On the Wrong Side of Orographic Lift

27 de maio de 2012


Portuguese Words of the Day:
paralelepipido = tile/stone on the ground
Carpádio=menu
Preguiça=laziness
Cozinha=kitchen
Garfa=fork

With my frantic language worries, I haven't actually described Joinville. I know that I have to learn Portuguese as fast as possible and take advantage of every opportunity that I have. Therefore, this post will be dedicated to describing everything that has happened since arriving in Joinville on Tuesday.

Joinville is a small city of about 600,000 people located in the state of Santa Catarina. I believe that it is located in a valley between mountains. If it isn't a valley, then the city must be located to the east of the surrounding mountains, and therefore it rains a lot. I imagine it is because of orographic lift--when an air mass is forced up the mountain, the cooling of the air results in precipitation. I haven't looked on a  map of the physical features of the area, but that would be interesting to see if the other side of the mountains are dry. However, since arriving here, the weather has been relatively nice, and it only rained a couple of days.

Joinville is also a "working city," so there isn't that much culture (or that much to do). There aren't any parks, and everything is relatively spread out. However, there are three main shopping malls-Gartem, Mueller, and Cidade das Flores, universities (UDESC and UNIVILLE), and companies.

The first full day I was in Joinville, I went to the AIESEC Local Committee (LC) office and met many of the members of AIESEC. We crossed the street to the Gartem Shopping center and had lunch there. After, I met Elisson, my "AIESEC buddy," who showed me around the downtown and the bus system. The downtown area is much busier than the rest of the city and features two of the shopping centers and other stores. Furthermore, there is a large amount of German influence here as seen in the architecture and the street names.

In terms of transportation, Joinville is a small city, but it is relatively spread out. Buses are an important form of transportation, especially for the students and are generally rather crowded. To get from my house to Instituto AMAR, I have to take three buses, get off at the motel stop, and then climb up a mini-mountain. The journey can be found in a promotional video for Instituto AMAR here. Luckily, Camilo works close by and can give me a "carona" in the morning to save 30+ minutes of travel time.

Downtown Joinville

On Friday, I began the first day of work. Instituto AMAR is a non-governmental organization that promotes civil society and helps those who need assistance in Joinville by teaching courses, selling clothing for very cheap, among other projects and initiatives. On Friday night, there was a get together for AIESEC-ers, with both the Brazilian students and students from all over the world. I met people from Tunisia, Portugal, Italy, and Japan to name a few countries. Even though everybody is has different backgrounds and speaks different languages, everybody was curious to know about the other cultures.

Today was a day for being relaxing. We didn't wake up until 10am, which is very late here (back at home, I could sleep until 1pm or 2pm...). Normally, the work day starts around 8am, but people wake up earlier to prepare for the day, etc. Many of the students begin work or classes at 7am and don't sleep until 12am or later. It is quite the work hard, play hard mentality. But even with working all day, the people here still have time for family and friends, which is really good. They are busy, but aren't in their own world.

Um pastel com frango e caldo de cana

As I was saying, today was a day of relaxing. The sun was shining (and I was able to wear sunglasses for the second day in a row), and we went to Dona Francisca and the mountains. It's interesting that just five minutes away from the house, the landscape turns to a more country-feel. Per usual, we ate pastéis (see the picture) and caldo de cana com limão (juice made from sugar cane) and then went to the mountains.

Daniel and me in Dona Francisca scenic point

sorry, eu não falo portuguese

To continue from the last post, the language confusion has only gotten more confusing! At first it was fine since with my hosts I could communicate in Spanish, and with the fabulous (and nice!) people of AIESEC, I could speak in English. But, today I started work at Instituto AMAR only to realize that nobody in the office speaks in English or Spanish, or any other language that I know. Also, in addition to all of the documents being Portuguese, I will be organizing events for the community in Portuguese...this poses a little bit of a problem. But I guess you could call it a good problem. I will have to learn the language as fast as possible.

In the past six days, I feel like I've already learned a good amount of basic Portuguese, but still not enough to hold a conversation. As a result, this morning was a whole bowl of awkward when I was sitting with two of the women that worked at Instituto AMAR. But Giovani and Maira from AIESEC came, and it was better. We met with Dilamar, the president of Instituto AMAR, and talked a bit of the expectations and what I will be doing.

My sentiments at work today

It can and will only get better (and easier!) from here!

Portuguese word of the day:
guarda-chuva = umbrella

We All Speak the Language of Cupcakes

22 maio 2012

Today, we spent the majority of the day driving 450 kilometers from Sao Paulo to Joinville. Normally, driving 450km by car on paved roads does not take nine hours, but the road we travelled on was through the mountains, had numerous radar guns and bizarre speed limit changes, and features 20 kilometers of one-lane traffic behind a line of trucks. But I will get to that after talking about final day and a half in Sao Paulo.

After spending the three days in Sao Paulo, two overarching questions were floating in my head. The first was a seemingly simple: where is Daniel? The other question was: por qué los estadounidenses no hablan más idiomas? These past few days, I have been speaking so much Spanish, as it is the common language of the four of us. Well, and the language of cupcakes, with words such as "chocolate," "vanilla," "gum paste." It is a bit confusing sometimes as I'm not sure if they are speaking Portuguese or Spanish, or Spanish with a hint of Brazilian Portuguese.

