So, working has been reallllly fun. I´ve done some reflected ceiling plans, and details-learned the words for glass, gypsum and wood in Portuguese pretty fast out of necessity. The language is coming to me, slowly but I´m nearly conversational, I still can´t understand everything- but I´m getting there I haven´t even been here a week so I´m proud I´m making some progress.
The office is Marlene, the head arquitect, and then Carolina who is a partner of the firm. Then there´s Josi, Samara, Emerson and me- the interns. All of us apart from Marlene who is my mom´s age are in our 20´s- it´s awesome. I´m working mostly with Carolina, her English is the best. Marlene is fun, she sings along a lot at work, and is super nice. There´s not really a sense of hierarchy or authority, everyone just does work to get the projects done. This works out; no one ever feels like a CAD monkey working here, we have a lot of fun. They listen to good music. Ams, you´ll be happy to know they like U2. They listen to some Brazilian stuff too, naturally. Also they like Indian drums, which of course I also love from my IASA days at IA (Indian Student Association and International Academy, my high school- for those of you who may not have known this). Apparently there´s some artist I forgot the name already that they like here.
So- the projects that they work on are all very design oriented, they even do product design, things like lamps and furniture- all very cool. The firm seems to have a lot of house projects, everything is very ´beautiful´. I think its the favorite english adjetive here. The designs are contemporary, minimalist but with attention to details through materials-very honest treatment of them, wood is meant to be wood, concrete concrete, stone is stone.
Jogo- play
Thursday night we went out to play pool at this snooker bar downtown while Marlene went to an inauguration dinner. It was so cool to hang out with Pai (I still don´t know the dad´s name, I´ll just call him pai- which means dad), Isabel (Marlene´s daughter) her boyfriend Bruno, Jordana(the other daughter) and her husband Fabio. I love that they hang out with their parents its so much fun. Pai is crazy, he talks to me in Portuguese all the time, and is commited to me learning it- and fast so I can make jokes in Portuguese with them. He´s definitely a character. There is also no hesitation with PDA, even in front of parents; I can´t even imagine kissing in front of my parents. Their version of pool is different, the balls are smaller and the white one doesn´t fit in the holes. You save ball number 15 for the end, its like an 8 ball but you place it on the edge of the wall. You play odds and evens- not solids and stripes. To start you put the balls into a trapezoid, a triangle with the point missing. The white ball goes right up against the trapezoid and to break you shoot backwards, with the thicker end of the stick. Craziness.
There´s a lot of the same shows on TV, lots of American music as well. Grey´s anatomy is super popular, so is friends and 2 and a half men. We watched Amelie the other day, one of me and Isabel´s favorites. She also likes the strokes, like me- what an awesome coincidence.
Coma- eat
To eat we had pastel (pronounced pas-teu, a fried pocket with cheese, ham and tomato, super good. They also had me try coxinhas (co-sheen-nias), a fried doughball with meat and onions inside. It was good- just really fried, almost too much for me to handle. Beer here is called Brahma, and the pop of choice is Guarana, both are great. Lunch here is the biggest meal, there´s always salad and meet, potatoes with cheese and onions and bacon, rice and beans are a staple. There´s so many fruits here- there´s not even names for all of them in English. The juices from them are my favorite. Theres this citrus fruit sort of like a tangerine but bigger which has the best juice ever. Yum. Mayonaise, Ketchup and Mustard are served with everything, even pizza. Coffee is very strong, but good.
So, that´s all I have time for now, sorry if I rambled, I´m very observant. Here is a link to pictures-
http://picasaweb.google.com.br/monica.musialowski/Londrina1#
Tchau tchau até logo.
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