And now a little about the reason I'm actually here.
The school I'm attending has a really good reputation in Brazil, and is definitely one of the best private schools in the country. It has strong programs in everything from engineering to literature, and a very new and popular international relations department at their instituto de relações internacionais.
The university itself is located in Gávea, a really nice area 2km from the beach and above the wealthy Leblon neighborhood. It's right on the edge of the botanical garden, the Jardim Botânico, which is one of the largest national parks in the world. All over campus are examples of Brazil's famous biodiversity, with different plants, flowers, and tress from all over the country (just like AU!). This basically means it looks like you're in a rain forest the whole time. Yesterday I fell asleep on a bench in a garden, and woke up with palm trees and giant leaves shading me from the sun--pretty cool.
There's tons of different places to eat too--in which I can't help but notice a very strong social stigma. There are expensive sushi and international type restaurants in one area, and the cafeteria on the other side of campus--plus countless little snack stands right outside the gates selling açaí, meat skewers, salgados, and the drinks of choice, guaraná, matte, and of course, coke. This means you can spend about $15 on some sushi and be fashionable, or $2.50 on a HUGE meal of rice and beans, meat, salad, rolls, dessert, and a drink at the cafeteria. So basically I live in the cafeteria.
And then they have classes too! I wish I could get into which classes I'm taking, but I'm still not really sure. The whole registration process is almost impossible. Almost every day or two I receive an email half in Portuguese and half in broken English trying to explain the next extremely important thing I have to do to be registered. The problem is, the emails rarely form a complete idea, and when they do, they are immediately contradicted by the next email I receive. So I'm trying. I'm taking a Portuguese language class, which is interesting because it's cool to hear novice Portuguese with all the different accents, English, Spanish, Norwegian, French, etc. Then I have Brazilian Foreign Policy and Social Brazilian Debate, which are both very interesting. I'm experimenting with a few more so we'll see what I end up with. The strange thing is that in order to maintain a 15 credit load at AU, which is 12.5 hours a week, I need to take 22 hours a week of class here. I don't really know why the US thinks class time in Latin America is not as valuable as theirs.
In all, I really like the school, it's such an amazing feeling to be in such a different environment. Oh, and I almost for got to say, you can see the statue of Cristo from some of the class rooms. Even if you don't catch him, you're guaranteed an amazing view of the mountains.
Hopefully I'll be writing more as I start settling in!
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