We are all the same.

Forty years ago this month, my life changed forever.

My parents dropped me off at JFK Airport knowing they would probably not speak with me for the next three months, and that mail would take up to two weeks.

However, they were confident I would not only be fine, but that my world would soon expand in ways they had only dreamed of when they were my age… and they were right.

When I landed at the airport in Rio de Janeiro, I didn’t speak Portuguese and my host family didn’t speak English.

I was 16 years old when I arrived and had never traveled farther west than Pennsylvania, farther east than Nova Scotia, farther south than North Carolina, or farther north than Maine.

Immediately, everything – the air, the landscape, the language, the smells, the sounds, the expressions – felt so deeply alien, I didn’t know how I would survive for three months.

But I also remember – during that long drive from the Rio airport northward to the town of Campos, squished between members of my host family in the back seat of a wide sedan – the laughter and the reassuring pats on the back.

As I recall, the first night (or the second?) I arrived in Campos, our entire family drove somewhere downtown to celebrate something with everyone else in the city. Streamers, cheers, food vendors, music! Always, always music.

But I couldn’t figure out what they were celebrating. A Copa do Mundo?

And then I heard the words in English: World Cup

Still I was confused, so someone took my translation dictionary (my life source) from my hands and flipped through it to find the words: Soccer Tournament.

Apparently, Brasil had won a soccer game and there was pandemonium in the streets.

Like most Americans during the 1970’s, I hadn’t heard of the World Cup.

“Oh, Pelé?” I said.

They laughed. “Sim, Pelé!”

Even though Americans knew little about “football”, everyone had heard of Pelé, one of the most famous athletes on the planet back then… a magician with his feet.

That night would be the first of hundreds upon hundreds of times the Teixeira family would show me patience, empathy, and respect — carefully explaining the intricate details of their rich culture and beautiful language.

Living in Brasil, outside of my American bubble, was the hardest and the best thing I have ever done. It changed my world view and the course of my life.

And it was something I never could have done if my parents didn’t believe that people everywhere are good and loving people… no matter their religion, their politics, their education, their sexual orientation, their culture, or their financial status.

And it’s something I never could have done if the Teixeira family had not been so completely good and loving, generous, sensitive, and kind.

The most important lesson I learned that summer is this: If you get to know people who feel different from you, then you will learn to care about people who feel different from you.