Rollercoaster of experiences

Past week it was like a rollercoaster of experiences. Once I stept in the rollercoaster I rolled from one experience into the next. I will try my best to take you on this journey, vamos!

As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I had an assignment of Portuguese with Brazilian language students. Now I finally had this assignment, which was a good practice for my Portuguese. Unfortunately, we didn't talk in Portuguese anymore. But I understand why not, they wouldn't understand a thing. Although I learned them a few words of Dutch. We talked for a hour or 2 in Portuguese and a little bit in English. 

The day after, I planned to work both on my internship and Portuguese. It turned out to be only Portuguese, Portuguese and Portuguese. I started with my homework for Portuguese class for that day and the homework that needed to be finished 1 or 2 weeks ago. I got some help from Ana, and soon it was time for my Portuguese practice with Samanda. We worked on Portuguese while enjoying a cup of coffee. While working hard on Portuguese we lost track of the time and came half a hour to late for Portuguese class. You understand with all this Portuguese I make quite some progress in Portuguese. 💪

Next stop the journey to Padre Bernardo in Goías! First of all, IT WAS REALLY AMAZING!!!

Together with Lucas and Katinka we left Viçosa early in the morning (06:40). We took a bus from Viçosa to Belo Horizonte and arrived in Belo Horizonte around 11 o'clock. The professor of Katinka called José picked us up from the busstation. We went to his house in Nova Lima for lunch, on the way he showed us some parts of Belo Horizonte. But my GOD, the city is enormous! Truly unimagiable, there was no end of buildings to see, favelas, office buildings... I tried to take pictures, but they don't bring truth to reality.

Next, we went in some hurry from Nova Lima back to Belo Horizonte to the airport. It was about 1 hour and 20 minutes flying from Belo Horizonte to Brasilía the capital of Brazil! Unfortunally, we din't show much of the city because it was already dark outside and we were focused on continuing the travel to Padre Bernardo which was 2 hours driving. After 17 hours of traveling we finally arrived at the farm near Padre Bernardo arround 00:30!

I slept on a bed of straw (really old fashion but cool too), and we weren't alone. In the bathroom we had the company of a frog, and Lucas and I had company of a salamander in our bedroom. The straw matrass was pretty hard, but I didn't bother I was really tired.

When we woke up we had a beautiful view. 

The breakfast was nice and after we got a tour by José. He showed us the farm, it was interesting to see how the dry the grains here. They dry it the old fashion way, with wood! Also there were some really big machines to work the land. José told us the farm is 3000 hectares, 3000!!! That is comparable with our municipalities Veldhoven, Gelderop-Mierlo or a little smaller than Nuenen!! Can you imagine?!

After the tour, José needed to work and we went for a forest walk. A men who works at the farm and know the forest went with us as a guide with a big kitchen knife! As you can expect, this is not a normal forest we know from the Netherlands. It is called an Alto Paraná Atlantic forest, it is a transition from the Atlantic forest to cerrado. I was advised to wear long jeans, but since I hadn't bring any with me I needed to do without. Walking in my shorts a lot of twigs scratched my legs, ending up with scratched and red skin. The forest walk took longer than expected and at one point we were walking along a rood while "desperately" looking for cellphone service to call for a lift. Because we walked very far from the farm. Some pictures below!

 And look who greeted us on our arrival back on the farm! Such a nice dog!

In the late afternoon we went on a sort of safari by car into the cerrado forest! It was quite an experience, standing in the back of a pickup car driving over dirt roads and partly off road! I have seen greater rhea's, real Brazilian cowboys, toekans, some other birds and a dead snake. Watch the video below!

The next day we had some time to rest in the morning and luckily the sun started to shine very bright! It was a really tranquilo morning, took a nice shower outside, I finally had the space and time to practice my dancing figures from the Netherlands. Unfortunately I had difficulties with remembering those and the more newer ones I ... forgot ... 😅 Or maybe I couldn't remember them because I was stupid enough not to put sunscreen on. Now I am very badly burned! After lunch we went again to the farmland, this time to check the grain (corn) and cows. I drove with the harvest driver one line of corn, it was really cool. Never thought I would see one this big this close and then even sit in it!

After this harvester we went to check on the cows, apparently they needed to be counted. It was kind of hard to see, they cows were kept on a very small paddock (normally they are free on the grasslands). The cows were really scared of us humans and tried to keep as much distance as possible. Adult cows stood together with young calves. One of the calves was pushed to the ground several times and cows stept on it.

On Sunday it was time again to travel the long journey back to Viçosa. On our way we stopt at a few places in Brasilía, one of them were the governmental buildings. 

Because we flew in the early afternoon we had no time to further explore Brasilía. But we had time to explore Belo Horizonte. We went to a museum about the history of Minas Gerais, but they also had a lot of minerals from across the world. I must say, the was the most interesting to watch. 

And again watch how big the city Belo Horizonte is!!

Meteorite

After the museum it was time to head back to the busstation. We took an Uber to drive us to the station because all the distances in this big city are pretty long. We finally arrived back in Viçosa around 23:00. When I arrived at my apartment I couldn't get in... I left my keys at home, but now I needed to ring the door. Luckily after 15 minutes Nathan could open the door for me. And I went to bed with some severe burnings but a really satisfied weekend! Boa noite!