As I returned to Cincinnati from Washington D.C. after a problematic day at the Brazilian Embassy, I understood that my journey to Curitiba, Brazil would not be graceful. Listening to an instructional CD on Portuguese, I realized that my illiteracy in Portuguese and Spanish would make my arrival as difficult as my departure. As I began my second co-op quarter, assured of an internship at WAA (Willer Arquitetos Associados), a reputable architecture and planning firm, and at IPPUC (Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba), a world-renowned planning institution, I still had no idea of where I would live. After arriving in Curitiba, transportation to and from work involved public transportation and periodically, a ride home from a generous coworker. At my first co-op, my labor was primarily focused on public works in Angola, a large country in Africa, whose president was a friend of Alfred Willer, the principal architect at WAA. Through the duration of my second co-op, I was able to participate in an international course in planning, where I visited the headquarters of prominent government agencies and the sites of social reform programs, while meeting architects and planners from many Central and South American countries. I was able to visit the architecture program at two Brazilian universities, PUC-PR and UnicenP. The women undergraduates were beautiful and greatly outnumbered their male counterparts. Of the cities I visited while in Brazil, Foz do Iguacu was the most memorable due to their two world-renowned attractions: Itaipu, our world’s largest hydroelectric dam, and the National Park of Iguacu, which enclosed the beautiful waterfalls of Iguacu. I did not know it at the time, but my wonderful experiences in Brazil have greatly influenced my desired career path and yearning for international travel.