Departure & Arrival

Dear reader,

Welcome to my first blog post about my internship in Brazil!
This post has a high chance of becoming the longest one, so lay down your stuff and take a seat... :)

I will start with the beginning: Why have I chosen for Brazil?
I heard so many beautiful stories from my classmates who did their internship here at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV) last year: Bart, Katinka and Lucas. Then I got the oppurtunity to come here too via Living Lab Biobased Brazil (LLBB), an organisation that brings Brazilian and Dutch students together to participate in exchange programmes about the biobased economy. The decision was made with full commitment: I was going to cross European borders for the first time in my life!

After choosing for Brazil, a period of arranging and planning began. I will save you from these boring, though important procedures. You and me, we'll both fall asleep ;). I can only tell you that I had to go to the Brazilian consulate in Rotterdam three times. From Brazil I got a lot of help from my ambassador Ana. After she arranged my room, one of my then known housemates Bruno helped me out as well. This way, I had no reason to worry about anything at all. Thank you Ana and Bruno!

In the meantime, I planned to study some Portuguese. However, since this is something that is postponed easily, not a lot of Portuguese was learned... Something I have to make up while being here.
After everything was arranged, it was time for celebrating carnaval and saying goodbyes to friends and family. It was very nice to have friends and family come over wishing me the best on my last weekend in the Netherlands. Thanks again via this way!

Wednesday morning, February 21
My Dad, Mom and sister brought me to Schiphol, putting me on the plane to Rio de Janeiro. The time had come to say goodbye for the last time. Some in advance unexpectedly tears flew right before I took off. Keeping yourself busy with getting checked-in is the best remedy in this case, so that's what I did.

The flight to Rio de Janeiro was pretty okay and when I arrived I had to check in for my flight to Belo Horizonte, which was about to take off three hours after my arrival in Rio. But first I had to change some clothes because we had flown across the equator, which meant the temperature had risen from -3 to at least 25 °C (in the evening), I'm not saying anything with this, I just wish you a lot of pleasure in the freezing cold back home! ;-D

When I arrived in Belo Horizonte, Vinícius' family: Bianca, Ana Flavia and Eduardo picked me up at the airport. Vinícius is taking part in the Living Lab Biobased Brazil programme as well. I met him during the annual LLBB dinner, where he offered me to have me picked up at the airport of Belo Horizonte by his family. The next day at 5:30, Nanci and Ana Flavia brought me to the bus station for the final chapter of my journey from Venray to Viçosa. During the car trip to the bus station I experienced something rather shocking... I already noticed the traffic is, softly said, pretty bad: People driving on the left side of the road all the time, taking over from the right side (which is also the wrong side ;)). So on the highway, there was this car right in front of us that wanted to go to the left lane. He didn't check his mirrors nor blind spot and as a result, he drove into a motor driver that came from his left side, driving about 70 km/h. A hard hit... When we arrived at the bus station, Ana Flavia and Nanci helped me getting on the right bus to Viçosa. Thanks again Vinícius and family!

During the bus trip, I saw many other differences, like poverty in the city of Belo Horizonte: Many people sleeping on the streets. I knew I could come across these kind of situations, but it's still not nice to see. When we got out of the city, I noticed the differences in vegetation between Europe and South America. Like bamboo plants ten times thicker than the ones in our backyard at home. During the bus trip, I saw many favelas as well. I was now able to confirm this beautiful country still has some important challenges ahead.

When I arrived in Viçosa 4.5 hours later, Bruno picked me up and lead the way to my new home. At home I met Matheus, Bruno's brother, and Hanníbal from Paraguay, who's staying here temporarily. The other three housemates will arrive in the coming days. The house is nice. It's old, but spacious and everything is working fine.

The four of us drank something and we took off for a lunch (together with Bárbara, also UFV ambassador) and a small tour through the city of Viçosa and the University's terrain, which is absolutely beautiful!

Going out for lunch or dinner in Brazil means paying for the weight on your plate. Later we had some icecream and guess what? The icecream was put on a scale too... Another cultural aspect is meeting new people or friends on the street: At home we just say "Hello" or "Good morning". In Brazil, people hug each other all the time.

Then there is the use of plastic bags. We went to the supermarket and everything was put in a seperate bag.

We had a laugh about it: Saving a plastic bag from every store in the city. But of course, it is a serious problem. I guess this one can be placed in the list of cultural differences as well. If there's one thing that's hard to tackle, it's the cultural related challenge. Not many Brazilians speak English, so when we were speaking English, everyone's looking at us, hilarious! I had to buy some towels and bed sheets in a linen shop, because only 5 hours before my father, mother, sister and me took off for Schiphol, I still had to get rid of 7 of the 30 kg! I'm sorry for that again...

When we returned to our house, I found six beautiful cards from my home front hidden in my luggage (I was already busy unpacking my luggage for the sixth attempt probably), of which I was allowed to open two. After we had dinner, we went to a bar. We enjoyed some Brahma beer, which is pretty soft (fits me well in a certain way ;)) and we listened to some Brazilian Funk, of which the lyrics are way crazier than our Dutch Lil' Kleine and Boef.

Today was more a relaxing day... Writing this post, listening to music, playing Bruno's guitar with Bruno and fixing Matheus closet together with Matheus.

In the next post, I will write something about the content of my internship
Untill then, thanks for reading and take care!

Luc