One thing that no one warned me about,
and an almost ignorant thing on my behalf, was the rain in Brasil. We
are on the equator, so not thinking to bring a raincoat was no so
smart on my behalf. But, a hat and an extra shirt in my bag work just
as good as an umbrella in some respects. But as much as it has rain
here in the past few days, it's still more attainable rain than that
of upstate New York. That is, the rain comes straight down here in
Brasil, not sideways with a 50mph wind at one's front and back. Oh,
and there is hardly ever any thunder or lightning here too, which
makes it that much more different than upstate, where when you see
rain you hear and see thunder and lightning. A little rain never hurt
anyone though, so it's not that bad.
The one thing that does hurt
productivity is a power outage. On Monday there was a “normal”
power outage that lasted the entire morning, which in the end yielded
us to pack up at around 11AM to head back to the hotel to try and get
actual work done. The nice thing about the power outage (other than
the day off) were the people we got to meet while waiting for the
power to come back on. We met a student who was very willing to talk
to us about Joao Pessoa and what to do and what to stay away from. He
warned us of certain vendors to stay away from because when they see
tourists their prices skyrocket to sometimes 500% of the goods actual
value. He also showed us that he carries around two cell phones, a
nice one and a not-so nice one. He stated that he does this in case
he does get robbed, so he can give the not-so nice phone over instead
of his nice one. Smart thinking. Good thing that I don't carry my
phone around with me here, since it doesn't work. Oh, did I mention
that Virgin Mobile'a pay as you go plan doesn't work here in Brasil?
It doesn't. Kidding aside, not having the need of always worrying
about expensive technology on my person is a relief, as much as my
mother probably dislikes it very much. But the less you have on the
streets, the better, as least that's the going trend of what locals
are telling us.
As for what's to come, this weekend is
a festival celebrating the corn, and it is apparently a really big
deal in this part of Brasil. It includes lots of parties, dancing and
good times by everyone here in northern Brasil, and of course the
24th annual reckoning of yours truly. Updates to follow
after this weekend passes, as well as other topics on school and the
university are to come. Lots of things are happening that the weekly
blogs might turn into every few days or so. As for now, back to
coming up with evaluation methods for applications in the lab!
- a hero within
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