Brazilian Kindness

Hi everyone!

Yep, I'm still alive! Just reallyyyyyy busy with the university that has started already, arranging things, spending the time I have with Cor and Carsten and meeting new people!

Last weekend we went to Foz de Iguaçu and it was one big adventure!!! It was a journey all the way to the South and took a while (20h), which make us arrive at 7 oclock in the morning, which surprised the hotel guy as he thought we trying to be really Dutch and arrive really late to not have to pay the night :P eheheh. This didnt work, but my crazy dad wouldnt be my crazy dad if he wouldnt have tried to convince the cashiers of the National Park next day that we have the Brazilian nationality in order to save some money in the tickets... hehe.The waterfalls were soooo pretty!!! Wish I could have stayed there longer. At least it was long enough to catch some beautiful pictures of the park and the waterfalls with sunset... I promise to post them soon! Ahh and I saw some 'wasbeertjes'! Yayyy!

As we were close to the borders (5 min from Argentina and around 30 min from Paraguay) we just hád to cross them ;P (now I scored a nice stamp from Argentina! Yay!). Paraguay was a bit bigger adventure than anticipated, even though basically everyone recommended us to not go there with a HIRED car, well you can guess... Cor wanted to go anyway. Which was pretty cool, Paraguay seemed like one crazyyyyyy chaos, everywhere, everywhere you can look are cars and people going around like ants, beating on your window, trying to sell you something... chaos chaos (wow, even São Paulo was nothing compared to that!!!) at least the border city which is called Ciudad Del Este. Pretty fascinating and striking to see the differences with Brazil. I actually managed to talk with people in my Portanhol (Portuguese-Spanish); just speak Portuguese reallyyy loud with an improvised Spanish accent and they will understand you ;) eheheh.
Oh yeah, so I was enjoying a lot until we encountered a corrupt policeman who take advantage of the fact that Cor had released his seatbelt for 2min and we were the only 'gringos' (=white foreigners) around, which ended up in the evil policeman walking away with Cors driving licence unless we paid him some money.... Crap.... at least we didnt miss out on the real South-American experience .. ;)

Back in São Paulo I almost went straight to uni, as we got back at 3 in the morning and I had to catch my bus to be in time at 5 heheh. Despite all classes starting really early (7.30), uni is cool! The campus is incredibly big! Actually its an entire neighbourhood, or city compared to Dutch standards heheh. Well it's even called the 'Cidade Universitária'! Every faculty has its own buildings, library and computer building, there's 6 restaurants, many small cafés, 10 banks, an art museum, a lake, a swimming pool, a biggg football stadion and sports centre, residential flats, some parks with lots of green, and every faculty organizes its own parties (which have the fame to be really good)! Prettyyy awesome no? Courses seem to be good as well, we had this week to experiment classes and choose afterwards. My Portuguese is coming along, I understand most of it! Yay! I think I will take Economic Development, Distribution of Income Poverty and Inequality and Social Contemporary Inquiries. The last one has a really really crazy professor though. This is what his final exam of last year looks like:
http://www.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://www.jagboy69.com/images/remote%2520control_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.jagboy69.com/humor.htm&usg=__Og1zRPSAXaGSLmDaNm2D2nxrbp0=&h=413&w=586&sz=32&hl=pt-BR&start=0&tbnid=8R8mxxs4yScExM:&tbnh=139&tbnw=217&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dthe%2Bfirst%2Bremote%2Bcontrol%2Bever%2Binvented%26hl%3Dpt-BR%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D575%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=341&vpy=87&dur=862&hovh=188&hovw=268&tx=100&ty=87&ei=p15bTOzFB4zCsAPyzsDZDQ&oei=p15bTOzFB4zCsAPyzsDZDQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=13&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0
So ehm... we will see!!

I managed to register at the police by the way! Unfortuntately I did not get the number of my document yet, which I need to open bank accounts, get a student discount card for transport etc., and my actual document will just be ready in 5 months, and ehm yes, that's when I'm leaving! Oh well, Brazil is not the right country to worry anyway. Foreigners learn fast here. Don't worry about anything, everything's gonna be ok! Yep, Brazilians are very relaxed, even the professors are late for their own classes! But ohhhh Brazilians are just so kind and helpful and always open for a conversation and a joke! Really 'gezellig'! For example, yesterday in the bus a girl started talking to me, asking where I was from etc., it turned out we studied at the same university, and as I didnt know yet about the possibility to take breakfast there for 0,70 reias (= 30 eurocents), she invited me to come with her in the other day! Also yesterday we were having a really nice conversation with a pizzeria guy, and then he offered us a free pizza for dessert! Yes, a sweet one! With chocolate and banana and cinnamon, and I promise you, it's absolutely divine! Should I start exporting it to Holland? Eheheh.

Oh some more uni news for Bertram, Denica and Christoph: I took a picture with John Nash!! Yes THE John Nash, NobelPrizeWinner of Economics!!! He was at a congress in uni and while Cor surprised his 3 big, black bodyguards, he pused me in the direction of the poor old man and quickly took a picture. So.. yay! (And no Jacqueline Eyasu and Denise, I'm not mentioning you because you dont like game theory anyway. Ha!).

Have to go now, talk to you soon!
We're going to Rio tomorrow by the way, to visit it this weekend! Might be going to one of the biggest favelas there as well, I contacted the guy of the blog which I mentioned in another post. Am really curious. Don't worry, you will be updated! =)

Love, Claudia