Last weekend, I was so lucky to be able to meet up with my friend Gustavo and stay with him for the weekend with 3 other IHP-ers. Gustavo and I were both exchange students in Denmark together and hadn't seen each other in almost 2 years. He lives about 6 hours north of where I am in Sao Paulo, so I invited Barby, Mike, and Nick to come along for the weekend so I wouldn't have to travel so far alone, and because Gustavo and his family live a 5 minute walk from one of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil, so it was bound to be a good time. We took an overnight bus and slept most of the way, and Gustavo met us at the bus stop in his city with his girlfriend, Natalia, and we drove to his house. And oh my goodness is it a beautiful house!
The view from the top was unbelievable. No camera could correctly capture the beauty. You could see the ocean, the beach, the town, and if you looked reeeally close you could the Cristo Redentor statue in the distance. I wish I could have sat up there all day, but we had to go back down eventually.
To make the day even better, we were walking around the city and ran into a group of Rotary Exchange students! There were a few from Denmark so I got to use my Danish again, which is always nice :) They were on their Northeast Tour (similar to the EuroTour that I went on for my exchange). Gotta love Rotary!
This past week went by pretty fast! We have class from 8:30 until about 4 or 5 each day at the Santa Casa Medical School. Since me and my two housemates live right next door to two other host families, we all try and meet up in the morning to walk to school. It's about a 50 minute walk, but it's a nice way to save money and get in some exercise. Our class day also includes guest lectures, site visits to hospitals, neighborhoods, and NGOs, and group community building. This week our focus has been on women's health and maternity, and HIV/AIDS in Brazil. Our professors are nice to give us 15 minute breaks often and an hour lunch break each day. This week we also went to a Samba rehearsal for one of the Carnaval groups that was performing at the big parade this weekend. They're called Vai-Vai, and are one of the best in Sao Paulo. We got to see some of the costumes and listen to the drums as they danced around. Our large group of Americans were easy to pick out of the crowd from the clothes we were wearing and the way we were dancing, and they must of liked it because we ended up on national Brazilian TV the next morning! A man had interviewed me and another IHP-er, Nick, about the whole experience, and lucky me got a quote in on TV. You can watch it here: http://globotv.globo.com/rede-globo/jornal-da-globo/v/estrangeiros-participam-do-carnaval-de-sao-paulo/2391214/
My Portuguese is getting better! I'm lucky for knowing Spanish so well, because it's easier to understand Portuguese. The speaking part is coming along a bit slower, but I'm definitely learning new words each day! We have a translator here (several, actually) who come with us on site visits and translate for some of the guest lectures, but they also hold a "Survival Portuguese" class for us every morning from 8:30-9, so that has been pretty helpful as well!
This weekend we celebrated Carnaval, but I'm going to save that for it's own post! We leave Monday (tomorrow) for our rural visit where we'll be staying for the week. After that we just have one more week here in Brazil! It's crazy how fast time is flying.
Here's a few more photos from the past week!
The view from the rooftop
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