As time goes by: two months in Brazil

Hello everyone!

The last post was about our trip to Salvador and right after we came back to Vicosa, I was invited to go to capital no. 4.
After Rio de Janeiro (capital of Rio de Janeiro) (which only was a stopover to go to Belo Horizonte), Belo Horizonte (capital of Minas Gerais) itself, and Salvador (capital of Bahia) we would go to Vítoria (capital of Espírito Santo) the next weekend. We were going to visit some friends and old housemates there.

Together with Berginho, Tales and André we were going there by car. The trip was very nice and I was able to see a lot, especially of the state of Minas Gerais, which used to exist of forests completely. It was cut during the colonisation because during that time, the word 'environment' didn't exist at all. Minas Gerais is very hilly and most of the land is used for agriculture. During the trip we saw many coffee plantations and I was told that Minas produces one of the best types of coffee in the world.



When we arrived in Vítoria we met Carolina, Catherine, Sávio and Heron and we had a nice evening with lots of laughter.
The next day we went for a city trip by car and visited a rocky beach to see the view. In the evening we went to a party, which had something new: not just for the amazing view at the beach but also for the electric music.





The next day we got up rather early to leave for Vicosa again. All in all it was a long travel for such a short trip, but the next day everyone had to go to university again. Even though it was a short trip, I can say that Vítoria is a beautiful city!



Then about my internship: I booked some progress even though I had this delay that I talked about previously. Most of the work so far existed of a literature study. 

About the Troca (de Saberes): I'm understanding more about the meaning of this event. It's not just an Exchange of Knowledge (Troca de Saberes) during the Farmers' week at UFV. It's been an exchange of knowledge every meeting so far, since everybody has his or her input during the meetings. The only thing is that it's hard to understand the topics when you're learning Portuguese. There are many difficult and abstract topics to be discussed. I would compare it to reading a very difficult, technical text in my own language. You have to be really focussed or you won't know what you're reading actually. Sometimes, some of the other Brazilian participants even say: "What have I been reading here?" You can imagine that it's difficult for me to understand what's being discussed. When you're learning Portuguese it's easier to start with something like 'Nijntje' (or 'Miffy' in English)... Just to give you an idea. Last week we had a meeting in the middle terrain of UFV, to present what's Agroecology about.



Next week on May 3rd, I will be giving a presentation about any topic I want. Since one of the conditions of our internships at HAS University is an assignment related to Health & Safety, I'm going to implement this (partially) in the presentation. Since my classmates who came here last year already discussed literally everything about the Dutch culture, I will be presenting about the European Union. I know, these seem to be tough subjects (and probably they are), but I will give it my best to make it interesting.

In the next post, you'll read how the presentation went.

See you!

Luc