Where to? Next stop Viçosa (MG, Brazil)

The weekend started well with an invitation from Micael to go to the Saturday's market. While I walked to the meeting point which was near Lucas' home, I noticed that some buildings really look like the time of colonization. Even it is not my first time that I walked there, I just now noticed there were some nice buildings. What do you think? Together with Micael and Paula (a Colombian exchange student) we walked to the market. There we went straight to a place were the sell Pastel's, it is a typical Brazilian fast-food. It is a crispy, brownish fried pie of filo dough (I think) and is filled with a variety of food options (meat, cheese or vegetables). If I knew this I wouldn't have eaten so much during breakfast. I tasted some of the sugarcane juice, it is sweet (as you can expect) but not that sweet to. It didn't taste wrong, but its not my taste 🙈. From this place you had a good look over the market, which is how I actually imagine a market. There where you o...

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 c...

Enjoy reading (muito prazer)! Before coming to Brazil I heard stories about the cultural differences. As I said in my last post, you pay your food per kilo during lunch. And as I see it, most Brazilians in Viçosa go out eating during lunch, except on Sunday when everything is closed. It is really tempting to eat a lot this way...  One of the most common dishes during lunch is rice and/with beans (arroz e feijão).  One of the mean cultural things I knew before and experienced pretty soon after my arrival in  Viçosa  is that  hugging people is really common. Even when you just met someone you can hug them, or they will 😉. It is really something you need to get used to it. And I am still learning when I should hug and when not, sometimes it gets really confusing.  One day we went for a long walk to the old internship of one of my housemates. It was a farm were they perform research with cows, some cows had surgery in order to look into and take ...

After a really difficult goodbye to family and friends the journey starts. Me and my mom spent the night before departure at Van Der Valk Hotel near Schiphol airport. This way we didn't risk to get stuck in traffic jam. At D-Day (Departure Day 😉) we had breakfast at the airport and again after a difficult goodbye we went to the customs. But time was short and the queue was really long, really... long... and we were the last in line. I figured we wouldn't make it in time to pass through the customs and board on time, short story we will miss our flight this way. (By "we" I mean Katinka and I, Katinka is a fellow student from the HAS who is also going to Brazil by Living Lab Biobased Brazil).  Sooo I asked an airport employee what to do, because our flight was already boarding and we have 30 minutes left. It was genius, we could skip the whole row and were directly at the customs turn. After the customs we hurried to the boarding gate and we were one of the last to b...

All this time I have such a surreal feeling. Me 24 weeks living in an abroad country and saying goodbye to people for half a year. This week lots of last goodbyes for the next six months.  Well I have good news, this weeks lots of things have happend. I have received my project description! I will do a research to the use off a biomass driven mechanical drying technique for drying fresh harvested coffee beans. Normally, the beans are sun dried and sometimes mechanically. There are some problems with a biomass driven drying technique. My job is to try solving these problems and/or suggest solutions.  Besides that there is a possibility I will help with a project which focusses on the reuse of process water which is used on the coffee plantations. Some more good news? YES! I have a place to stay in  Viçosa, a really good place! It is right in front of the UFV campus, an apartment on the fifth floor. The apartment is shared with two other students. I...