Stage 1 - Cleared

so ILCP is over and the bahia kids are on their way to salvador. it's a weird day but at the same time it's something i've been waiting for a while. this might be confusing so let me elaborate on this a little more...









i came to a program organized by CIEE - council on international educational exchange. the name of the program is São Paulo - Liberal Arts Program. the program started on january 8th and will go on until june 27th. it is one of the longest study abroads students go on and part of its length is because it has the ILCP - intensive language and culture program - followed by the regular classes at a private university. this university is called Pontificia Universidade Catolica - PUC.





so during the first month, called ILCP, there was a group of 60 people from which some stay in São Paulo, 20, and some others go to the city of Salvador in the state of Bahia, 40. we did this program together and now that it was over, we had to say our goodbyes and go out for the last time.





during this program we had several extracurricular and cultural activities - like going to paraty, maracatu, samba school, futebol museum and other things. also, on a more academic side, we had two courses. a daily 2-hour portuguese lesson and a daily 2-hour brazilian culture lesson. the portuguese lesson was extremely helpful to remind me of all the different tenses and learn vocab. our professor was also very good and funny so the two hours were not painful but rather enjoyable. sometimes i did feel like i would have liked to review different things but i guess it's really hard to adapt to all the different people's needs so it was fine. the brazilian culture class was not as good as i expected it to be. the professor, Carla, was very energetic and talkative but when it came down to structuring the classes in an organized way so that we could all just get the meaty stuff from the class and learn in a more concise way, i believed she fell short. i liked it anyways because we watched some good films and learned a lot about brazil history, considering that i didn't know any of it before coming here. i actually confess that i knew more about brazil's futebol history than any other kind of historical facts... i know, it's kind of lame

anyways, we just finished our ILCP part so we had our last event at the top of the highes point in the city. it is a restaurant at 'Terraço Italia' and it is a very cool building with an amazing view. as you can tell from the pictures we were privileged enough to have lunch with this view and the sky actually cleared up for us to get cool pics of the city. some parts are impossible to see where they end. the city is huge and so full of buildings. looking from the roof, it felt like i was so small in relation to the city but at the same time so big. it was a cool and new feeling. i like it when that happens.
all i can say is that i hope the bahia kids have fun up there and i hope whoever reads this blog enjoys the pictures.

saludos y hasta luego










Pictures are as follows =

me at the top of terraço italia
terraço italia - highest point in the city
MamaSilvia -my hostmother - Karla and I
MACstudents in Brazil
a view of São Paulo
largest residential building in Latin America
last picture together of Kirsten and I before she left for bahia
my portuguese class