Rewind

While engaging in one of the most narcissistic activities in which one can partake, googling oneself, I ran across this article that I should have posted before taking off for Acapulco.  It's an article about my grant from August 11th, 2008, appearing in the BGSU Monitor.  I remember being embarrassed while posing for photos for the photographer in the Student Union right before I headed to work at the Bowling Green Language Institute.  Seems like forever ago...

BGSU graduate heads to Mexico as Fulbright Scholar

A study-abroad stay in Spain as an undergraduate was enough to convince Brandon Brewer to change his major. Brewer, who graduated from BGSU Aug. 9 with a master’s degree in Spanish, will now be pursuing his love of the language and culture full time as a Fulbright Student Scholar in Acapulco.

He will teach English at the Autonomous University of Guerrero, one of Mexico’s state universities. “I’ll apply what I’ve learned teaching Spanish at BGSU as a graduate assistant, and some of what I’ve learned volunteering as an English teacher,” he said. “My goal is to immerse students in the language and also give them the cultural aspect.”

But he is most looking forward to Fulbright’s required community-oriented project outside the university, in which he will work with students in a middle or high school. Depending upon the availability of technology, he would like to arrange a “pen pal” correspondence with a group of students in the United States. “The U.S. is having its presidential election, and Mexico just went through theirs two years ago. I’d like to get them into blogging and email to compare the two countries,” he said.

Originally a media arts major, Brewer grew up in the Tucson, Ariz., suburb of Oro Valley. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, he surprised his family by choosing to go to Alcalá, Spain, for a study-abroad program. “It was a big step,” he recalled. “I had never been outside the U.S., and I hadn’t known anyone who’d traveled abroad at all.”

He enjoyed the experience so much, he said, that he later went abroad several more times, again to Alcalá as a BGSU graduate student as well as to Brazil and Mexico. “I like languages a lot and I want to learn more,” he said, adding that he is also looking forward to the warm climate and living in a Spanish-speaking culture once again.