AIESEC Roadtrip #2 ! Itajubá and Campos do Jordão

Another mega-blog!!

Thursday didn’t turn out quite as expected. I had an education meeting, which was actually very productive, and then had my infrastructure meeting. We are finally starting to produce some results! I talked to them a little about what kind of atmosphere we were trying to create and what kind of questions we should be asking ourselves as we work on the office infrastructure. Then around 4:30 Diogo called the office and told me that the ride we were going to get to Itajubá the next day couldn’t take us, and if we wanted to go we had to leave right away! AIESEC in Itajubá had invited us for the weekend to help with some training sessions, specifically ILP (Individual Learning Plan) and CR (Corporate Relations). So Diogo asked me if I could go straight home and get ready. So I said a quick goodbye (Ha! That’s a laugh. There are no quick goodbyes in Brazil because you have to say goodbye to each person) and headed for the bus. I rushed home and packed up some things, making sure I had some food with me in case we didn’t have a chance to eat later. Then I headed back to the subway and took the Azul (Blue) line to Paraisó where I transferred to the Verde (Green) line and went to Clinicas, which apparently is the largest public hospital in Latin America. There I met up with Diogo (after waiting 45 minutes… but don’t get me started) and we found the guy who was giving us a ride. It was already after 9 pm so there wasn’t much to see on the way there. However, we were out in the countryside where there are no lights, so looking out the car window I could see more stars than I have ever seen before. It was gorgeous. Plus the constellations are different down here. I keep looking for the big dipper and Orion out of habit, and not finding them. We were going to another state, Minas Gerais, which is north west of the state of São Paulo. Itajubá is a smaller city of around 80 000, so it’s Nanaimo sized. The AIESEC there is an extension, which means that they are applying to become a full fledged local committee once they complete certain requirements. We arrived there around 1:00 am after driving for around 4 or 5 hours. Our driver, Eduardo, dropped us off where we would be staying, where we were greeted by our hosts, Natalia and Carol, and the Extension Leader, Gustavo. We were tired so we had a snack and headed to bed.

On Friday we got up around 8:00 because Gustavo was going to come pick us up at 9:00. At breakfast we had warm milk, which apparently is fairly standard, and very tasty, especially with chocolate added! Gustavo picked us up and we headed to the University. The University of Itajubá is fairly new. It used to be a school just for engineers, but in the last few years they expanded to a few other areas and so they are now a university. But almost all the students are engineers. You can’t take history or anthropology there, but you can take entrepreneurship and stuff like that. We headed to the AIESEC office (the LC :P), which was a largely empty room. I learned later that they had just aquired an office and that’s why it was so sparse. They had a couple desks, a computer, some chairs and some old AIESEC posters from the 80s and 90s which were very amusing. We stayed there for a while, but Diogo was helping their VPPD (VP People Development) in Portuguese, so I decided to wander off for a while. The campus is quite small, so I wandered around and took pictures. The buildings were very nice and a lot of people were on bikes, which was nice to see. The school was surrounded by hills which often had houses perched on the top. The earth in Itajuba is very red, and so the hills were deep red and green. There were a lot of open grassy areas, so I sat down in the glorious sunshine and wrote down some ideas for how to change our messaging to potential members in Victoria. Of course I still have to sell these new ideas to Sang :P It was such a nice day and I really liked being in the countryside away from the big city for a while. In Itajubá there are no skyscrapers and there are a lot of praças [open squares] with parks. We had lunch at the University cafeteria and then did some more work in the office. Unfortunately most of it was in Portuguese so I couldn’t contribute as much as I wanted to. I ended up on MSN and talked to some of the members for a while. Everyone there was really nice, and they asked me questions about Canada and about my AIESEC experience. In the evening we headed to a bar for some snacks. Unlike in Sao Paulo, where it takes half an hour to go anywhere, in Itajubá it was across the street!

