Last week Monday was my first day at work. Fernanda from AIESEC picked me up at my apartment at 8:15 in the morning and showed me the way to the bus stop, which is only 3min from my building. There is a bus going directly to my work – when the bus comes… There is no regular schedule for the bus and on the website of the public transportation company of Sao Paulo you can only get the information, how many buses are going in a special time frame (so for example between 8 and 9 there are 4 buses). So it happens, that you wait from time to time up to 15min for the bus in the morning. The traffic is busy, but the bus needs around 25min to work. On my first day the girl from the human resources where introducing all the people in the office. The office is in the 9th and 11th floor of a business building in Sao Paulos famous business district of Villa Olympia. They showed me the workspace where I am going to work until march. Well my computer at work is working with Linux, which i did not used that much before, so I had to get used to it. The workmate who is sitting next to me is a guy I am working together in the project they allocated me to. The problem is: His English is bad like my Portuguese, so there are some language barriers indeed. The way we communicate if we cant understand each other is using Google-Tranaslator. He is entering his sentence in Portuguese, the Webservice is translating it to English and I know more or less what his message should be… But after some days we managed it somehow to communicate without the translation tool. Also the other guys at work are not that good in English so making conversations for example at lunch is tough. But I told them to speak slowly Portuguese and I could understand than more than before. And if they don’t know a word in English, I am teaching them what it is. One guy said, that he was reading some English text before, but he with me it was his first time he was speaking English. And for me, it seems that the guys really like to learn English… Well somehow we will manage it, I am sure.
About my work. Its a start-up company for writing web-applications for Internet marketing. There are around 50 people working divided on two floors. Since my second day at work, the 9th flow is in maintenance so everyone is working now in the 11th floor (the 2 bosses included). So if you enter the office you feel sometimes like in a Internet-Café. The working mentality is very different. Some people seem to work very hard, some other are using messengers all the time or are playing web games. I have a long list with task which I should do, so it wasn’t boring since the first day. I am working from 9 to 18 with one our lunch break. And if you have something to do, the times flies… The only bad thing at work is the air condition. Again I am asking myself why the people have to turn the temperature to ice age!? Come on, its Brazil, I am not here to freeze! Even if I have my pullover on, its cold, because the air condition is exactly in front of my desk… So it was only a question of time that I become sick, because I really have problems with air conditions…
Neighborhood of Vila Olimpia where my office is
On my first day at work, Raquel picked me up and showed me the Bus home. For this bus you have to wait in the rush hour up to 30min and its needs in times of very bad traffic more than one hour for this 7KM to my house. Thats why I am taking now first a local train which stops 200m from my office and I have to change to two metro lines, but at least I need around 45min to 1hour to come home. Its incredible who many people are using the metro so there are especially on stops where to lines are crossing thousands of people trying their way to the metro…
This packed can be the Metro during the rush hour
After work I am relaxing most at the time at home, watch some television, cook my dinner and something more that I have lunch for the next day and drink a ice cold beer. Sometimes I was meeting with some trainees or couchsurfers for a beer in a bar. So, the week is always very fast over and the weekend comes, together with the question, what should I do on my two free days…
For the last weekend I had several opportunities but the best was a trip to Paraty organized by some exchange students. Paraty is a colonial village between Sao Paulo and Rio de Jaineiro next to the Atlantic. Our bus was leaving at 7 in the morning (the bus was supposed to leave at 6 but thanks to some French exchange students, which where coming from the party last night and where still drunk, the bus was leaving one hour late). In Paraty we moved in hour hostel and took a local bus into the mountains to have an all-you-can-eat fish lunch. Than we went to a waterfall, which is actually a natural slide. Some locals used this space to slide down while standing, which looked like surfing on the rocks.
I tried it as well, but the only thing what I was getting where blue spots on my bud… Than some of our group including me where jumping from a 7 meters high rock into a natural pool, which was great fun. Than we had the chance to visit a small Cachaça factory which is the famous Brazilian schnapps for Caipirinha. Back in the village of Paraty we had a big BBQ, some Caipi’s and a small beach party.
The next morning I was standing up at 8 to discover the village free of tourists, which I didn’t regret. It was so nice to see how this village prepare their self for the storm of tourist and enjoys the last tourist-free minutes…
At 10:30 we took a boat which was big enough to fit all the 35 people of the group. We were driving to nice beaches, played football at the beaches, jumped from the boat, made a boat party, snorkeled for fish and had a nice fish-lunch. It was a really nice and funny boat trip, unfortunately the sun was leaving at 3pm so it was becoming kind of cold. Than it started to rain, so we where building a big mountain of bodies in order to get some human heat and fit all under the small boats roof…
Back in the village and back in the bus, I realized that my pain in my throat of the Friday before the trip turned to a cold, and together with the ice cold air condition in the bus, I was becoming very sick. I was hoping that the bus ride is over soon, that I can come in my warm bed, but there was a massive traffic jam, that we reached home at 3 in the morning. When I was coming home, there was no electricity, so the elevator was not working. Well and hour apartment has two entrance doors, one two the elevator and one to the stairs. Unfortunately I had only the key for the elevator entrance door, so I had to ring my roomie out, to open me the door. Well and now I am since two days sick at home and hope that I get a bit better that I can go tomorrow at work… Vamos ver (We will see…)
All the pictures of the trips to Paraty are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/captainmathi86/Paraty
Amazing!!! It looks like your days in Brazil have been awesome!! Enjoy it!