hellooo! welcome to my wonderful website :3 here I will be posting updates about my exchange year in Brazil! for now, most of my posts will be in english. click to follow my site!.
hi everyone! this is my first blog/site/whatever post from Pirapora, Brasil! i'm having a wonderful time here so far, it's 9:45pm and i am exhausted but i know that if i don't make this first post, i will never end up doing it at all! so here goes :)
i got off of my plane from São Paulo to Belo Horizonte today at around 11:55am and spent at least 30 minutes waiting for my checked bag to arrive. finally it did, and i met my host family right outside of baggage claim! they could not have been kinder and despite our very prominent language barrier (mostly my fault) i feel like we got along very well instantly. after we crammed my stuff in the car, we set off on the 4 hour journey from Belo Horizonte to Pirapora. it was awesome!! we stopped at a restaurant along the way where i met my host sister's aunt, uncle and cousins, and we had very good food. here, they have "coca-cola sabor original menos azuçar" which is like LITERALLY what i've been saying needs to exist forever (coca cola with less sugar but no artificial sweetner). turns out it does but not in america!! anyway, after the restaurant, we got back in the car and kept heading for Pirapora. my host sister (Leticia) and her friend (Vicki) and i were attempting to communicate with eachother, often relying on google translate when we had service, but we were able to sing along to some of the same songs which was cool. after about 4 and a half hours of laughing about having no idea what we were trying to say to eachother, we arrived in Pirapora. it does remind me of schenectady in some ways!! i really like it. Leticia and i are sharing a room right now, and i'm impressed and inspired by how tidy her room is compared to mine at home. i will try to include some pictures! after i got settled and took a much needed shower, i had pizza (shredded chicken and corn on top, eaten with a fork and knife) with my host father, Tiago, and we attempted to learn about eachother without using google translate. this lasted about 7 minutes of on and off conversation before he finally got his phone so we could communicate better. we both like a lot of the same music!! i am really excited to improve my portuguese so i can learn more about everyone. i'm really liking it here.
well, i think that's about all the news that's fit to post! tchau, peace out, hope u enjoyed :3
img. 1 - são paulo!! img. 2 havaianas (flipflops but better) img. 3 the window in my room
hello! so far today (it's like 2:15pm now) i woke up around 9:30, had pao de queijo for breakfast, (which is like cheesy bread but it's a ball and it's really good), and drove with my host brother and sister around town. my sister keeps saying how small it is but honestly it is much bigger than a lot of small towns in america. we went to the family restaurant for lunch and had steak, french fries, spaghetti, salad, rice and beans, all of which are tipical lunch foods. it seems like lunch is the biggest meal here. afterwards we got ice cream which is done similarly to frozen yogurt places in th US, but you scoop your own ice cream. i couldnt really tell what was what so i ended up with a weird mixture but it was still very good. they had a flavor of mint that tasted EXACTLY like toothpaste, nothing like the mint ice cream in the states. weird!! but not bad. afterwards, we did more driving. the river is beautiful! there are all these horses that hang out right next to it and eat grass. it doesnt seem like they belong to anyone but apparently they have horse racing here. some people were out fishing today. we might swim in the river this weekend! my portuguese is improving i think but i still can't really understand anyone unless they speak reaaally slowly.
second day pt two! leticia and i went to her friend's house for one of her friend's birthdays which was cool. we played a lot of games that usually involved a volleyball or something similar. it was neat! i learned a new game where you have a table between 2 teams of 2 people each, and they have to pass the ball to eachother atleast once before hitting it against the table to the next team and if someone drops it the other team gets a point. if that makes sense. it's really fun!! afterwards we went to the supermarket which sort of resembles lowes or home depot but for groceries. the butcher shop was a lot different than at home. there was also a cat in the parking lot. we got home around 8 something and had dinner around 9, which was like baked ziti but without tomato sauce which was super good.
that's about everything for today! tchau :3
img. 1 - leticia made dinner!! it was super good.
