CRISTIELI, 30 YEARS

Dear Family,

My name is Cristieli, but you can call me Cris or Chris, if you want. I am 22 years old. At the time of writing this introduction, I have just gotten my bachelor's degree in Law.

I live with with my father in a small town called Gravataí. Our family home used to be a farm, and we do our best to preserve its original gardens - as much as our 16 dogs allow it, anyway. Since my father spends most of the day at his autoshop, I do most of the housework.

I am an only child in a very big, loud, warm family. In total, I have 30 cousins on first, second and third degrees, and my childcare experience has been informally acquired by babysitting the youngest. From an age when I was barely old enough not to be babysat myself, I have regularly taken care of my younger cousins, such as Giovanna (now 15), whom I babysat from when she was 4 and who lived with my family for two years between the ages of 7 and 9; Leonardo (now 18), from when he was 6; Alexandre (now 12), from when he was a newborn; Lucas Gabriel (now 6), from when he was a toddler, as well as his little brother Pietro (now 15 months old). Be it by helping them make clothes for dolls, taking them to explore our state capital's parks and museums, or supervising their homework, I have found that they teach me as much as I strive my best to teach them.

After five intense years of Law school and months of deliberation and talking to former au pairs, I realized the next step for me would be a sabbatical period to grow my world view, before pursuing a graduate degree. Throughout my academic career, my interests have always gravitated towards the multicultural, which led me to study foreign languages – English, French, Italian, some Spanish and, as of a few classes ago, some German -, and do academic research in public international law and focus on extracurricular activities with a transnational element, such as Model United Nations, for instance.

However, I have never really traveled long distances, and now that I have completed an importante step in my formal education, the time has come to further develop myself as a world citizen and culturally enrich my life – especially if I choose to pursue international law in my career. There is only so much learning that can be achieved in a classroom, and a sabbatical period away from the theoretical shelter of academia to acquire real world experience seems the next step at this time of my life.

My hobbies encompass reading, writing, watching movies, hiking/running and, more recently, cooking. I am lucky to have an excellent cook living next door – my grandmother –, who has been teaching me life-giving family recipes. Another activity I love - but I am not sure that can be classified as a hobby - is going on road trips. Finally, I have impressively bad-yet-resilient karaoke skills.

I am really looking forward to meeting you, and I hope we can enrich each other’s lives and have a lot of fun together as a family.

See you soon!