While applying for a destination of exchange I knew I wanted to choose a country that not only had my interest in terms of beautiful places, good weather and kind people. There are also countries in the world that have my interest as to their increasingly development and their amazing economic performance in times of worldwide recessions and nearly bankruptcies of (former) developed countries. Brazil is one of these countries. I will spare you the boring and complicated delineation, but Brazil last year managed to show a growth of almost 8% of GDP where the EU and USA could hardly get 3%, two years after the global financial crisis of 2007.
How are these major developments possible in a country that tends to have a more communistic than capitalistic regime? How is Brazil, and especially Rio de Janeiro able to manage the two biggest sport events in the world in nearly two years? Questions for a country that most people know of being corrupt, dealing with high level of criminality and having the largest drug traffic in the world.
Let’s go back to my story. On Thursday the 21th of July I left Schiphol for a 30 hours taking trip to Rio de Janeiro. Beforehand, I managed to rent a room in a well located apartment together with two Brazilian guys at the beach of Botafogo. So with Christ the Redeemer looking up to me I arrived on Friday afternoon in a 34°C heat (not bad for a winter day) at my apartment, of course without my luggage. I immediately realized that the Portuguese courses I took in Tilburg would not be very helpful, since Portuguese in Portugal is really different than that from the Brazilians. The first week my roommates showed me the several well-known beaches and the impressive nightlife of Rio de Janeiro. Three years ago I already went here for a holiday so I could avoid the touristic attractions.
As said, it is currently winter here so the second week my lectures already started. After some introduction with the other exchange students (90% from Portugal, some Latin Americans and a few French) classes started. Luckily the first two weeks we could freely join all courses to find the most interesting ones. Eventually I changed all my preliminary chosen subjects. Classes here are really different than at Tilburg University. Smaller groups, more intervention with the students and starting at 7.30am will need some adjustment from my side. However, it is no problem to come one or two hours too late, you will still get the “bom dia” from the professor. At 1pm everybody joins the restaurant to get rice, feijão (black beans) and a large piece of meat. After that most students go to their work. Due to the increasing economy Brazilian businesses have to deal with a serious lack of well educated people, so a lot of students have part-time, well payed jobs. Other classmates install at the library to study. We go to the beach.
The first two weeks went on like this. Monday till Thursday lectures and trying to understand the most important parts of what the professors tells. After that the weekend starts with surfing classes at Ipanema praia, playing futbol in Flamengo, samba party’s in Lapa and much more fun. Next blog I will speak more about that and try to learn you more about the fantastic Brazilian culture. Valeu!
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