As a foreigner, most people are really interested in talking to you about your culture or what you think of their culture. These are great conversations that I have on a daily basis. São Paulo is a wonderful place to learn about the world and yourself. For me, everyday that I’m here, life gets better: my Portuguese can only get better, my relationships grow, I meet new people all the time that are interested in learning from me as I am from them. Studying abroad is another opportunity that comes from continuing to live, learn and accept happiness from wherever it comes.

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.