Portugese teaching assistant, a Fulbright scholar, sees first snowfall

When Aurea Santos stepped outside Wednesday, she was seeing snow for the first time.

Her student, Loni O'Grady, a secondary education and Spanish major, stood by with several of her classmates. She filmed the entire scene.

"At first she seemed almost a little timid," O'Grady said with a laugh. "She was kind of scared to go out and she was scared of the cold. When we got out of the elevator, she just looked out the window and ... she just said ‘Wow' and she walked outside. She didn't know what to do and so she was just trying to touch the snowflakes."

Santos' friend had texted her at the end of class, saying, "It's snowing!"

When Santos, 31, told her students, they said they had to take a field trip to watch her witness snow fall for the first time.

They weren't disappointed.

In person, Santos is anything but timid. And, dressed in a sweater, a winter hat and boots, she is a long way from her home in mild Brazil.

Santos is a foreign language teaching assistant. But she isn't just any TA; she is at UNL on a Fulbright scholarship, teaching Portuguese to university students. And this is the first time the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has offered Portuguese in recent years.

"The Fulbright, because it's an exchange program, they have literally foreign language teaching assistants from other countries coming to the United States to teach their language," said Laura Damuth, UNL's Fulbright program adviser. "Aurea is great."

Santos applied for the scholarship in July 2010. When she found out she was coming to Lincoln the next year, her first reaction wasn't totally positive.

"That makes me feel, like, very scared because I knew it was cold here," she said. "I'm from a very hot city in Brazil. The weather is the scariest thing."

She said the hardest things for her to leave behind were her "children": a mutt, a Cocker Spaniel and a German Shepherd.

They're living with family now, so she knows they're in good hands, but she still misses them. She said she especially missed them when she stepped off the plane in Nebraska for the first time.

"I got off the plane crying, ‘I wanna go back, I wanna go back, I wanna go back,'" she said. "And then there was this person from the university who was there waiting for me from International Affairs and she was so smiley. ‘Hi, welcome!' And I was like, ‘I wanna go back right now.' It was fear. I was afraid of the new."

Her fear slowly dissipated over time, though, after she made herself comfortable in her room and stopped eating dining hall food.

She said the biggest culture shock for her was how nice people are in Lincoln. She was blown away by how nice the bus drivers are. However, that's not always something she enjoys.

"One day," she said, "I was walking on O Street and there was this man coming and he was smiling far from me and when he came close to me he said, ‘It's a very hot day, isn't it?' and smiling all the time.

And I said ‘Yeah.' Creepy. That was creepy."

But now, in spite of that, only a few months into school, she feels right at home in Lincoln.

"I feel home here because the city is small," she said. "Not a lot of cars, not a lot of traffic. I feel home here. I just love the city."

And, as much as she has made Lincoln her home, her students seem to have made themselves at home in her classroom.

There are only five students in her class, but Santos isn't too upset by that. She said the great thing about having this class is that they are all there because they want to be, not because anyone is making them. One of her students, she said, is just taking it so he can talk to his friends in Portuguese.

"I feel that they have a lot of pleasure taking the classes," she said.

O'Grady said she agrees.

"I love it," O'Grady said. "It's very fun. She does a very good job of mixing the language with the culture. And I've learned a lot from it."

For O'Grady, the addition of the Portuguese language program came just at the right time. She has been planning on applying to be an English teaching assistant in Brazil for the last two years. She had been trying to teach herself Portuguese in preparation, but she became excited when she went to the

Department of Modern Languages and was told they would be having a Portuguese class.

Damuth said having Santos teach Portuguese has been "highly beneficial" for students applying for Fulbrights, because they can get at least some experience under their belts.

"Frankly, as difficult as it may seem to hear, you are more successful internationally, whether it's on a Fulbright or anything, if you have the language or at least some of the language," Damuth said. "The more languages we can teach, the more unusual languages we can, I think the more competitive our students are for these kinds of awards."

The class is small now, but it's growing in popularity. According to a press release, because of many requests, there will be two Portuguese I courses offered next semester and one Portuguese II course.

Back at home, Santos has taught English for about 10 years, and she said it is a dream for most teachers there to be in her shoes. But, as it is with most people who want to travel abroad, it's too expensive. That's why she said she's grateful she has the Fulbright. As one of the perks of the Fulbright scholarship, it pays for everything.

When she goes back in May, she said she hopes she will return with a lot of knowledge about American culture that she can pass on to students, family and friends. But she said if she didn't have a job, she would consider staying in Lincoln longer.

O'Grady would be more than OK with that decision.

"We are so grateful to have her here," she said.

danaelenz@dailynebraskan.com