Name: 【TEDx】What makes you special? | Mariana Atencio | TEDxUniversityofNevada
Uploaded: 2017-04-30T07:30:44.000Z
Duration: 17 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

My job is to talk to people from all walks of life,

why I decided to do this with my life and what I've learned.

a place that to me was, and always will be,

my parents wanted me to have a wider view of the world.

I remember one time when I was around seven years old,

"Mariana, I'm going to send you and your little sister..."

"...to a place where nobody speaks Spanish.

I want you to experience different cultures."

He went on and on about the benefits of spending an entire summer

in this summer camp in the United States,

that I didn't pay  too much attention to at the time:

I was thinking, we were going to get to summer camp in Miami.

and we were going to go a little further north, to Orlando,

My dad, however, had a slightly different plan.

Frоm Caracas, he he sent us to Brainerd, Minnesota.

and with no cell phone, no Snapchat, or Instagram,

was that the other kids' hair was several shades of blonde,

The first night, the camp director gathered everyone around the campfire

"Kids, we have a very international camp this year;

The other kids looked at us as if we were from another planet.

Or, "Do you go to school on a donkey or a canoe?"

I would try to answer in my broken English,

they were just trying to understand who we were,

and make a correlation with the world they knew.

or like characters out of a book filled with adventures,

But I had my little sister to take care of,

and embrace everything I could about the American way of life.

We later did what we called "the summer camp experiment,"

for eight years in different cities that many Americans haven't even heard of.

What I remember most about these moments was when I finally clicked with someone.

Everybody wants to feel valued and accepted,

and we think it should happen spontaneously, but it doesn't.

When you're different, you have to work at belonging.

You have to be either really helpful, smart, funny,

anything to be cool for the crowd you want to hang out with.

and from Caracas he sent me to Wallingford, Connecticut,

This time, I remember daydreaming on the plane

about "the American high school experience" - with a locker.

just like in my favorite TV show: "Saved by the Bell."

that my assigned roommate is eagerly waiting.

Her name was Fatima, and she was Muslim from Bahrain,

She probably sensed my disappointment when I looked at her

See, as a teenager, I wanted to fit in even more,

and I felt that Fatima just got in the way

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TEDx】What makes you special? | Mariana Atencio | TEDxUniversityofNevada

applause

embrace

realize

unique