Birthday & Clearness

Hello everyone and welcome to another blog post!

It's been more than a month now that I've started this adventure in Brazil. I think it has been the most eventful month of my - in the meantime - 21 year life.

Because that was the topic I ended my last blog post with: my birthday.


On Saturday morning, March 17th, after a short night, I went to CTA (Centro de Tecnologias Alternativas da Zona da Mata) with some students of the working group on agroforestry, named Grupo Apeti de Agroflorestas. We got there by bike and I think it was the most special bicycle tour of my life. We cycled through a beautiful place of rainforest: Recanto das Cigarras (literally translated as "Cicadas' Corner", or "Hoek van de Cicaden" in Dutch). It's named this way because you can hear the cidadas very loudly. I would compare this sound with the sound of crickets (in Dutch: krekelgeluid), but much louder. During the bike trip we also heard some monkeys... Pretty awesome to start your birthday this way.


When we arrived at CTA, we worked on the surrounding forest, we gathered dead and overflowing plant material and spread them on top of the bare ground, to increase the organic matter of the top layer. We also had a taste of mangoes and passion fruit. Amazing!

After the same beautiful trip back home during midday, we had lunch and relaxed a bit: everybody was tired.

In the evening, just before going to a Calourada, a nice surprise awaited me when my housemates got me a real Brazilian cake and salgadinhos (snacks).

It was a birthday I'll never forget! Thanks everybody!

Last week I got to know the groups of the Agroecology department at UFV: GAO (Group of Agroecology and organic farming), SAUIPE (Group of Integral Health in Permaculture) and Grupo Apeti de Agroflorestas (Group of Agroforestry). I'm participating with these groups, but I mustn't forget my other assignments too.

One of them is participating in the organisation of 'Troca de Saberes' (In English: Exchange of Knowledge), which will take place during the annual and national 'Farmer's week' in mid July at UFV. With a group of students and some professors, there's a weekly meeting in which the event will be build up bit by bit. In smaller groups of students, different themes are taken care of.

I'm also expected to carry out a research study, which will be a life-cycle assessment on the production of bamboo. Tomorrow we are going to a small bamboo farm, to see what it takes to produce bamboo.

Something else: Forró (Brazilian music and dance style). Yes, you've read it correctly: Dance style.

Many people told me I should try, so I thought: let's give it a go! In the picture, you can see Micael and me in the dance room. Micael is a teacher of Forró and he helped me with my inscription. I'm going to take this opportunity to give it my best shot!

Last Sunday we went to play football with some housemates and friends. It was hard for the gringo to deal with the heat, but in the end, it was nice to play. When we went home, we came across two capybaras!


Another nice prospect: Coming Thursday we're going to Salvador de Bahia until the following Wednesday. Coming thursday and friday are holidays in Brazil due to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Together with Luca, Luca, Elisabeth, Silvana and Gustavo we're going for this citytrip. We (six people, five nationalities) are all looking forward to this trip a lot!

In the next post I will write about our travel to Salvador de Bahia.

Thanks for reading and take care!

Luc

Getting used to the Brazilian vibe

Hello everyone and welcome to my second blogpost already! 😮

It has been almost three weeks for the second blogpost to arrive, but there have been some reasons for this huge delay:

First of all my laptop's keyboard had some issues which got bigger after my first blogpost. After I had brought it to a computer store three times without results, I decided to buy a laptop three days ago, which I'm using now. The only thing is that Windows and Microsoft Office are completely in Portuguese, lucky me because I need to learn Portuguese... and FAST.

Also I bought myself a bicycle, but I had to go back three times already because it had some issues. It's hard to find a good and not too expensive bike.

I had some more challenges that I had to fight myself through, but now it's time for the good things that happened.

To start with: All housemates have arrived safely: Matheus (aka Cebolinha), Douglas (Douginha) and Valentim (Vaval). Bruno (BB), Matheus (Berginho) and me (Gringo) were already here. A total of 6 fellas who get along very well. We already found out that translating jokes from Dutch to English or from Portuguese to English doesn't work out. The sense is just lost.

And now, back to school!





So, my project will be at the Agroecology department. It will have more than one aspect. The first part is organising a national event of agroecology in Belo Horizonte, which is called Encontro Nacional de Agroecologia (ENA). With a group of students and professors, the event is organised by arranging everything in weekly meetings (which are in Portuguese, so very hard to understand). These meetings also have a spiritual character, which I think can be good for your personal development.

The second part is to be determined in the following two weeks. It could be another assignment related to agroecology, or it's going to be a chain research related to for example the coffee or dairy industry, which are huge in Brazil.

For both assignments it is essential that I develop my level of Portuguese quickly.

Coming Monday I will start with Portuguese classes, twice a week at the department of lettres.

In other words: There's a lot of work to be done and things to clarified.





Via the group of ambassadors, a tour through the whole university terrain was organised. We got a nice view of all the beauty of UFV.

In the meantime, I did some groceries in the Dutch way...





As Vínicius said, it's an opportunity to change the use of all the plastic, I think it's possible.

I experienced many more things of the Brazilian culture which surprised me a lot. Sometimes it made me laugh, like the habbit to light up your car's safety lights to let everybody (authorisations included) know that you're not parking at that spot for a long time. We use these blue parking cards, safety lights can last for more than a day on your car's battery! 😂.

But on the other side, sometimes it made me feel shocked, like the murder on the Brazilian politician Marielle Franco, yesterday. There are many problems to be solved here, starting with the political system. And of what I read about it, Marielle Franco could have been taking the lead with this. Another attack on democracy... Which is making the rest of us into cowards because now we don't dare to say anything anymore. I think it's brave to step up against those who are harmful to your country. I sincerely hope that one day, democracy in Brazil will be just as strong as it is in the Netherlands. RIP Marielle Franco

Even though it's not easy, back to something positive...

My first Calourada (Freshman party).



A nice party where you pay for your entrance and an unlimited amount of drinks





Like it does almost every day until the rain season ends at the end of this month, it also rained during the party... So I cleaned my shoes for the second time that day, I had no idea what was about to happen during this so called "Calourada"...😂

Last weekend we had a party at our house to celebrate the birthdays of Cebolinha, Camila and me. The party was nice and it ended beautifully, with my new friends we made some music on the street. It was another great experience!



Yesterday morning, Anibal and me headed for the federal police in Juiz de Fora (4 hours and 20 minutes by bus), because of arranging our legal stay, which you have to do within 30 days of your arrival. The day before yesterday I got a flu, so I felt bad. Yesterday was tough, but we made it. I was happy to catch some sleep after the same trip home: 4 hours and 20 minutes. Today I'm feeling better, I hope to be back to 100% before my birthday this weekend.

Probably I have forgotten many things that happened, but they will be discussed in the next posts.

One of them just comes up: Don't ever try to put on some Dutch or European music on a party in Brazil, Brazilians just don't change their vibe: Funk. If you put on some nice house/DJ, electronic, rock, pop... Name it... You might as well turn off the power of the whole building. It will result in the same effect: People will stand still: the party will be killed. Fortunately, we got it up and running again.

I want to say one last Thank You to all new people I met during my first three weeks here. You really made me feel at home. Muito Obrigado!!

Thank you for reading again and the next post will be following soon!

Luc