My name is Clarice Goulart de Oliveira Costa and this is me:

(click here to send me an e-mail)

I come from a small town called Ouro Branco. The labor market in the city basically depends on a steel plant called Açominas and that is why my parents moved there (my father works there) 25 years ago. Actually, I was born in Belo Horizonte but since my early days of life I moved to Ouro Branco and also spent my entire childhood and teenagerhood there, so I usually tell people that I am from there. Anyway, people from everywhere came to Ouro Branco to settle down and work at Açominas.

But at that time most women did not work as engineers and most of them who moved there had to find another way of making a living. So, it was then that Nancy decided to teach classes at her house. After some time teaching, Nancy and her classes became very popular around town since there was not much to do and English was a new thing to all of us. My parents, then, decided to enroll my brother and me in her classes and it was simply love at first sight.

It was in March,1989 when I attended my first class. I was seven years old and extremely shy. When I got there, I was feeling a mixture of shyness and excitement due to the totally new thing I was about to know and learn. There were about 15 students in my class (I believe all of them were there for the same reason I was and when I saw all of those kids I felt like going home) but suddenly that amazing creature of heaven (Nancy) came and welcomed me with a huge

and a nice

that made me automatically relax and want to long there forever.

I was simply astonished to see that interesting and different “tia” in front of me since she was very tall, blond hair, large hips, a very loud and energetic voice besides her exquisite figure.

After welcoming child by child, the class finally began. Of course it could not be any different from what we all know language classes were... We started by repeating a series of hellos, welcomes, greetings etc... However, that was for me a super thing! Until that day I had never imagined what it would be like to speak another language. Actually, I had not thought about it at all and that is why I got so fascinated by all the hellos and good-byes and good afternoons that I managed to produce or better to repeat that afternoon. All I know is that I got home that day extremely motivated and delighted by that one-hour class with that exotic but interesting teacher.

And then during the following years, it was sacred for me to attend my English classes with teacher Nancy. Since it was the only place in Ouro Branco you could learn English, after some years Nancy became quite popular and well-respected in the city and due to lack of room in her house she decided to move to another house and make of her old house her English school which happens to become ICBEU . Everybody just loved it because we would have a real place like a real school to go and learn and have some fun.

Her classes were all very exciting, colored and fun. At the same time she was nice she was extremely strict and would not tolerate lack of attention or parallel conversation. Students either loved her or hated her. But I believe she managed to please most students and parents. It is interesting that thinking of her classes now I am able to see and analyze them with different eyes. Her classes at that time were mainly not to say merely repetition and drillings. She did use lost of pictures and gestures as a way of illustrating them but basically those were her classes.

So after some time attending Nancy’ classes, I got the chance to have classes with a new teacher called Edimar. Nancy hired him to help her at the school. His way of teaching was very similar to her (I believe she instructed him to do so) and his classes were also based on drills and repetitions... but still very funny.

The years went by; I was at the age of fifteen and very much in love with English. One day my telephone rang and it was Nancy wanting to talk to me urgently. I got to the school as fast as I could and to my surprise she invited me to work with her as an assistant. I could not imagine that and I was extremely thrilled and surprised. The next week, I started working as her assistant. I would help her organize the paper work, receive phone calls, be responsible for her tiny library and its material. There was nothing better for me at that time... After some time working there, Nancy could notice my enthusiasm and commitment to my fist job and gave me a promotion: give extra classes for the students in need what they used to call CTI classes.

I could not believe again!!! I was going to teach!!! But how come? I was still a student and only 15. Anyway, I accepted the challenge and did the best I could. I became a would be teacher trying to teach English (the little I knew). After one year teaching and simply in love with what I was doing, I decided that I wanted to be an exchange student. The organization that had a partnership with the school I was working was AFS (American Field service).

So I applied and after six months I got the news that I was accepted and was about to go to Slovakia

(Click here to listen to Slovakia’s anthem)

as an exchange student. It was a dream. I was totally excited and delighted with the fact that I was going abroad for a year to a completely new and different place. In August 1997, I landed in Bratislava (Slovakia’s capital) and there I was all by myself experiencing a big challenge in my life. And although English was not Slovakia’s mother tongue, I was able to practice and improve my English due to the fact that since I did not know Slovak I had to get along with the English that I knew so far. It was simply a wonderful experience that enriched myself as a human being.

After one year living in Slovakia, I came back to Brazil and was totally in love with this experience and decided that I had to make something that would continue what I had started: working with languages. I had this ideal that if we the world could speak only one language, things would be better since communication would be easier and simpler to understand and misunderstandings would not happen because of lack of communication.

And it was then that I decided to take Letters as a way of continuing and giving life to my objective and dream. Successfully I passed my first entrance exam at UFMG and of course since the beginning I was sure that I was in the right place. The years I spent at UFMG were simply perfect and each day that goes by, I am more aware of my choice and its importance of it to my life.

This year I am graduating from college and since our life is full of surprises, I am back in my hometown, teaching and working with that exquisite lady that I once stepped in her classroom and instantly got delighted with her figure and her teaching. Now I am a teacher at ICBEU Ouro Branco, being able to fulfill a dream that I have being carrying with me for many years: diminishing the language barriers present in the world and consequently trying to make it a smaller and better place.

These are my first and ever lasting experiences with English …