Yesterday morning, I met one woman at the hostel from Shanghai, China. We started speaking in Chinese, and she was in Brazil for a business trip. For the first time during the trip, I had my own secret language! So at the breakfast table, there was a mix of English, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and everything in between.

After breakfast, Daniel and I started the day by going to "Rua 25 de Marco," a famous street in Sao Paulo where there are many cheap things and wares and such. It is comparable to the Chinatown in New York City, just overwhelming with sights to see, stores, people, and everything else in between. I am certain that Daniel and I went to every single store that sold items for the kitchen and cooking. Somehow Daniel was able to spot every single store that sold even just a plate…and of course, anything cupcake shaped.

After a solid, four hours of browsing every single store the "25th of March" and the surrounding streets, we changed focus and went to the opposite: the luxurious mall of Iguatemi, where it is very important to check in on FourSquare at Louis Vuitton and Chanel. The day ended with dinner at sushi Matsuya with Vani, a good friend of Camilo and Daniel, and her son Daniel.

Today (Tuesday) we "hit the road" and made the 450 kilometer drive from Sao Paulo to Joinville. Scenically, the drive was all right. There were parts where there was endless construction, in efforts to increase the number of lanes of traffic. There were also parts where there was a single house in the mountains. My favorite scene is of the fruit stands, where you drive for kilometers in the mountains, and then come to a clearing where there is a stand with more fruit you can count. Below is a photo of one of the said fruit stands:

We also stopped in Curitiba in Paraná for lunch (pasteles con carne, what else...) and cupcake supplies since you cannot find cupcake linings nor some of the other supplies needed in Joinville. Furthermore, Daniel is going to make 1250 cupcakes by Friday for an event. I wish that I had taken a photo, but all I can say is that the amount of supplies took up about two seats in the car.

Finally, after nine hours, we arrived in Joinville. Apparently you will know when you are in Joinville because it will start raining. Surprisingly, it was not (and it currently is not either). By the time we had arrived, it was dark, so I couldn't see much out the windows. Tomorrow, we explore Joinville!

So Much Craziness to Finally End Up in Sao Paulo

The past forty-eight hours have been an absolute whirlwind. It began three hours before my initial flight to Sao Paulo via Detroit. My first flight was delayed forty-five minutes, which I thought was fine until I realized that I only had 53 minutes to transfer in Detroit. Not going to work. So I received another phone call a bit later saying that my flight was changed to fly through Atlanta. And my father, seeing that my flight was delayed by 45 minutes thought that we could leave for the airport 45 minutes later. That would normally work, except it was rush hour time. By the time we arrived at the airport, I was running super late, and I ended being "one of those people" that had to cut the security line. And of course, when you're running late, it feels like everything moving in slow motion. Finally, I made it to gate 13, only to realize that my flight was further delayed and that I didn't actually miss it.

Upon arriving at the Sao Paulo international airport nearly fourteen hours later, there was a sentiment of: "why am I here? I don't speak any Portuguese." As a side note, the public phones are super confusing to use. But once I found Daniel, all was well. And eventually, Camilo found his father, who landed about an hour after I did. Then, we drove into the city.

I wish I could say Sao Paulo and Brazil were what I expected, but I didn't know what to expect. It feels like there is a mix of European influences and Asian influences all within the city. We walked around the city and went to Chinatown. I was a bit surprised that there weren't as many skyscrapers as I had imagined and that (parts of) Sao Paulo weren't as crowded as I had thought they were. I was also surprised that many of the stores were closed, as it was a Saturday afternoon. Night was quickly advancing, and by then we were all exhausted--Daniel and Camilo left Joinville at 3am to drive to Joinville; Hernando, Camilo's father flew in from Rio de Janeiro; and I was travelling from Boston. We retired back to the beautiful Hostel Vila Bonita, and let's just say I don't think I've ever slept for 15 (inching towards 16) hours in my life.

First Post. Still in USA

Hey everyone, this is my first post regarding my trip to Joinville, Brasil in the Santa Catarina region! To begin, I'll be there working with Instituto AMAR from May 18, 2012 to August 12, 2012. A few updates on where things currently stand:

First, I've officially booked my ticket from Boston to Sao Paulo to Joinville. This took unnecessarily long because I didn't actually realize that you could change the TAM website to the U.S. version and was trying to figure out what a Brazilian CPF was.

Next, I spoke to my host couple, Daniel and Camilo via Skype. It turns out that Daniel doesn't speak much English, so hopefully I will learn some Portuguese and brush up on my Spanish. They showed me around the house, including my room, which Camilo said was "messy" (obviously he hasn't seen my room) and the kitchen, which features a large, almost industrial-sized oven, as Daniel is a cake designer (http://danieldamazio.com/)!

We also spoke about coordinating a trip to Sao Paulo. They are planning a trip to visit Sao Paulo the same day that I arrive there, so they were thinking that we could drive down to Joinville. Plus, I opened a fortune cookie tonight that said: Ask a friend to join you on your next voyage. More details to follow...

T-minus four days!