March 26, 2012

Andrea's Brazil Journal #2 - A week in Juiz de Fora



After a beautiful weekend in Rio de Janeiro, I headed 2.5 hours inland to Juiz de Fora for work at the BD Medical manufacturing plant. The drive to Juiz was very windy through the mountains and it felt like we were driving through a mix of the Smoky Mountains and the jungle. Very cool.



 

The city of Juiz is really interesting because it is completely built into the mountains. It is super hilly and very crowded - definitely not ideal for running!


The week was largely devoted to 1) work 2) running and 3) lots of eating. The cups below have Acai berry smoothie in them. It is probably the best thing I have had here, and I am pretty much obsessed with getting it every day! It was also interesting to me how small the bananas are and so different they taste!


I noticed that there are some different types of trees that are really beautiful in Juiz. The purple trees are called Tibouchina Granulosa, not sure about the first though (it's so hard to understand Portuguese!).



And check out these huge ant mounds!


One night, my co-worker's mother cooked us some authentic Brazilian food. We also went to her English class, and the English teacher said that I had the "high accented girl voice that she read about in books". What does that mean?!

Overall I had a good week. The area has a totally different culture and lifestyle and I will talk about this in my next post. I will say that it was very challenging and frustrating to not understand people. I wasn't a big fan of running 50 miles on the treadmill during the week either, but I got it in! :)

1 comment:

  1. Greetings, Andrea. I came across your blog while searching for high quality pictures showing Juiz de Fora. Needless to say, I ended up delighted by reading your account of experiences and the way you described my faraway homeland. Thanks for sharing the text and visuals ;-)

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