University of Itajubá campus

Saturday started at 8:00 as well. There was a general meeting at 9:00 and Gustavo came to pick us up again. We walked into the room and heard the AIESEC songs playing and people were dancing. It was an excellent way to get some energy going in the morning. Then Fernanda led a session about the ILP. The powerpoint was in Portuguese but I could read enough of to get the gist. Then the members were given time to fill out their ILPs. Diogo and I didn’t need to do this since we have many times before, so told me about some of the stuff he learned from Brodie (the PAI – president of AIESEC international – from Calgary!) and AXLDS in Columbia about leadership. Apparently all the LCPs got to have two days of sessions just with Brodie, and what they learned was pretty cool. It was about the different types and qualities of leadership and what is necessary to run an organization well. I copied it all down ;) I think I would like to attend an AIESEC leadership conference some day. It would be amazing! The LC in Itajubá is doing very well. They have 21 members and they are starting to contact companies about potential TNs. And they are hoping to get a CEEDer to help them as well. After the session we went to a Brazilian restaurant which served traditional foods from Minas Gerais (the state). They talked me into trying some feijuada, which I had thus far avoided. It’s a stew made from beans and pig, but the WHOLE pig, from foot to tail… literally. It actually wasn’t too bad. And I had some sausages and what I recognized as Bete Batata (ya Igor I know I can’t spell it ;) ), but when I told the others I knew what it was they didn’t know it! They called it something else, haha, oh well.

Minas Gerais Food

Not your typical buffet

After lunch we went around the city a little and stopped at the central praça [square]. We went to an icecream place that makes the icecream with real fresh fruit. I asked Gustavo to translate the menu for me, and so I asked for what was supposed to be peach icecream. Haha, when they gave it to me it was almost purple and Diogo told me it wasn’t peach. But he couldn’t remember what it actually was in English. After 10 minutes, he remembered and told me it was plum. So I had plum icecream. Go figure, and it was actually quite good. And the guy there gave me a little bit of avocado icecream for free too, because I was a gringo (foreigner). Then we headed back to the university. Diogo helped with some CR training, again in Portuguese, so I went online and looked into flights. Gol, an airline here, is having a promotion where you can book tickets for $R25 (like $12) so I was very interested. They didn’t have any for Rio or the northeast, but they did for Curitiba! So I snagged one for the way there and then found a cheap flight for the way back as well. But you have to book with a Brazilian credit card, so I ended up using Gustavo's card to book them, and then gave him cash. So next weekend I am going to Curitiba!! But I’ll talk about that later. Gu (Gustavo) dropped me off at Natty’s (Natalia) in the afternoon. I talked to her for a while and then she asked if I wanted to come with her to the supermarket. I said sure, and that I needed to go to the bank as well (because I had given Gustavo all my cash). So we started our quest to find the bank, which turned out to be very close to her apartment. Then we went to the supermacado and got some food and snacks. Around 9:00, Gu came to pick me up and he, Diogo and I went to a June party. It’s basically a fair that they have in June on the days of some saints. It was a bit chilly in the evening, but other that that it was really cool. It’s sponsored by the universities around the city, so each booth was operated by a different faculty. You could go to the physiotherapists and get warm wine with cinnamon and then to the health booth to get chocolate (go figure) and then the entrepreneurs to get cachaca and honey in a bamboo stick! Plus there were Krepes Suisse (Swiss Crepes) and meat sticks and lots of other snacks. I actually ate a lot, but it was all pretty cheap. And they had live music and a bonfire. We stayed there until around 2:00 am and then headed back.

The crew
The sign behind us says Delicious Icecream, and it was!

On Sunday the plan was to go to Campos do Jordão, which I was told is like a Swiss mountain city. And it was! Actually, it reminded me a lot of Whistler Village. The architecture was very European and it was up in the mountains so it was quite cold.

Brazil??

