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Elizabeth is a graduate student at DePaul studying Network Engineering and Management and plans to finish her master’s degree in March 2011. She is originally from the New York City suburbs and received her bachelor’s degree from University of Notre Dame with a double major in History and Computer Applications.  She chose the Brazil study abroad program because it is a perfect opportunity to visit South America and to learn more about technology use in an emerging country. Her favorite part about Brazil was learning some Portuguese and conversing with the people there.

Brazil was much more sophisticated than I expected it to be. I imagined the cities to be dirtier, grimier, and uglier with many of the poor and homeless visible on the streets. I suppose this is how I pictured Central and South America in general, because of pictures I’d seen of other developing countries. Instead, I found cities that reminded me of Europe. I even thought São Paulo was very reminiscent of New York. The cities had clean, well-planned streets, and skyscrapers and excellent restaurants, hotels, and shops.

I was very impressed by the companies that we visited. Our hosts were friendly, intelligent, professional, very proud of their organizations, and spoke perfect English. The companies had ambitious goals, somewhat similar to U.S. company goals, except Brazilian companies seemed more eager to reach out to the international markets. While many U.S. companies also strive to achieve a share in foreign markets, many U.S. companies can be very successful while remaining within the American domestic market. One of our hosts at the ACATE incubator said that his company encouraged its resident developing companies early on to not be content with the Brazilian market and to expand their company overseas and market their product or service to potential international clients.

IS 597 Study Abroad, Brazil DePaul University

1 East Jackson Chicago, Illinois 60604