Bound for Brazil

At 23 years old, Caroline Hiott has a well worn passport. She’s studied abroad in Australia, traveled through Argentina and Brazil and lived with a host family in southern Spain. Before she goes to graduate school, Hiott is returning to Brazil to teach English for four months.

A Mountain Brook resident since kindergarten, Hiott began indulging her desire to travel while a student at the University of Alabama. Her studies in anthropology incited a “desire to experience the people and the cultures of the world.”

“Everyone says, ‘I wish I had done it,’” Hiott said. “This is the only time I can do it, so I scrounge up the money and buy a plane ticket.”

After making friends with a Brazilian student in Australia, Hiott spent a month traveling his home country and Argentina. That’s when she fell in love with the people and the community-focused culture.

“Brazil has a stereotype of being a really fun, really lively, beautiful place for a reason,” Hiott said.

While in Spain, Hiott had the chance to teach English to her host family. She said she likes the way English can connect people to an increasingly globalized world, and she wanted to continue teaching it. This led her to apply to schools in Brazil, and she accepted a teaching job in São Carlos in January.

Hiott left on March 7 and will teach until July. She said the most difficult part of her preparations has been learning Portuguese. While she is already fluent in Spanish, Portuguese is the most common language in Brazil and, Hiott said, much more challenging.

“All my friends make fun because I speak half-Portuguese, half-Spanish,” Hiott said.

When she returns to the U.S., Hiott plans to go to graduate school in the fall to study social entrepreneurship. She wants to someday earn a doctorate in cultural anthropology so she can continue to study and visit the different cultures of the world.

“People see traveling on Pinterest, but these places are real and when you see it, you’re never the same,” Hiott said.