What does it take for a Brazilian woman to not only move to Turkey, but also happen to be a YouTuber - mainly in Turkish? Well, for the 28 year old Tourism Specialist and Youtuber, Andyara Angelica Sevinç - AKA Andy Sevinç, natural from São Paulo, it took a handful of random events.

Born into a family of artists, Andy was raised in the countryside of São Paulo between books, jazz and a lot of contemporary culture. When she was a teenager however, her parents divorced and like many of the divorced kids, she was in between houses for a long period of time.

When she was deciding which career she would go for in University, her mother married a Turk still in Brazil. Years later, the newly wed couple moved to Cappadocia and Andy stayed in the city to finish College and see where life would take her. “At that point I was working, I had a boyfriend and I was studying Social Communications”, she tells The Dank Project.

Very attached to her mother and her new family however, Andyara saw herself learning a lot about Turkish culture, Turkish language and how life works on this side of the world. The year was 2013 and she was in her 2nd year of graduation when the biggest plot twist happened: her choice of degree was discontinued, her relationship was over and her landlord requested her apartment back. “At that point I was like: ok well, I think I’m being kicked out of the country!”

Established in Turkey for a long time, her mother owned the Tourism Agency Kleos Tourism, specialized in packages from Latin America to Turkey. Insisting to have the daughter next to her to follow up with the family business, her mom convinced her to try her life in Turkey.

“It wasn’t so much of a strange land for me, I came into a family so I wasn’t 100% yabancı (foreigner), but it was a big shock and I didn’t want to be ‘the boss daughter’ at that point and started my own career working on luxury hotels in Cappadocia.”

And so she did for many years. In between jobs, but still in the luxury hospitality business was where Andy met a lot of people, improved her Turkish by herself and happened to meet her (now) husband.

With an extremely funny personality and coming from a continent where almost everything is different from how life works in Turkey, her coworkers and friends were constantly insisting that she would create a channel on YouTube or a profile on social media to show the world how a Brazilian sees life in Turkey.

In 2017 she decided to give it a chance, she created a channel in Portuguese initially. “It was such a trial and error process. I grew so much in such a short period of time, but I grew in the worst possible way!”

Her profile started to be bombarded with internet haters calling her names and cursing her life - simply because she resides in Turkey. “At that point I was fed up with my career and deciding what would be my next move. I was frustrated with all the things I had to read, so I chose to shut down the channel and gave into my mother’s wishes of working together.”

Between the years of 2018 and 2019, she used all her Youtube skills in her family tourism agency, showing the world the good hidden gems in Turkey and all the amazing things that go way beyond common sense. Life was going well, they were growing and she was trying to calculate a perfect formula to balance real life and YouTube.

Pandemic & the whole new career that came with it

As we are all very (very much) aware, the 2019/2020 beginning of Pandemic brought far too many life changing events to absolutely everyone in the world. It wasn’t any different for this Brazilian trying to thrive in Turkish lands.

“Last year was the scariest moment for Tourism business owners. I sat down with my family and told them: either we use our creativity to continue our business strong, or we will die.” So they did virtual tours in Cappadocia for Brazilians, re-branded their business Instagram and made a weekly video plan to show the world.

“I missed doing videos for fun though! I missed talking about the funny differences that are between Brazilians and Turkish. I missed telling people how life here is cool, but funny. Some people call me a comedian - but I’m not accepting this title yet!”

With that in mind, just a couple months ago she created a personal project called Andy in Turkey, where she creates reels and IGTV with small - and absolutely funny - ways to express how foreigners live here.

“It just took such a random course when it grew so much and people started reaching out to me, sharing the videos, calling me a comedian and even texting me all these positive reactions!”

Andy has now decided however to focus on videos in Turkish only. “After a few pools on the new Instagram, I have realized most of my followers are Turks interested in knowing how we live life here. It is more than common to hear ‘but why Turkey?’ and well, here I am, answering!”

You can find Andy on her personal Instagram and on her - now fully in Turkish - new project's page.