hello! not much to say about today. i spent a lot of time at the house while my host parents were working. for breakfast (café da manhã) i had a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and mango!!!! i love mango. i organized some of my clothes and other things, remembered that you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet, and fixed some stuff on the blog!! so now the jump links at the top of the page should work Lol. we walked to get lunch and that was nice, it's quite hot. lunch was steak, meatballs, salad, some other things i don't know the name of but were Very good. so far brasilian food is overall usually salty. which i don't mind. after lunch we went home and made brigadieros which is like Super duper yummy. cocoa power + sweetened condensed milk and some butter, heated up in a sauce pan and then cooled in the fridge, with chocolate sprinkles. i talked to my host brother, daniel, a little more today. i tried to explain the american wealth system. it wasn't easy. he is a nurse in a maternity ward, he showed me a photo of one of the babies, they are so small!! very cute. afterwards, more of the same of doing nothing. it was a very relaxing day. sometime between lunch and dinner, i had another grilled cheese and ham sandwich and a banana!! the banana tasted pretty much the same as they do at home but slightly more flavor and slightly more tart. then, we had more of the brigadeiros because it had cooled down more and tastes better when it is colder. then, more relaxing. for dinner was hot dogs and papas fritas!! hot dogs are similar here except made in a pot and cooked in sauce and you usually put cheese inside the bun before u put the dog in there. also on top is some of the sauce that its cooked in, as well as ketchup or mayo or papas fritas. we had grape juice too which was yummy. we talked about present and past and future tense in portuguese and english and how confusing it is. anyway it is almost day four right now so i have to sleep. bigger day tomorrow! tchau :3
img 1. here they have very big bottles of coke! img. 2 brigadeiros!
hello! this post is coming super late, i am very behind on posting. sorry!! today, we had lunch and then went to the cvs-equivalent of pirapora. they have blueberry trident gum which i have never seen in the US. i'm probably going to buy some soon. afterwards, we went to leticia's friends house again and made more brigadeiros and worked on a present for leticia's boyfriend. it was very fun!! we walked home (about 20 minutes) and i got a blister from my havaianas. we saw lots of cats and dogs on the way home, including one cat that was pregnant. very cute!!
hello! this is coming a little late because we spent the night at my host family's ranch/farm on the river. it isnt really a ranch or a farm but there isnt a good word in english to describe it. it was a lot of fun! i met many of leticia's friends. she leaves for her exchange in mexico soon, on august 10th. i am going to keep the day four post short because it is already day five. we went to the marina at around 1 (they have like five cats!!) and took the boat down the river a little ways, which is the only way to get to the ranch, and spent the afternoon and night hanging out and playing games. people set up tents for the night, and i slept in the bunkroom with leticia and two of her friends. it was a lot of fun, and there were a few people that spoke pretty good english which was cool. i start school on monday, so it was nice to meet some of the people i would be seeing there.
img 1 - cat at the marina img 2 - view of the river from the marina
hello! a few posts in one day today!! we left the ranch this morning and headed back in the boat, and spent pretty much the rest of the day at home, sleeping. leticia's boyfriend is letting me borrow his guitar for the day which i am super grateful and excited about!! my hands hurt from playing after not having played in a while. it's a nice guitar and it's fun to be able to practice again. otherwise, not very eventful but a good day. tomorrow i start school so i spent some time preparing for that. i have to get up at 6am!!! so i have to go to sleep now. i will post an update tomorrow :3 tchau!
