PATRICK'S PEOPLE

Brazilian falls in love with PSU

Valquiria Vita, Pittsburg State University international student from Caxias Do Sul,

Brazil, knows all about love at first sight.

By Nikki Patrick
The Morning Sun 
Posted Sep. 2, 2014 

Valquiria Vita, Pittsburg State University international student from Caxias Do Sul, Brazil, knows all about love at first sight.

She first came to Pittsburg as an exchange student in 2012 through an agreement that her university in Brazil had with PSU. Vita said she fell in love with the community  the minute she got here.

“I was supposed to be here one semester, but I liked it so much that I stayed a year,” she said.

Because Vita was a journalism graduate, she  applied for a job at the PSU Collegio.

“I started as a writer and then became managing editor,” she said. “I was the only student  here that summer and didn’t have money to travel, so being managing editor was a good experience for learning. Gerard Attoun, PSU director of publications, taught me a lot.”

In January of 2013 Vita went home to Brazil.

“I never thought of graduate school or teaching, but I missed  Pittsburg  so much that I started trying to figure out a way to get back,” she said. “I  applied for a scholarship, was chosen as a teaching  assistant and came back to Pittsburg in January of  2014.”

She said that she and a professor alternate weeks in teaching a class in performance appreciation and films and theater.

“There are more  than 100 students in the class, most of them American, and it’s really challenging to speak to more than 100 students,” Vita  said. “I’m not  so much  into theater, but I love films.”

Her teaching experiences may be a  life-changer for her.

“I had always just wanted to be a reporter, but now consider the possibility of teaching at a college in Brazil,” Vita said.

She’s still occasionally writing stories for the Collegio, though as a teaching assistant she can’t accept  pay  for it.

“In May I and Marcus Clem went to a town that had been hit by a tornado,” Vita said. “We don’t have tornados in Brazil. The people took me  into their home and said, ‘This was the  living room, there was a wall here,’ and it was all destroyed.”

She added that the weather in Brazil is never as hot as Kansas can get in the summer, and, at least where her home is, it never snows in the winter.

“We also  don’t eat a lot of fast food, but we usually eat beans and rice very  day,” Vita said

She will graduate in May with her master’s in communication and, once again, will miss Pittsburg 

when she leaves. She  said she has made many friends, both Americans and international students from other countries.

“I live in a big city in Brazil, and it’s not as safe as Pittsburg,” Vita said. “The other night I went to a movie and rode my bicycle home at midnight and felt perfectly safe. We can’t do that in my city in Brazil.”

She feels that some  people living here may not appreciate the community as much as they should.

“Sometimes people who live here don’t realize how pretty Pittsburg is,” Vita said.

Story published on The Morning Sun, on Sept. 2
Read more:http://www.morningsun.net/article/20140901/Lifestyle/140909964#ixzz3CkWerikd