Featured image: Me and my friends in front of one of the many murals at the artful Vila Madalena neighborhood. São Paulo has such incredible street art, and this is just some of it! Hello from Brazil! I’m currently at the bus station waiting for the bus that will take me and my friends to Rio for the Easter weekend, which is a 4-day weekend here! (Our Brazilian program coordinator brought chocolates for us all today! Isn’t she the sweetest?!)…
During my program’s last week in Brazil, we had the week off of classes. It was wonderful to have the executive power to choose where to go; I settled on spending five days on an island named Ilhabela off the eastern coast of the country. I and twelve other students booked rooms at a hostel on the island right on the beach. With the moon still bright in the sky, my friend Alex and I left our house at 4:00 a.m. to catch the 6:00…
Sao Paulo is huge. Flying over the city, I thought I had a sense of its scope, but I didn’t at all. You can never see where it ends. Standing on a mountain in the forests above the city, the urban landscape seems to stretch forever, with atmospheric perspective engulfing the horizon. I am living with a family in Villa Madalena, which is one of the nicest areas of the city, in my opinion. It’s located about fifty minutes away from Mackenzie University,…