Curitiba Days

Oi!
Brazil e maravilhoiso.

These past few days have been so fun! We are in the city of Curitiba, located in one of the most southern states of Brazil, and known as the ecological capital of Brazil. Many metropolitan cities around the world have modeled their transit system after the system in Curitiba, and this city was the first city in Brazil to instill a rigorous recycling program. Throughout the city there are patches of forest that are open to the public and this city boasts large populations of Araucaria trees, trees native to this area, and these trees are home to many beautiful animals and special birds! It is a city bustling with energy! It was colonized by Europeans, mainly of Portuguese, German and Italian descent. The architecture is beautiful and colorful and the bus system is phenomenal!

While in Curitiba my group and I are studying Portuguese. I am enrolled in the intermediate class because of my experience with French and Spanish and I feel that this class is a good fit for me. However, SPANISH is NOT SO SIMILAR to Portuguese as one might like to believe( I sure thought I could get away with Spanish). There are many false cognates and lots of vocabulary words in Spanish that do not even exist in Portuguese and as you can imagine it gets crazy!! Portuguese is an extremely powerful beautiful language but it is very hard. I get frustrated during class while we conjugate verbs and create different tenses, but in the end it is very rewarding.

Aside from school, we have been doing fun activities. As this week is host family week I am living with a Brazilian family in the suburbs of Curitiba in a lovely home full of incredible people. I have a host brother Guilherme who is 20 years old who is so fantastic and a sister named Barbara who is 14 and is so incredibly intelligent and mature! We have fun going back between my Portuguese-SPanish mix of vocabulary and English. Oh the joy of culture and language!

We have visited this beautiful opera house surrounded by trees, visited patches of forest, visited the marvelous botanical gardens that are home to over 7 varieties of Bromeliads! My friend Mia was telling me how they have perfect geometry (like acorns) and how incredible it is that so many different varieties could be so perfect. Bromeliads have become one of my favorite plants. While in the Atlantic Forest we saw many of them growing on the forest floor as well as on the tree branches as epiphytes. They intrigue me with their shape and their astounding beauty. Needless to say, they never cease to make me smile!

Aside from these fun things we went out last night to a Rio style barzinho (bar). My brazilian brother took me out with some of his friends and some Americans met us at this bar. They had a live band playing samba and it was so incredible! It was the Brazil that I had imagined in my childhood dreams. There were several drummers, saxophone players, there were guitars, flutes, voices and there was samba!! As a brazilian daughter (papa is from Brazil) you cannot even imagine what shame I felt not being able to dance. So instead I was creative and danced Salsa with my brother and it was just as fun!  After 1 liter of caipirinha, 1 cuba libre, and 3 brahmas I went down to the main dance floor with my lovely friend Maria and I tried to move them hips the way they do it here and I still could not master it, but thats alright because we had fun, and we laughed and most of all we danced.

Today, we learned SAMBA! And I was laughing inside thinking, "oh gee thanks, why couldn't we have done this yesterday?"  It is so hard, mostly because I do not like structured things, but im hoping to lock my door and blast some music and practice.... hahaha!!

This viajem is PHENOMENAL. I love Brazil, I love this program and I love the people who I am experiencing all of this with. Each and every person on this trip is so talented, and so beautiful and I could not have asked for a better group of homies.

Tchau Cobras!

Love

Lazzuly Mello.

Curitiba, PR, Brazil.