We got there around 10:00, having left at around 8:30. The road there was gorgeous! I loved looking out at the countryside. There were amazing rolling hills and trees scattered all over. It looked almost like an African savannah. There were farms and cows dotted along the roads, as well as some little cities. In the centre of each little city could be seen a church with a tall steeple, and then the city circled around it, which larger houses and buildings nearer the centre and smaller ones near the edged, a kind of semi-flavela. There was one little town that must have had only 100 buildings. All I could think when I saw it was “Anthropologist’s Dream Village!!” One person could easily survey the whole population. Most of the other towns were a little bigger. Itajubá and the countryside was honestly a lot more like what I had imagined Brazil to be from my reading in cultural anthropology. São Paulo is still very Brazilian, but it is also very western. The countryside was all Brazil. I imagine that the people there don’t travel often to the big cities and they probably eat only locally grown foods. There were lots of bikes and more trucks. Everyone seemed to know each other. These were communities, more so than you see in São Paulo. Several of the members of AIESEC Itajubá also told me that they liked being in a smaller city. Some were originally from São Paulo, but they said that even still they were never bored in Itajubá.

Back to the drive! … we started up into the mountains and the view was incredible!! We went around one corner and we were looking out into a valley that was filled with clouds. It was truly amazing. There were more trees in the mountain area. Finally we got to Campos do Jordão. We spent the first hour or two jut wandering around. Diogo had been there several times before so he knew his way around a little. The building are all Eurpoean in style and could have been found in Zurich… or Whistler :P And all along the main street are maple trees from Canada! That is the only place in brazil that they can grow. And so everything was maple everywhere! The restaurants had maple placemats and maple signs and maple decorations. It seriously felt like Canada, except everything was in portuguese. And everything was really expensive too!

Ahhh Whistler... no wait...
FYI those are maple leaves

Apparently the city is famous for is restaurants, beer and chocolate, so we went to a chocolate store and I bought some chocolates for Iza’s family. Then we headed to a chairlift that took us up one of the mountains (no snow though). The view from the top was really nice, you could see the whole city nestled in a valley and surrounded by trees. Then we went for lunch at Santanas and I had cheese fondue, which was very good but very rich. Then we went and met up with a group of trainees who happened to be in the city as well. They went skating (yes there is skating in Brazil!) but we decided to go to the Kilombo. It was quite a drive away on a really rough road that was hard on Gustavo’s poor car. But we made it. A Kilombo is a place where the slaves used to escape to before slavery was abolished. It was a really huge cave with much graffiti added. At the very back of the cave was a little escape hole in case the authorities found them there. It was clear that the cave had been lived in. You could see the modifications and wear on the rock. Maybe I am the only person who would notice, but I thought it was very interesting how they had made a drainage system. Having a hole in the back of course meant that water could run into the cave. They had developed a rut in the rock that the water could travel down, all the way out the front of the cave so that the whole cave didn’t get wet. It was dry when we were there though. We climbed up above the cave and had a look at the view. I took lots of pictures because it was so gorgeous. They have a tree (the name of which I can’t seem to remember) which only grows in this region and is quite endangered. It is also the symbol of the city, along with the maple, so it’s picture was everywhere. It’s a very interesting looking tree. We drove back to the city and went to a restaurant called the Matterhorn for dinner. I had meat fondue this time, which I was a little leery about because you have to cook the meat yourself. But I think I cooked it more than adequately. It was good. Then we walked around a little more, stopping to look at things and to get hot chocolate, which was literally hot melted chocolate! Mmmmm….. Then we went in search of the group of trainees. It took us a while, but we eventually found them. Then Diogo and I joined them for the ride pack to São Paulo while the three from Itajubá headed back home. I ended up in a car with three Spanish speakers and a dutch guy. So we drove home listening to Spanish music. Normally that would be cool, but by this point I was really tired and wanted to get home. They dropped me off at a metro station on Paulista, so I had to take the verde (green) and then the azul (blue) lines to get home. I arrived around midnight and went straight to bed!

A very interesting and unique tree

View from above the Kilombo

This morning I slept in until 10:00 which was fantastic. I won’t go into detail because I’ve already written a lot, but I had a really interesting conversation with Renato, Fernando and Jorge (the “regulars” at the office”) about languages. Tomorrow I am going to the symphony and then on Friday I go to Curitiba for the weekend. And the week after that is Rio! I just have to figure out how I’m getting there :P

There’s probably more I wanted to say but that’s all I can think of at the moment.

Oh, and on a random note, all the AIESECers think I’m crazy because I laugh when I am talking to people on MSN. I’ll be in the office and start giggling and they look at me like “what are you doing?” Funny conversation, I swear!