For senior Carolina Miranda, time at Manhattan High was valuable — and of the essence. Miranda’s first day at MHS was a chilly day in February of the beginning of spring semester, 2014, and her last was this past chilly November Monday.

Coming to high school in the U.S. from Belo Horizonte, Brazil through the visa of her godmother, a Kansas State University employee, Miranda’s year-long adventure abroad seemed short to her, but proved to be an extremely beneficial experience, as, Miranda explained, the American high school system offers student-specific opportunities that aren’t typically available through Brazilian high schools.

“Here, you can choose the classes you want to take, and in Brazil, it’s like they choose the classes for you,” Miranda said. “Here, I got to choose, so I could take classes I wanted to take that could be more useful to me.”

Miranda explained that in the beginning, it was hard to get used to things in the U.S., but she managed to find her way around the high school with a little help from teachers and fellow students, and even found niches in classes such as 21st Century Journalism, English as a Second Language, history and literature.

“Journalism is something I enjoy. I like that class and I’m interested in studying journalism later,” Miranda said.

As far as people and culture, Miranda found that Americans and Brazilians are similarly friendly, but Americans tend to be somewhat “quieter” in the sense that they “give you your space a little more.”

“In Brazil, people are very involved in each other’s lives, but here, like, people don’t really ask too much about your personal life, generally, unless maybe they already know you well,” Miranda said.

After her time living with her godmother and cousin in Manhattan, Miranda will be on her way back to her hometown in Brazil to be with other members of her family, and hopes to share as much of her experience with them as possible.

“It has been an amazing opportunity to visit another country. I’ll carry it with me for the rest of my life, and I can use my experiences and things I learned to help get a job in the future,” Miranda said.

Miranda plans to attend college in Brazil, studying journalism, and hopes to return to the U.S. afterward to visit friends.