Loveandpizza.it ~ Graduation ~ Carolina tells her family

    Graduation week. In Brazil, getting to university – and going through it – is a big, big deal. Specially if you are a Med student. We start paying for the graduation party in the first year of university - I mean, the parents start paying, because being full time students, there is definitely no time to do anything else.

    Well, preparing for the big thing is not simple: there is a church service, then there is a cocktail (expensive dress), and then there is the graduation ball (even more expensive dress). Fortunately I had already chosen my clothes, but I hadn’t told my parents about my ‘job in Italy’ yet. I was planning to do it during the graduation night, raising a toast with all my family and closest friends. That way, my parents wouldn’t do a big scene. I’ve already mentioned my family, right? Not easy to deal with. Smart, eh? Well, not that much.

    My dad nearly choked! Honest, I thought he was going to have a heart attack when I told him that my next big step in adulthood would be taking a break – and making money – in Italy for a year! My mum started to cry, ‘Oh, Carolina, I wish I could go with you’; my middle sister said: ‘Are you out of your mind??’ and my oldest sister just smiled. I knew she meant: ‘Go for it, girl!’ My older aunts looked at me astonished, like they couldn’t believe I had spent all that time in university to become a doctor and now I would just ‘have a year break’ in Italy, teaching English.. And I thought that at least my father’s sisters would be a tiny little bit happy for me, their grandparents being from Italy and all. But I was wrong. They thought I was joking. But I wasn’t. I was taking it very seriously, and I was only doing it because I wasn’t going on my own. If Lisa gave up, I would kill her!

    Anyway, the decision was made, the flight had been paid for with the savings from all my years of receiving my pocket money from dad (I’m glad I’ve always been a saver) and we would leave in the first week of September. I couldn’t be more excited, but at the same time, still wondering if I wasn’t making the biggest mistake of my life.