Our Adventurers Abroad feature this month is a chapter from my new book Adventurers Abroad: The New American Expat Generation.

“The idea of returning to Rio did not really hit me until I got home from my trip. I really loved that place and wanted to go back. About a month or two before graduation, I was not sure what I wanted to do with my life, so I decided to look at the things I really love, like travel and writing and meeting new people. I also like to teach and thought that might be a good way to get back to Brazil.”

South America had always fascinated twenty-two-year-old Will Martinez but his family’s annual vacation never seemed to include Latin America. While working in his school’s study abroad office during the fall semester of 2013, though, he ran across an international relations study program in Rio de Janeiro that finally held the promise of travel to the continent that he dreamed about. The month Will spent in Rio the following January decided his destiny.

Born in Philadelphia and raised in Greenville, Delaware, an affluent suburb of Wilmington, Will and his younger brother grew up living the life of an upper-middle class family, playing tennis and golf and excelling in school. His father is a long-time client representative for IBM and his mother, who also worked at IBM for a while, is an elementary teacher. Will’s grandparents owned a travel agency, which allowed the family to often travel internationally.

After high school graduation, Will chose to attend exclusive Hofstra University on Long Island for its communications program and its proximity to New York City.

“Coming from a small town of about two thousand people, I was always fascinated with New York. That whole fast-paced lifestyle really appealed to me. Hofstra seemed perfect for me because it was just seven miles from New York City and had a very good school of communication. I had a double major of public relations and global studies, with a minor in drama.”

While in school, Will got a job in Hofstra’s study abroad office and found the idea of living and studying in another country very interesting, especially since one of his majors was global studies. He had never been to South America, so he spent much of his time researching education opportunities in Brazil and Argentina. In the winter session of his last semester at Hofstra, he found a one-month program called “Summit Global Education” that seemed promising.

“Since I worked in the office I had access to a lot of resources and information about different countries. I started researching South America by looking at the culture, history, music, the people and even the films of Brazil and Argentina. Summit had an international relations program in Rio de Janeiro for the month of January that attracted my attention. It was going to be held at ESPM, which is a marketing and communications school in Rio. The program seemed so perfect for what I wanted and it also was my chance to finally get to visit South America.”