ACruciano

Today is my last day at work. I have to admit, I am not entirely sad that today is my last day of work for my internship (but please do not misinterpret, I have loved my experience here in Brazil, just the project was a bit of a headache). This project, although I knew it would a lot of tedious work, there were many more speed bumps that I ran into than I expected. For those of you who do not know what my project is, I will explain briefly. For the past year there has been a collaboration between three labs, Dr. Harrison’s of the University of Pittsburgh who is the primary investigator, Dr. Claudio Sacchi’s real time PCR laboratory at the Instituto Adolfo Lutz (IAL) and Dr. Ricardo Albernaz from Centro de Vigilância Epidemiológica ... read more

This past weekend I took my first excursion and traveled to a sleepy little beach town called Caragutatuba. I went because we have family friends that are American missionaries there who I wanted to visit. So Friday after work I hopped on a bus and headed out to Caraguá, about a 3 hour bus ride from São Paulo. At the bus station waiting were our missionary friends, AJ and Barb as well as another guy who my mom knows well from her trips to Caraguá, my Brazilian brother, Felipe. AJ and Barbara live in a beautiful home just blocks from the beach complete with a pool and hammock. I have to admit I got a bit spoiled this weekend :-) On Saturday morning I wanted to see the city a bit so another American girl who ... read more

I know this is a bit of a random entry but I just thought it was funny. I have already introduced you all to João Pedro (Petrusco), the 3 year old son of the family I am staying with. Well he had started the habit of yelling my name any time he feels like it. Whether it be when I am in my room reading, or he will just blurt out when we are all at the table eating dinner. We all think it is very funny and the rest of the family has started to do it to also when they want my attention. Also, little João Pedro has a tendency to be a little more crazy than usual when I am around so I taught him out to say "I am a show off" ... read more

This past Wednesday was a holiday in São Paulo and I asked about a half dozen different people what the holiday was for and no one could tell me for sure. All I could gather is about 7 years ago the government in São Paulo decided to make July 9th a holiday for something honoring when the state was founded. Anyways, because everyone had a day off, my coworker Ricardo told me he would take me around São Paulo that day so I could see a bit more of the city. I meet Ricardo and his girlfriend in the morning where we started off the day with a cup of “garapa” (sugar cane juice) flavored with lemon which was fantastic as you would imagine. The only problem was that it gave me a pretty bad headache ... read more

So I can officially say I have experienced “25 de Março” in São Paulo. 25 de Março is a street in downtown São Paulo that is filled with vendors selling cheap Prada knock offs, illegally copied DVDs, and about every useless electronic you can ever want. We got there early, about 9:00am and I had heard it is a crowded place, but at 9am it was actually quite enjoyable with only a few people in the stores. By about 10am the streets and stores became just packed with people where it was difficult to even move. Basically like NYC’s Chinatown at Christmas time. It was quite the experience. To make the day perfect….just like in NYC, every time the cops come through an area, all the people selling the illegally copied DVDs collapse down their stands ... read more

So it was Petrusco’s 3rd birthday on Monday so a family from the church wanted to take everyone out on Sunday to celebrate. We all went to the Brazilian equivalent of Chuckie Cheese except instead of Chuckie Cheese it was called Habib’s, instead of cheese pizza there was falafel and humus and instead of a mouse, there was a genie with a mustache. The best part was that the menu did not only consist of Mediterranean-ish fast food, but of course there were also the staple hamburgers and french fries. It was interesting. One a side note about Habib’s, last night Neil was talking to me and he said that he and Marlida had wanted to have Petrusco’s birthday part at Habib’s but were not able to because they didn’t have the money. Instead, then just ... read more