Welcome! Bem vindos!

After "strong encouragement" I have decided to start writing a blog about my experiences in Brazil. So far I’ve really enjoyed my time here; it is quite nice to have a warm summer day every day. Perhaps I won’t enjoy the weather as much when the summer arrives with properly hot weather... but that’s a later issue. Everyone is very friendly, although it is difficult to communicate with many. In the university a lot of people speak English (with varying ability and confidence), but outside of the university no one speaks English at all.

I will start to learn Portuguese, but it has been very difficult so far. I signed up for a course in Portuguese for foreigners. I thought the first problem would be that I’m already more than a month behind, since the course started in the beginning of August. But I didn’t expect that there was an even bigger problem before that; finding the classroom! The information I received when signing up for the course listed the times of the classes and the building where they are being held, but not the actual room. The guy who gave me the information told me that I could ask anyone in the building and they would know. I asked several people (including some secretaries who checked the course in their system and called someone who was supposed to know) and was guided to a few different rooms. We found a course in German and two in English but none in Portuguese… Hopefully I will find it next week and then start learning a bit more of the language.

I will probably complain a bit in this blog, but I will also try to make you jealous. I hope you will enjoy it!