My name is Carolina Alarcon, I was born in El Paso Texas, on a beautiful and green april 7th in the year 1993, Hello everyone, Im going to tell you a little bit about myself; I have two brothers and a sister, we are all pretty close to eachother, and also by age because my older brother is twenty, I am nineteen, my sister's eighteen and my younger brother is seventeen, of course I am closer to my sister, because we are only eleven months apart from age so, we are like twins we do everything together, except when I decided to go on an exchange for a year, I decided to go to India, somewplace not everyone has gone, not everyone knows how it really is, and I wanted to have adventures, and learn another culture, language, also how to be independent, my parents supported me through this, because my older brother also went on an exchange to Belgium, and he really did change, and grew up, so that was it. I went all by myself to India, I really did not know how India will turn out to be, I had only seen the movie "Slumdog Millionaire", so my expectations were not so big the first thing was to go with an open mind, or i guess I did not really expect anything at all; I got the cultural shock pretty quickly as soon as I set a foot in India, out of nowhere..... cows, people, rickshaws, bycicles, motorcycles, scooters and cars everywhere and in your way, they also got to drive like crazy, as soon as I got in my host familie's house I called my mom, and told her I wanted to go back, I told her India was a crazy country, and the food is not tasty, I dont like it here, then I cried, but then my mom put my dad on the phone and reminded me how strong I was, and that he knew I could handle it on my own, so I said to myself, Okay, i'll see how it goes this week; well after two days I loved it there, I did not want to go back, my families where amazing, I got to meet a lot of people and learn about their festivals, ceremonies and stuff, everything now it seemed really interesting and colorful, I mean I was completely on the other side of the world, not eveyone get this kind of opportunity, Afterwards I met another exchange students from all over the world, we were always together and they became like my family we were all really close, so we got to travel all over India, to the south to the north, the himalayas and the most amazing deal was that we got to see the Dalai Lama!; and other things like I got to learn a little bit of hindi, to dance like them and do some art, an opportunity like this was unique, so I do not regret the time I got to stay there eventhough I am one year behind in school, im one year ahead of experiences, this is pretty much, the most interesting thing that has happened in my life.
My major is Special Education, at the beggining I was not so sure, but then I had some experiences when I was in high school, I had a boy with down syndrome in a class, and no one would really talk to him, because he just cant, he just stammered, so people did not bother to even try ,but I started to try to talk to him, and he would conversate with me that I thought I could help him, just by listening and being with him, so I did it after sometime then after some days, everything changed I was so happy everyday I did not know why, but then I realized it was because I helped him, the satisfaction of helping someone with difficulties is something you cant explain, you are just smiling the whole time, and it takes a lot of patience to do it, After sometime a special aid teacher came to me and asked me to go to some of her classes to see how she teaches, and have some experience so I went to the classes sometimes; That was was influenced , and inspired me to become an special education teacher.
I guess something that has made an impact in my life was my year in India, that is why I talk about it a lot to everyone; some think is interesting, some think is crazy, but if I wouldnt had gone, I wouldnt have learned so much about who I really am, and what im capable of doing.