hello! first day of school was today. they have 3 years of highschool there, and there are several different courses offered but i'm not totally sure what they all are. i know there's sales, energy and something tech related and i think theres a few more. mostly the students stay in the same room for the whole time but they had me follow the english teacher around today at least for the first two classes. it's kind of hard to tell what's going on most of the time for me and everyone is always trying to talk to me, which is nice but overwhelming. there's a cat at the school but i don't know his name. apparently he isn't super nice. there's also a dog but the dog has no name. i've met a TON of people and i think i remember 2 names. they're all names i've never heard before which is probably why it's difficult and it's a lot all at once but i'm hoping i will figure it all out soon! i was so tired afterwards though that i took a 2 3 hour nap and when i woke up it was so dark out that i thought it was the next day already. school ends at 12:30 ish though so that's really nice. i don't have my uniform but a lot of people don't wear theirs so it should be fine for now. i think it worked out for the best because someone asked about the band on my shirt and i always like talking about that. i can't believe i've been here for a week already. anyway. i am very tired. tchau!
img 1 - the moon behind the clouds!
hello! today i biked to school with one of my new friends (jairo). it isn't too far (maybe like 14 minute bike) but apparently here that's considered a long way. we got out of school early because the power shut off in the school, so i went to jairo's house. it's very close to mine. afterwards i went home, had lunch, and took a nap, i was so tired. i am trying to figure out how to get my new sim card to work, so far no dice. i hung out with the dogs a little bit as well. i played guitar with daniel (my host brother) and leticia's boyfriend (gustavo), which was fun. daniel made burgers and fries for dinner!! they were really good. i'm starting to realize how pathetic my cooking "abilities" are. everyone here seems really good at it. so far i've been waking up at 6:30am each day and leaving for school around 6:50. school is exhausting despite the fact that i usually am not doing any work. everyone is always trying to talk to me and i usually can't understand them very well. but there are a lot of kind people. it's time for bed now!! tchau
img 1 - burgers!!
hello! today i biked to school again, but this time by myself. i pretty much remembered the path! it's mostly straightforward. hopefully i will remember again tomorrow because this time i will not have cell service. the lights kept flickering today but we didn't go home early. i met another one of the english teachers, she is very nice. i met with the first english teacher again and he gave me my uniform, explained everything at the school to me, as well as gave me more info about the area. he is going to canada next week for some sort of professional developement thing which is cool. i got a mini tour and saw the school cat, i think her name is ify? she is very pretty but apparently grumpy. i met a lot of people again and do not remember their names. Which i really need to work on. after school, i biked home, and then had lunch. afterwards we tried to go to the cell service store to see why my sim card didn't work and they said it was an issue with my american provider. So that's great. i feel bad but i'm not sure there's much i can do that i havent already done other than contact cricket again. But enough of that. after all of that we went home and leticia and i took naps, and then went to beach tennis with my host mom and vicky. it was cool!! the sand feels nice. i had tropeiro, which is like beans and meat and stuff. i think it's pretty good, its a dish that is pretty specific to minas gerais. afterwards, we went to vicky's house and i met her parents. they are very nice! vicky goes back to university in montes claros tomorrow which is very sad because she is really nice and i will miss her. now i am home and in bed and very tired. i wish school started less early. i think i will be taking english classes soon. the english teacher at the school is going to start teaching me portuguese which is kind of ironic. it's really good that i graduated early because now the school doesn't really have to keep track of my grades in a serious way. anyway bedtime now. tchau!
hello! long time no see! things have been pretty crazy lately. day 10 i went to two different classrooms, biked home, and went to the gym that night with leticia. it was cool!! it's pretty nice in there. we did arm day and i think my arms finally stopped aching like yesterday. i haven't gone back yet but maybe tonight!
day 11 i only went to one classroom, the 2nd year renewable energy (energias) class. i've made a few friends in that class and we had a retirement party type thing for one of the biology teachers that morning, so there was food and stuff. a lot of brazilian food involves chicken and cheese with some kind of breading. there's also a lot of different brazilian sodas, some of them are specific to minas gerais. they taste very good. i really like the energias class but there's this one teacher who's kind of evil. like most of the teachers, he doesn't speak english, but he made me explain "string" to the entire class in english. at least five times. it was weird. and he often asked me to answer questions even though i've never taken a class even remotely similar to solar energy, and i didn't understand what he was saying. luckily my friends told me what to say but it was sort of strange. i don't know how often he teaches in that room. later that day there was a rotary event that i went to part of before i got overwhelmed, left, and got churrasco skewers with leticia and my host dad. they were good. i guess eating chicken hearts is a thing here. they're okay. they taste a bit weird but they're probably pretty good for you. you can kinda tell that it's a heart so that's a little weird.
