First of all I want to thank every and each one of you who took the time to drop me a line about my recent citizenship. I was honestly very touched by your kind words and am looking forward to the upcoming ellection when I will be able to exercise my voting rights for the first time!

I just took some time off from work to respond to a few comments left on my blog about my use of the word America as a synonim for the country United States of America. First off, I mean no disrespect to anyone from the continent America. For better or worse, even when I was a young child in Brazil, I had always understood that America stood for The United States. No one has called Brazil, for instance, anything else but Brazil (unless you want to take a trip back in history, when it was named first as an island, and then as a “piece of land”). Taking a quick peek at Wikipedia I noticed that, though the term America is used to define the continent, it has also been used in many songs, videos, poems, etc in the same manner I used.

So, for those who may have gotten a bit upset about my usage of the word America, please accept my appologies, for it was not my intention to offend anyone. But I am very certain that someone from Chile wouldn’t want anyone calling their country America. Heck, I know that no Brazilian would want that either! So let us all just drop this issue aside, for no matter what happens, the United States will always be known as America.

Update:  I have disabled the comments on this post.  This is a subject that will get some people inflamed… and I understand them somewhat.  I too lived outside the United States, and contrary to what some people may think, I have a very open mind.  The whole world has called the Unites States as America.  No, we don’t think we’re more important than anyone…