My first month in Brazil

Jorja Whyte

Hi there!

This has been the craziest month of my life. It’s been extremely challenging and eye opening and I have learnt and experienced so many new things. My host family is great and from day one I have felt very welcome in their beautiful home. My first 2 weeks in Brazil were on summer holiday. Aside from being very jet lagged and enduring warped sleep times, my days were spent swimming in the pool and exploring parts of the city such as the large shopping mall and various restaurants. I still cannot get over how big my region is. It may be less population dense than Australian cities but the buildings and city scapes spread as far as the eye can see and a breathtaking view awaits at every corner. I was lucky enough to experience many kids’ birthday parties which included mass amounts of bite sized treats called docinhos (doss-een-os) and the traditional Brazilian birthday chant. I went to a festival where Brazilian funk music played and to my delight my favourite Australian band were there too! The food is really different to Australia, lunch being their biggest meal of the day when the family returns from school or work to eat together. Beans and rice are eaten every single day along with meats and the occasional vegetable. I have tried a lot of the Brazilian cuisine such the famous fudgy condensed milk/chocolate dessert; brigadeiro (brig-ah-dare-ro), delicious home-barbecued meat called picanha (pic-ah-na) and fresh açai (as-eye-i). I am yet to find something that I don’t like! School is also very different starting at 7am and finishing at 12:30. I enjoy this as I have the rest of the afternoon to socialise and spend time with family and I don’t mind the 5.30am wake up! I have met so many new people, made friends in my class and am yet to meet other exchange students living in Belo Horizonte which I am looking forward to. The language; Portuguese is pretty challenging but I’m picking it up slowly.

Everyone in my family speaks English besides my little sister, so we communicate through Google translator.. in this instance, thank god for technology! She is teaching me Portuguese while I teach her some English so we both learn either way. There has been many times where I’ve pronounced a word so incorrectly it causes everyone to laugh, but they always encourage and correct me. I visited my host grandparents on the weekend. We drove 4 hours to their small town called Formiga; a very

traditional and beautiful town. Neither of the grandparents speak English but I really enjoyed their company and their food was absolutely amazing! The grandfather made homemade pao je queijo (pow-gee-cay-sho); small rounds of cheesy bread which is one of my favourite Brazilian foods. He even promised to teach how to make them next time we visited. I was able to taste so many homegrown fruits and even ate home slaughtered chicken! By the end of the weekend they insisted I call them Vovo and Vova a loving term for grandmother and grandfather in Portuguese which was very special. Mornings are very hot and sunny while most days end with crazy electrical storms, booming thunder and rain. There was a day of extremely heavy rain causing many landslides, flooding and the roof of the shopping centre to fall in. I’ve attended a few Rotary meetings so far and although I cannot understand conversation it was great to meet many locals. One lady was 102 years old, one of the first woman in Rotary Brazil and is still a part of rotary today…incredible! I was able to introduce myself in Portuguese which was a great achievement. Guilherme my coordinator and Bernardo the exchange officer are wonderful and very helpful along with eager outbound exchange students from Brazil.

Although it’s been really hard, I’m looking forward to what the next month will bring.

I hope everyone is doing well back home and I send my well wishes.

You’ll hear from me next month!

Jorja :)

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