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The autumn arrived in Curitiba – it has been raining for hours now. And it is even raining a little bit in our apartment – various parts of the ceiling are leaking but nobody seems to be worried, it seems to be normal, so we are also cool about it, just moved some pieces of furniture a little bit. In fact the autumn was supposed to arrive here in the beginning of March and everybody here was afraid of the cold coming. If cold means plus 26 Celsius, it is all right with me.

We spend the Easter holiday in Florianoplis, or Floripa as the locals call it. It is a strange city – in fact it is a 2 in 1 package because there is a city (devided in two parts by the ocean) and there is the Santa Catarina Island that belongs to the city. It is a bit confusing but nonetheless beautiful. We choose to stay outside the centro and it was a very clever decision as the city was completely deserted during the weekend. We stayed in a nice pousada (bed and breakfast) on the north of the island, very near the beautiful Santinho beach. The weather was just ideal – warm enough to swim and enjoy the sun but cool enough to walk. We walked a lot watching the surfers and the waves, were hiking for even more beautiful views, enjoyed the sunshine, swam and eat muito muito seafood in various forms. On Saturday we decided to rent a car and visited the Lake – there are some villages in between the ocean and the lake, so if you turn left you see the lake, if you turn right, you see the ocean. A nice place to be. (Anyone ever thinks of going to Floripa, I can recommend the pousada – www.pousadadoatoba.com.br and we can recommend some really good restaurants including this one http://www.arantebar.com.br in the south of island in a fishing village called Pantano do Sul).

Florianopolis

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Last week was less eventful as there was a break in the school so Robi was not teaching. He had plenty of time to practice guitar, I studied a lot of Portuguese, we did some shopping, walking in the city. I don’t think I wrote about Curitiba before. It is a very pleasant city to stay – easy to get around, safe and clean (we are talking Brazilian terms of course, not Switzerland). It has a nice center with nice squares, large parks, a big cathedral, plenty of shopping (this is how shopping centres are called – just shopping), a nice walking street. Of course a Brazilian city is not at all like a European city with old buildings etc. It has very high houses – not quite skyscrapers, but high -, a lot of modern and not very nice architecture, small shops everywhere. The local transport system is really efficient with very convenient bus stations that look like UFOs. People are very European – there are a lot of people of Ukranian. Polish, German and Italian origin so a lot of the people we meet are called Natasa, Tatjana, Elena or Giovanni. People here are supposed to be much colder than anywhere else in Brazil – and it is true that in Rio people were more open. But still, they are very kind and nice so we can’t complain.

One of these days we will finally take the Tourist Bus and go around the city to make a little film. The rain stopped now and I stop writing as I have to do my homework of Portuguese for tomorrow. Unfortunately it seems that Lenita – my teacher – will have to go away for 10 days and I am very sad but she promised to give me some books to read (simple novels for young people – this is the fascinating thing about learning a language, you can speak like a 3 year old and nobody says that you are an idiot – well, they might think so but at least they don’t say but congratulate you for such a great achievement.)

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