Hello, Hola and Salut! I’m Andy, and I’m creating this blog for the Global Village’s Q199 Introduction to the Global Village course. I am currently a freshman planning on majoring in Spanish and neuroscience with possible minors in French and Portuguese. My goal is to someday become an emergency physician at a hospital with that serves a large population of Spanish- and French-speaking immigrants. I also want to travel the world, a goal that I’ve already started to work on. Over the past two summers, I’ve spent 3 months in Spain, soaking up the language and culture. I’m already planning next summer’s travels, hopefully to Portugal, France, more of Spain, and maybe the Middle East. I’m planning on studying abroad in Brazil for a semester while I’m here, and I’ve started taking French as well. Ideally, as a result of all of these experiences, I will be quadrilingual by the time I graduate!

I see my role in our twenty-first century global society as one of understanding and positive contribution. I want and need to understand the cultures of people who are different from me and then use this knowledge and all of the resources that I’ve been blessed with to work to improve the lives of others, particularly those less fortunate than I. This may be as simple as helping international students adapt to life in America or as in-depth as long-term service work in a foreign country.