Guided Entry: Brazil Intercultural Transition Program

Most foreigners who move to Brazil get the checklist right and the country wrong. They figure out the money, the documents, and then arrive to discover that Brazil is not a logistics problem. It is a cultural immersion no guidebook reaches.

This program was built for US citizens in committed relationships with Brazilians who are planning to put down roots here. Over 6 sessions across three months, we work through four layers:

Health: Vaccine requirements, private healthcare navigation in your partner's city, finding English-speaking specialists before you need one.

Financial: Sending money efficiently between countries, understanding how Brazilians relate to money, debt, and financial interdependence as a couple.

Practical: Housing, driving in Brazil, daily logistics, emergency networks, neighborhood orientation.

Intercultural: Brazil carries visible and invisible codes that only become legible through friction. What is said and what is meant rarely share the same surface. Race, colorism, class, and regional identity shape every interaction. Safety is navigated through certain strategies. Brazilian socialization - its relationship with time, religion, politics, family obligation, and the collective weight people carry for those around them - is not learned from a guide.

Not a visa service or relocation agency, it is a guided transition led by Sílvia Lorenso, Ph.D. (UT Austin Spanish and Portuguese Department), postdoc (UNC, Chapel Hill), Fulbright Fellow (Boston University), and former Associate Professor and Director at Middlebury School in Brazil. Dr. Lorenso has two decades inside the academic, personal, and professional dimensions of the Brazil-US corridor.

This is not a travel guide. It is the conversation you didn't know you needed before you started planning your new life.

I know the aches and the wonders of this transition - I've been there. Now I help others cross it well.