Discovering the Unknown

by Brenda Goulart (Brazil)

A leap into the unknown Peru

“un·known”: This is how the world appears on google when you search it. Unrevealed, mysterious, undiscovered, unfamiliar... all these words are synonyms to unknown. And what about the meaning? Something you don't known or don't well-known. Scary, but really simple. What do you think about discovering the unknown? If you felt scared by this sentence, imagine how I felt when I did it. Me, a 17 years old girl at the time, going to an unknown travel with people that I didn’t know, all by myself. Yeah, a lot of unknowns. Even so I went for it, and it was AMAZING. By the time I didn't know that this trip would be one of the most important things in my life. So, being honest, I was scared as hell. I went to Peru to be part of this program called Latin American Leadership Academy, and I’m 100% sure that the connections I made there will be forever. People from different countries, cities, cultures... just teenagers. We spent a hole week together trying to figure out how to be a leader of our community, how to be the leaders of the future. In our free time we danced, we shared dreams, cultures, talked about nothing and everything at the same time. We also used to stay up all night doing nothing and being tired the next day, just because we didn’t wanted it to end, and that was something that touched me a lot. Furthermore, by coincidence I turned 18 years old in the middle of the travel. A special moment with special people, can I ask for more? I don’t think so. I started this story telling you that I was afraid about discovering the unknown, and if you ask me right now how I feel about this I would say that I’m definitely SCARED AS HELL. But I think this is good, right? Because being scared about things you don’t know give you the chance to be surprised about what is coming next.