As the semester comes to an end, most conversations are about the summer – “What are your plans?” “Are you going to work?” “Any fun travels planned?” “Aren’t you excited to go home?” Most people can’t wait to see their families and be home. But what happens if you don’t actually want to go home?

Growing up, I moved a lot. I lived in many places and met many people – which is pretty nice – but that also made me not get attached to places. For me, home is the place where I sleep most. Which means that, right now, William Jewell College is my home – and I’m not gonna lie – I like it quite a lot.

Being someone with different beliefs from my family’s, moments of disagreements happen a lot. And something I’ve noticed is that the longer I stay away, the less patient I am with them. So it doesn’t take long for me to want to get on a plane back to school. I like to think that some people are easier to love from afar, and that’s my relationship with my family. I love everyone, but calling them every once in a while is enough for me.

Yes, I do miss everyone in my family. And when I’m here, I do wish I was back in Brazil with everyone every now and then. But I’m also really happy here, even with late night practices, all-nighters, exams and the caf. My life is here now, so going where many would call my home is more like a vacation.

I do feel bad for not wanting to go home. I know my family misses me, they tell me that a lot. And I know they were kind of against me going to college in another country. But they also love me, so that’s why they supported my dream and don’t hold the fact that I’m away most of the year against me. But if they knew that I’d rather stay here, away from them, they would be heartbroken.

As my life goes on here, the more reasons I have to stay here longer. At some point, I might not go home at all, and my family’s reaction to that scares me. This summer I’ll be home for less than a third of the break – and I haven’t told my grandparents because I don’t know how they will take it. I also know that they fear so much that I’ll never move back home. Which is what I’ll most likely do, but they don’t need to know that yet.

I think one the hardest things for my family to understand is that I am my own person. I have my own life, and that life is here. My friends are here, my school is here and most likely my job one day will be here. And that means that here is home, here is where I want to be.

I’m now guest in my parents’ house, and I’ll probably see everyone in my family five/six weeks in a year. For my family, that’s not normal. Before I moved for the first time, we would basically have family reunions every weekend. But that was when half of my uncles still lived with my grandparents, no one apart from my parents were married and almost no one had kids. No, things are not like that anymore – even before I left for college things had already changed – but we would still get together at last once a month.

Overall, yes, I am kind of excited to go home for a few weeks. See everyone, eat some good food and just enjoy my home country. But I will also be thinking about my summer job and my next semester here at Jewell. And it’s okay, because as long as I keep talking to my family and don’t let them think I forgot them they should be just fine.

Culture and History

Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP)

This is one of the classic “must-sees” of São Paulo. The museum has a permanent collection with paintings and sculptures by international artists such as Renoir, Gauguin, Di Cavalcanti, Rafael, Botticelli, Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh and Gainesborough alongside masterpieces by Latin American greats like Diego Rivera, Candido Portinari and Anita Malfatti, but the building itself is also considered a landmark in the history of 20th century architecture.

Museu do Ipiranga

São Paulo has over 100 museums, but there is one that almost every person who resides in that city has been to – the Museu do Ipiranga. Opened in 1895, the museum’s structure was inspired by the Palace of Versailles in France and is home to a series of painting from the colonial period in Brazil. The museum is also known for its beautiful gardens where locals like to spend afternoons. This is not one of the most famous museums in town, but it’s definitely a local favorite.  

Museu do Futebol

I could talk about different museums to visit in São Paulo for forever, so in order to show a little bit of my hometown’s variety the last museum I want to talk about is our soccer museum. The museum shows the history of soccer, Brazilian football legends and the World Cup since its beginning in 1930. It also has radio and movie clips from famous soccer games and even has a whole room dedicated to Brazil’s football “king” Pele.

Food

If you looked up famous restaurants in São Paulo, you would get a variety of places – from well-known chefs to family owned joints. A special thing about Brazil is that we have such a diverse culture that there are so many good places with the same type of food served in different way. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about them all – here’s a list of places you have to eat at in São Paulo.

Mercado Municipal

Farmer’s markets are a big thing in São Paulo and the Mercado Municipal – Municipal Market of São Paulo – is almost a gourmet version of a farmer’s market with many stores selling fish, spices, different types of meat, bread and fruits from all over the world. But the best part is the restaurants. The top three foods you must try at the Municipal Market of São Paulo – also known as “Mercadão,” or big market – are the following:

Mortadella sandwich

With 10.58 ounces of mortadella – a large smoked sausage made of beef, pork and pork fat and seasoned with pepper and garlic – this huge sandwich brings people from all places to try it out. Many people can’t even finish it because of its size.

Codfish ball

Originally from Portugal, the deep fried “bolinho de bacalhau” is also really famous in Brazil. You can find it in almost every bar in Brazil as a snack to eat alongside with your beer, but at the Municipal Market of São Paulo you have codfish balls made with fresh cod in excellent quality.

Pastel

This is basically deep fried dough with filling. In São Paulo you can find the most different types of fillings in “pastel,” but the most common ones at the Municipal Market of São Paulo are mozzarella cheese, ground beef, cod fish and banana with caramel.

