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Many people are unfamiliar with French Lick, Indiana and who can blame them? I grew up in a town of 8000 people. Heck, we had to combine students from two adjacent towns into one because the classes were too small. To give you an idea, I graduated with 74 people and we had one of the biggest classes in years! 

When I find someone who HAS heard of the name French Lick, it's usually because of one of three things: Larry Bird, the West Baden Dome (once coined "the 8th wonder of the world"), or the casino (still a new construction, but as Indiana doesn't have very many casinos, it's quite the tourist attraction). 

Anyways, that's where I'm from. Christina Ojeda. Small town Indiana girl.

I hated it there. It always seemed too small for me. There was never anything to do. That is, unless you were there to spend money at the golf courses, gamble at the casino, treat yourself to a nice dinner at the French Lick Resort... you get where I'm going with this. My town was built for tourists. So for the locals, swimming, fishing, high school sports, that was our entertainment. 

As soon as I graduated high school and got accepted into Indiana University, I happily packed my things and set off for Bloomington. A small city located an hour and twenty minutes away from French Lick. Not too far from home, but far enough that it felt like I had escaped and moved onto something better. 

After graduating from college, I couldn't decide what I wanted to do. Graduate school, yes. What for? No idea. So I decided to take some time to figure things out, travel a little. The following year I was still unsure. Until, I received an email from my university notifying me of a new opportunity to learn Portuguese. You see, every summer my university holds an Intensive Language Workshop. It's basically a summer camp for language learners and this year (that is, summer of 2016) was the very first year Portuguese was introduced into the workshop. (You can take these same classes during the school year, but for someone who's already graduated - like me - it's quite expensive and would take more than 6 weeks to complete). 

As part of the workshop, students were to be learning Portuguese for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. For some, that might be a little... intense (ha ha), but for me, I couldn't wait to sign up! As I earned a degree in Spanish and had been yearning to learn a new language, I thought it was the perfect opportunity. What else did I have to do?

Two weeks into the program, I received an email from CIEE notifying me of a new opportunity to Teach Abroad in Portugal. Was this a sign? How could this be? First a chance to learn Portuguese comes knocking on my virtual mailbox door and then a second, allowing me the chance to LIVE ABROAD IN PORTUGAL? It seemed as if my path was right there, laid out in front me. How could I not take advantage? 

So that's exactly what I did. I hopped on my ship of opportunity and set sail!