Finding a Rhythm

First of all, I want to thank you all very much for all your kind comments and reactions I receive from you guys 😃. It gives me the energy and motivation to keep writing for y'all 😊. 

Since I have been ill a few days and other days I have been very busy I am a bit late with this blogpost. But there is enough to tell you all. So enough off this small talk and lets continue to the real thing. As always, muito prazer!

The day after Juiz de Fora, a friend from the Netherlands arrived. Lucas who is also studing the same as me will start his internship too in Viçosa. So I will do my best to show him the way around Viçosa 💪. The ambassadors from the UFV who help all the international students with what ever help they need had organized a picknick! All the participants brought something to eat or drink to the picknick (preferably something typical from their homecountry). So there was a lot of different food to try, especially because there are a lot of people who came. 

One of the ambassadors who is also one of my Portuguese teachers (Mateus) brought his guitar with him. He played some typical (I presume) Brazilian music, and soon everybody who could sing the language sang with him. 

Finally we took an awesome group picture, so we can always remember the special time we had here with all the new people and experiences! With all the Brazilian ambassadors and international students from Italy, Colombia, USA, France, Japan, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Mexico.

👇 See below 👇

Thank you all!!

Afterwards in the evening we went back to the center of Viçosa. While walking back, a few stray dogs joined the pack. They really considered the group as their pack and they were protecting us from most outsiders on foot. But none of the cyclists or cars were save, it was funny to see how crazy (louco) the dogs were. Running behind (or sometimes even in front of) cars, luckily no dogs were harmed. 

So that same evening it was finally my change to dance my long desired forró (because during the first opportunity I was ill 😞). So ofcourse I went! I went together with Micael one of the ambassadors and forró teachers. He learned me the first basics and I must say it went well. I even learned how to guide a women to spin turn one time. The Monday after I immediately signed up for the forró classes. 

I hope you can see something, it is nog me dancing

I must say in the past 2 weeks my plan of actions for my project finally gets some good shape. I am really making progress finally, because I really had a hard time to get a working drive in the Brazilian way of live 😌. Only need to do some more literature study and adding my literature sources 😩. Unfortunately, the Portuguese classes don't go that well. I even took a extra class one time! But its really difficult since one of the teachers (the theoretical) doesn't speak English. I often sit in the class while thinking, what am I doing here? I don't get a word of what the teacher says. And when I just repeat her I often don't know what I am saying 😅. But still, I am motivated to learn, only I think I need to learn it more on a different way... 😶

So one day I went lunching with the master student Ana with whom I work together in the project. During lunch a few stranger students came sit on our table (since the university restaurants are very crowded). When they noticed I am a foreign student they literally took the opportunity to both talk English to me and teaching me Portuguese. I noticed (and its funny) that many Brazilian people who I meet are really eager to teach me some Portuguese. But in our conversation we spoke about different subjects. We talked about the TV series "Vikings", bicycle garages we have in the Netherlands, religion, life in the Netherlands, my opinion of Brazil and politics. So I must admit, I made a deal with them (#Foratemer!), I hope I don't get caught...

Next day I had my first Skype meeting with my teacher in the Netherlands. We talked about the project and difficulties I ran into. But also about all the things I experience outside my project. And he was surprised that so many Brazilians are so open to talk in all honesty about their country and their corrupt government. (Yes I talk with more Brazilians about politics and other deep matter). Because my teacher was so curious about these subjects I made another deal; I will probably talk in one of my coming blogposts about the politics and what the Brazilian I spoke with think about this matter.

Another cool thing I saw my first hummingbird!! It was a black one, though, but none the less! It was so cool, I was so flabergasted. I looked up a picture from the internet for you guys so you know what it looked like, because I didn't had the change to make a picture because I was again so flabergasted 😁.

My professor told me about a believing that, when you see a black hummingbird it will bring you bad luck, if you ever see a white one it will bring you good fortune. Soooo, to bad for me, the weekend after I became very ill and still after 1 week I am not completely fine.

At the time we saw the black hummingbird, we were pulping some coffee berries by a old fashion pulping technique. 

When I came home, there was post from the Netherlands from me and even from Canada! Thank you mom & dad 😘 and Claudia & Erik.

Meu amor Flikka!😍

Compared to the structured and organized life I had in the Netherlands, I really need to get used and overcome to some hygienic difficulties. Like the first thing I noticed is that you can't drink the tap water, instead they use a filter or filtermachine (as I understand an activated carbon filter) to as I understand remove metals... Also there is no hot tap water available in most homes and the dishes are done with cold water. For drying the dishes, they just sundry them. At the streets every once in a few 100 meters there is a trash collection point which are collected (almost) every day around midnight (yeah midnight). Speaking of hygiene Micael showed me a pilot testing wastewater treatment plant at the department he and I are working. But this is more Lucas' subject, so I can't talk much about it. 

Wastewater treatment plant

So now continue to the more interesting matter, COFFEE!
Last Friday I went to my first coffee farm! It wasn't quite what I expected, it was better! I expected a large field with only coffee plants, but it was different. Also this was a farm which doesn't produce coffee beans for the production of the famous coffee drink we all love (just admit it 😉). This farm is to produce coffee plant seeds, and there were many different breeds of coffee plants. 

...I forgot to ask which breeds...😅

Yellow mature coffee berries

Red mature coffee berries

Ana showed me many things on the farm and together with the professor they explained to me a lot about the coffee production process and now I could see everything I only read about for real. Ana and I even took our change to sneaky eat some carambola, which was really sweet and sour at the same time. I also have seen papaja trees, lemon and an orange tree.

Both left and right pictures of the mature berries are different breeds of coffee plants.

Avenue to the coffee farm with coffee plants and trees on both sides.

Sun drying terrace

As I said earlier, the coffee farm is not what I expected. There are a lot of trees within the farm. And also it is mandatory for farmers to preserve at least 25% of its land for forest grow, in the state of Amazonas it is even 50%!! I think this is a good law which helps the preservation of forest in Brazil. Because a lot of forest land is cleared in the early years of Brazil to produce a lot of food. 

I will soon talk in another blogpost more about the general production process of green coffee. 

And now I would like to end this blogpost with one of the thing I really like doing in Brazil, FORRÓ. Yes, forró again... 😁 

This time I had my very first forró dancing class, and it was crowded pfff. I believe one of the teachers said there were 214 subscriptions, and I believe they were al present! It was an introduction class, and I really was wondering and impressed about the way the teachers or better call them instructors handled this big of a group. First they showed us the different styles within forró which are on different rhythms. After that we all stood in a few big circles and learned the basic steps. In the end we stood all in lines and performed the just learned basic in one dance with the different rhythm. I found it difficult, because everything was in Portuguese and with every new move which was announced beforehand I was constantly one step behind 😅. But now they know there are also international students present, next time it will go better I hope. 


That is it for now! Tchau!