Bairro da Liberdade

This is one of the most famous neighborhoods in São Paulo, mostly because of its Asian-inspired theme. Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside Japan and that has a big cultural influence in the “Bairro da Liberdade,” or liberty neighborhood, with light poles like paper lamps, street signs with Japanese writing and Torii gates around the streets. There you can also find multiple Asian restaurants with Japanese, Korean and Chinese food.

Brazilian Barbecue

You can easily find a good barbecue place in Brazil – we even have food carts selling Brazilian barbecue in the streets as if they were hot dogs. But one of the best restaurants is Fogo de Chão – which also has a location in Downtown Kansas City.

Tropical Fruits

The one other thing you must try when you’re in Brazil is our fruits. Being a tropical country, we have a variety of fruits that are always fresh since they’re distributed by local farmers close to the consumer. If at any moment you feel like buying a snack, some fruit will not only be healthier but probably cheaper in Brazil.

Nightlife

São Paulo is also really famous for its nightlife – with options for people in every type of budget. There are many nightclubs with different types of music and bars that you can go to even if you’re not of legal drinking age – in Brazil it’s 18 years old – but still want to hang out with your older friends. Augusta Street during the day is known to be a great place for shopping, but during the night it is known by its nightlife – with clubs, bars and live music venues.

São Paulo has a lot to offer, and I could talk about the different things you can do, see and eat there, but the small list I’ve made here can give an idea of the city’s diversity and its options for all types of adventure.  

On March 17 the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) released a new ad on Twitter, in which they claim to show a day in the life of a student athlete. The video received a lot of backlash from current and former collegiate athletes, many professional players that played sports in college also answered to the tweet.

Students and former students claimed that the video was far from reality, some twitter users even labeled it as fake news. They brought up points including how the video doesn’t portrait the actual stress athletes go through on a daily basis, the lack of time to socialize with friends and how exhausted athletes get halfway through the day due to their chaotic schedules.

Tommy Olson, former University of Minnesota football player, said that he understands why so many athletes were bothered by the ad, since it doesn’t represent what student athletes  actually have to go through. But Olson also pointed out that the ad was a way for NCAA to sell the idea of being a collegiate athlete, it was just a way to sell the brand – and when making a commercial for your company, you only show the good parts.

Also brought up by a few twitter users was how the NCAA exploits athletes. This commercial opened a window for people to argue about how the NCAA makes billions of dollars but doesn’t pay student athletes.

Richard Sherman, Stanford Alum and professional football player, commented on the matter, claiming how the video was a excuse for billionaires to not pay athletes.

Another issue that was commented on was the NCAA’s strict rules. Athletes have been complaining about the regulations made by the association, that are so rigorous that technically, the NCAA was not even allowed to use one of their own athletes to make the ad. This is not a new issue for NCAA athletes, but the backlash of the ad provided a platform for players to come together and openly expose their complaints.

Overall, the ad received a lot of critique and made students and former students  bring up many important issues, to the extent that famous athletes came in and also shared their thoughts. The wide reach of the response demonstrated that the existing issues within the NCAA have been the reality of student athletes for a while and protests against these are yet to create lasting change.

Every guy loves sports, because sports are something only men can enjoy. Women don’t like them because they’re not related to fashion or shopping, so they’re either bored or they hurt themselves because they’re too delicate. But sometimes, there’s always that one girl that claims she loves sports.

It is of general knowledge that no woman actually likes sports, it’s not in their nature. They only say that to get a guy’s attention – everyone knows that. Girls try to trick guys all the time, and pretending to understand sports it’s just one of them.

“Yeah, I’ve met one of those before. She wasn’t that cute, but she was okay, that’s why I talked to her. At first, when I asked her the players’ names and positions she knew the answers. But I knew that she was just trying to impress me when I asked her the blood type of the dog of the second cousin of the Chiefs quarterback from 1975 and she didn’t know the answer. You just can’t trust women, dude” shared anonymous frat guy with the Monitor.

Some women dare to try to be like men and play sports too. But it is a known fact that they will never be as good as men – they’re too emotional and don’t know how to play as a team, because that’s just how women are. No one would rather watch a female team play than a male team. Women should stick to what they were made for, which is not sports.

Most men would agree with the statement, but for some reason, a few guys disagree.

“This one time I was watching TV and they had women’s soccer on. First I was surprised to see that women knew what soccer was. Then, I was confused on how they the game came to be aired on TV. You can imagine how I felt when I realized that that game was their World Cup. After seeing that I thought, maybe girls like sports too?” said another anonymous source.

Some sources have seen the same pattern going on the video games world. It is quite understandable for women to go after athletes, but there is no rational explanation to why they were pretending to like video games to impress nerds.   

“It is obvious they’re only doing it for attention. They know they will be the only girl online, so they’ll will be the center of attention. They’re are usually ugly, for sure. That’s why they’re online, so no one knows how they actually look like” shared a confidential source, that lives in his mom’s basement.  

Overall, it is still not a confirmed fact if females are capable of liking sports or not. Most of the male population claims that it’s impossible, but there are studies in progress right now to determine if women are capable of doing something such as liking and playing sports for self pleasure, and not to impress guys.

Hopefully, with the conclusions of those studies, it will be clear that women don’t have the capacity to do anything without the intent of getting male attention.