APRIL!!

The month of April was another busy one here in Brazil, though it was highlighted by several big events as opposed to lots of little things. 

This month was also the first full month of Portugues lessons.  They have been going great, I’ve been learning bucket loads, I can now have pretty good conversations with locals and only speak in Portugues with my host parents and at school. My favourite time of the day is when I can sit down with my host parents at dinner and have a proper conversation in Portugues.

Anyway as to what I’ve been up to. This month I was lucky enough to go to Virada Cultura. This is an event that occurs once a year and what happens is that the entire central area of São Paulo is peppered with different stages and musical acts, from death metal and a guy hanging himself from hooks in his skin to classical music and circus. People from every walk of life were out for the 24 hours that this awesome event last for. From 6pm on a Saturday through til 6pm Sunday night. This was a great night that I shared with a bunch of other exchange students. Unfortunately we couldn’t do an all night so we returned home at 3am and then woke at 7am to attend a Rotex Project. This “project” is a day organised by Rotex during which all the exchange students of the close by districts (there are 5 within 1 hours drive of São Paulo City center) get together and do something or other. This particular project involved visiting various museums around São Paulo, these included the Museum of Portugues Language, São Paulo Art Museum and Casa das Rosas (House of the Roses - the only original house left on Avenida Paulista). It was a great day because even though I had been to the museums before, I got to meet a tonne of exchangers that I hadn’t met before. There were many from Europe a handful from the USA and a truckfull of Mexicans. They day was rather tiring after only having 4 hours sleep though we ate plenty of icecream, experimenting with it whenever possible, any and every flavour was tasted that day, from mango to cashew.

Then later in the month brought Easter holidays. Whilst my host family separated between three different locations which I had visited previously, I was invited to visit the beach house of another exchange student’s (Nicola Brown - New Zealand) host family. Their house is in a condiminium 5 minutes walk from the beach at Barra do Sahy (The River Mouth of the River Sahy). Though I did come down with a flu whilst staying there it was still awesome to hang out at the beach Brazilian style. This includes arriving at 10am and leaving at 4pm, drinking fresh coconut water and eating lots of pastel (a traditional Brazilian food which is basically pastry filled with meat, cheese or chicken and deep fried). The weekend was great though the traffic getting to and from the beach and São Paulo was hectic! It took us 5 hours to make the 1 ½ hour trip there then 2 ½ to come back. 

One of the major things that happend last month was the District 4610 Rotary Conference and because of this we, the exchange students, had weekly rehearsals for our presentation that we would do later on in the month but more about that later. The Conference was really cool, though we only went for one day, we got to do our presentation during which I had to dance the samba solo in front of about a thousand Rotarians, only slightly embarrassing. We then got to eat an awesome lunch and meet a bunch of really cool Rotarians and Rotaract people. After lunch we all went and played some very competitive volleyball (competitive on the Brazilian side), the exchange students beat the Rotaract team, no surprises there!

At the beach in Barra do Sahy

A visit to the Mercado Municipal with the Portugues Class