Avenida Paulista

Yesterday was my first day back and I decided to go to law school. I am staying in my friend Gabriela's apartment and she studies law at PUC SP (Pontifica Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo) and I went to class with her yesterday morning. Class started at 7:30, we showed up at 8:15 :) Oh Brazil. The first class was about workers law, direito de trabalho. We talked about the history of workers rights in Brazil, minimum wage, minimum age, mandatory vacation time (I think I understood it was 3 months! I think I heard wrong, I was very confused) stuff like that. It was pretty cool actually, talking about the history of workers right in a different country. Cool stuff. The second class sucked, I couldn't understand a thing. I don't even know what it was about, but I do know that Gabi has an internship at a place that practices this kind of law. I should figure out what it is.

In the afternoon I hung out with some of Gabi's roommates; Mateus and Luiz. I was so tired from my stupid disaster of a voyage that I couldn't bring myself to go out and explore where I was. I couldn't believe it! But, I made up for it today.

Today was pretty awesome actually. I slept in while Gabi went to class then met up with her for lunch at school. Afterwords I went with her to Avenida Paulista, a very famous street in Brazil that she worked very close to.  I spent the whole day exploring, walking up and down the street, going into stores, buildings, shopping malls, parks. It was so much fun. I didn't think that it would be since I was going all alone but I found it very refreshing, I had a great time looking at the architecture, strolling in the park. It inspired me to sit down and start writing again. I went to a cafe and sat a wrote some poetry for an hour, and then did it again in the park. It was lovely.

A view from uder MASP, the Modern Art Museum on Avenida Paulista

A park where I sat on a bench in the shade to escape the heat.

After meeting Gabi after work we went to Starbucks and then walked from Avenida Paulista to her school (40 minutes) We walked in front of one of the best medical schools in the country USP (Universidade de Sao Paulo) and it was such a beautiful campus with white buildings and grass and palm trees everywhere. When we arrived at Gabi's school there was a protest going on because they raised the price to ride the public bus. There was a little stage set up in the courtyard with a microphone with student lined up to speak about the subject. It was pretty cool. They are really only able to do this sort of thing, organize a protest and have a public debate like this because the police are not allowed in the school. PUC is a Catholic school and the school is not allowed to have any affiliation with the state, including the police force and the firemen. So if there was a fire in the school the director would have to give them some sort of document giving them permission to enter the school before they can attend to the fire. This is why the students were allowed to organize like this, or else the police would have broken it up.

PUC-SP at night

I really like Gabi's school, it is very different than an American University. For one thing we would consider it tiny. It is only a couple of buildings that have a couple of floors each. There is a courtyard, little cafes and a little cafeteria. You don't see anyone there dressed in sweatpants or in shirts displaying the name of their school, it is much more formal, mostly because a lot of the students have internships in the city and work after they go to school. So, there are girls in dresses and heels, guys walking around in suits. The professors are also much more interesting than the professors in the U.S. They are much more passionate about what they teach and it shows during their lecture. If we had professors like them I think that I would get straight A's.