#sapsocialsabbatical

Homesick already, but full of happiness and looking forward to get there! See you soon, Greece!!

The End 

This is my last post on socialsabbaticalbrazil2016. After a good journey back to Germany I'm happy to be back home. 

But I am sure in only a few days I'll also miss Brazil, and most of all the warm and always happy Brazilians. 

The Great Finale

An intense and amazing four weeks have come to an end. The last three days were all about wrapping up our work and delivering everything to Unilehu in a final meeting with the entire staff. We were also filmed giving final statements about our time here in Curitiba. Everyone was very appreciative about not only our work here but also about the very much desired outside perspective we were able to provide.

Today everything came to a big final culmination in a big meeting with all organizations, professional volunteers and project assistants held at the school of our client Unilehu - as always extremely well organized and with a lot of great food.

They also brought a group from their students in to play Bossa Nova while we had lunch - and since we are in Brazil, slowly but surely one after the other started to dance after they finished their lunch… Brazilians are great!

The final week has begun!

Time certainly has been flying… The last week of our four-week Social Sabbatical has begun.

Last week had ended with a pretty emotional meeting with the management team of Unilehu in which they had thanked us for our work so far and most importantly for providing them with a very much needed open and honest outside view of their organization which helped them a lot understanding where they are standing today and how to prioritize for the future.

Our last Weekend

This final weekend of our stay, all of the Social Sabbatical team spent in Curitiba exploring the city and its nightlife. Me and several others started the weekend with a great dinner at a Thai restaurant followed by a private party at the apartment of one staff member from one of our projects. From there we continued on to go to the most well-known club in town called "The Shed". It is a club which only plays what is called "Brazilian Country Music". It is nothing like US Country Music or anything we have in Germany. There even was a live band playing, getting the crowd all excited. However like my fellow colleague Britta, I also didn't find the music too exciting. I guess country music just isn't for me, regardless how different it might be.

On Saturday I decided to go and explore some of the local highlights. I could have taken a tourist bus like you would have it in many other cities too. But since only few of the stops the bus would make caught my interest I decided to go walk to Rua das Flores, the country's first "calçadão" (black and white decorated street exclusive for pedestrians), considered to be one of the marks of the city's cultural revolution.

From Rua das Flores I wanted to take a cab to go to my next stop, the Museu Oscar Niemeyer. Unfortunately though I couldn't get a cab even though there typically are many orange-black cabs cruising the streets of Curitiba. Therefore I ended up just walking for almost 45 minutes to the museum, which actually was quite an interesting walk as it gave me quite a good impression of the nice and the not so nice areas of Curitiba.

Finally at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer my expectations were highly exceeded. I was in fact looking forward to a nice modern art museum, but it turned out to be much bigger and much better than I expected. The museum is the largest and the most modern museum in Brazil, and I certainly didn’t expect the largest one of Brazil to be in Curitiba. The museum, also called the "Eye" was designed and build by the highly acclaimed Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and is home to a very good exhibition of Brazilian and international modern art.

On Sunday most of the team went to visit the weekly fair in the historic center of Curitiba. I had been told that it is quite big, but again I was very surprised. It isn't just big, its huge and you can easily spend hours browsing endless rows of little stalls which are selling everything from local handcrafted art to all kinds of cheap stuff from China.

Graffiti

One of the favorite pastimes of what seems to be some very fine Brazilian artists seems to be painting Graffiti. Over the past almost 3 weeks that I have been to Brazil now I have seen some very beautiful paintings - some of them on what seems to be the most random walls in the city.

Okay, I admit especially one of the Graffitis above might not count towards being very beautiful or done with a lot of fine technique. I still had to include it for its historic relevance ;-)

Tuesday, July, 26. 

After being sick pretty much all of last week, it is good to be back working on the Unilehu project again.