day 12 i went to the river briefly with some friends. it's pretty hard to get to the main river. you have to go through a lot of rapids and crevices and rocks and stuff before you get to the open area where you could swim. after that i had lunch and had a pretty chill saturday. the room was a bit upturned because leticia was packing to leave.
day 13 i made pancakes! it was difficult. in the house, there is no baking soda or baking powder, or brown sugar, and no measuring cups or tablespoon/teaspoon etc measurers either. All i had was a plastic cup with 100ml markers on the side which i used for the liquids, but i ran out of milk after like 200ml so i had to substitute the last 100ml with water and heavy cream. Someone put heavy cream in the freezer and after i put it in the fridge to thaw, it started coming out like glue paste. so i had to open the new box. i borrowed gustavo's baking soda. they wound up being surprisingly good though!! now that i am a little more familiar with the kitchen, i might try to make cookies. Probably not for a while though. After that, leticia did more packing and then we went to her aunt's house. they have a pool!! so that was fun. it wasn't too cold for me but for everyone else it was. i think i got stung by a bee while i was in the pool but the bee was dying so it didn't hurt that bad. we listened to lots of music and it was very late when we went home, which was rough because we had to get up at 4am the next day to take leticia to the airport.
day 14 we left for the montes claros airport at around 4:30am and arrived around 7am. we got breakfast and they had donuts, which here i guess are like bagels cut in half with frosting on top and in the middle. really good!! a bunch of leticias friends showed up to the airport to say goodbye. it was very sad. afterwards we had to go to the federal police to register me. we went to the wrong place first, and second, we went to this spot that looked a little like a mall, i guess it was a mall, but that was where the registration center was. we got there at 10am and were trying to do the registration thing until like 12, when we wrapped up one part and got lunch. No one in the registration center speaks english i guess, so my host father spoke for me the whole time. i had no clue what was going on. after lunch we went back, and waited for like an hour, and then i got my photo and fingerprints taken. i don't think i've ever had that done before. we went home afterwards and did pretty much nothing for the rest of the day. i slept in the car and a little bit at home. it was weird to be at home knowing leticia and i wouldn't be in there at the same time probably ever again. i tried to make a smoothie with the mushy apples that no one was eating because they were objectively terrible, but the smoothie wound up being almost worse than the apples, so i gave up.
day 15 i woke up late for school, but it didn't end up being too bad because the class i decided to go to today, energias, has a free 1st block on tuesday mornings. biking to school is a little annoying, but biking home is nice. today we didn't have the evil teacher. we had history, portuguese, and english class today. history is interesting. portuguese is too, right now theyre covering dramatic texts which is nice because it's actually something i know about. sadly i can't actually understand much of the material. i guess they had two tests yesterday so it's probably not the worst thing that i wasn't at school. i have to buy some stuff soon. it's weird that leticia isn't home. almost all of her stuff has been cleared out of my room, and it's very empty now.
hello! i am going to do a general recap of the last month, since it's been over a month since i've updated this! sorry about that. it's been busy! i've started going to the grocery store here pretty regularly to buy energy drinks and snacks. getting up at 6am and biking to school is impossible without caffeine so i've been buying a lot of redbull. i also bought cat treats to feed the stray cats that i see often! i've been going to the gym 2-3 times a week which is nice, except i usually go pretty late which doesn't help with waking up early for school the next day. my language skills are imrpoving and i'm making more friends at school. i've been making cookies for my host family because they don't really have the same kinds of cookies here as in the US.