Meet Chantal Figueroa
My Name is Chantal, and unfortunately my name does not have an exotic
meaning as I would have hoped for. Instead Chantal stands for “rocky mountain”.
The place I was born and raised, however, is exotic: I come from Guatemala.
When I turned 17 and graduated from high school, I moved to Montpellier, France
where I was accepted to the arts program. I was going to register to the School of Arts, and in the last second I changed my application to Portuguese. School in France is very different and this changed my whole career. I don’t
know why I made such a spontaneous decision, but it lead me to live, study and
work in different countries around the world.
With a bachelor's degree in hand, I
moved to Salvador da Bahia Brazil, where I worked with the Health Department
and the communities of Candomble. Thanks to my work, I won a scholarship to one
of the first and most renowned universities in Europe, Universidad de Coimbra
in Portugal where I started a master’s degree in International Relations and a
minor in English Rhetoric. I finished my master’s degree in Montpellier. After
that I was employed in a marketing enterprise in Barcelona, Spain. I moved to
Spain without thinking about it twice, and even though Barcelona was incredible, my
first job was not what I expected. Corporate work was horrible and I felt
trapped in an air-conditioned cubicle.
So, since I had never lived in an
English speaking country but all my education had a form of English in it, I decided to jump the ocean once more and
explore for myself that country that I only knew in movies. Did endless
Coca-Cola refills, 24 hours super markets and Hummer limousines really exist? I
wanted to find out! And that is how I came to Minneapolis, at first as a non
degree seeking student and a French Teaching Assistant, and now as a master's student in the Comparative and International Development Education
program and a TA for Access to Success. Needless to say, I had never seen snow in my life
until last year, and I almost ran all the way back to Guatemala the first day my
ears froze!! But as they say in my country “love is blind” and probably numb as
well, because I fell in love with the U of M, the students and the program so
much that I don’t even feel the cold
anymore!
Chantal's contact information
E-mail: figu0027@umn.edu
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