Reflection 1/8/17
This morning we flew to Curitiba. It was raining by the time we arrived to our hotel and luckily we didn’t have much planned for the day. Some of the class went out to walk around and get lunch but I did not want to risk getting my new wound wet in city puddle water or any kind of rain water. I stayed back in the hotel and wrote reflections and watched my favorite movie “Rio.” It was nice to relax and catch up on work. Georgie brought me some pizza back to the room and I was even more content. Then a few people from class came and we all talked and hangout in our room. I love how close this trip made us all, we are like a little family. When it was time for dinner, we wandered around the city and didn’t get back until around 11 o'clock or so. We were followed by a few homeless people but it was nothing worse than being in Philadelphia. I am eager to learn from this sustainable city and see what Curitiba really has to offer. Reflection 1/9/17 Today we met with Daniele Moraes who is an architect and urban planner for the city of Curitiba. She gave us a presentation on the urban planning process in Curitiba. Daniele told us all about how the city of Curitiba has grown to become a booming metropolitan area. It was first developed in 1963 and since then has adopted several different master plans for city improvement. Curitiba was designed with a balance between land use, road networks, and public transport in mind. I really enjoyed this presentation and Daniele was willing to help answer any questions that we could come up with. It was a pretty formal presentation with photographers, but I felt extremely underdressed. Since I had my leg all dressed from my "shark bite" I couldn't really get my jeans on and I showed up to a meeting with government representatives in athletic shorts and flip flops. The next half of our day was spent at Curitiba's environmental protection agency. We met with one of their representatives, Carlos, and got a tour of their facility. He showed us how the buildings were built with a sustainable design and showed us all their grounds. Carlos also brought us into one of their educational outreach classrooms and talked to us about Curitiba's green exchange and water resources. One thing in particular that I found interesting was that they teach their children when they are 11 or 12 how to do their own water quality testing. Carlos was a really personable person, and he called out Jaclyn for dozing off during his lecture. I personally didn't see Jac sleeping but it sure was funny to hear what professor Tait had to say about it. After Carlos's lecture the whole class went for a walk down to a small river to see the old brick factory. Along the way we saw Capybara and other birds that we pointed out to Lester. This was also the point that we realized Erika was losing her mind a little bit. In the taxi ride back to the hotel she had shown symptoms of severe heat exhaustion and as soon as we got back in our room, Georgie and I put cold compresses on her head and tried to cool her body off. When professor Tait came in to check on her, she started singing the song Copacabana to him. It was comical to say the least, but she was okay and that was what mattered. Today was jam packed with information and I really appreciated every bit of it. They offered some interesting perspectives on how to plan a city to be productive around a central urban nucleus and also how to construct buildings to be more environmentally savvy. I enjoyed today and I am very excited for the rest of Curitiba. Reflection 1/10/17 We started our morning by being chased by a homeless person for three blocks. He kept typing to pickpocket our group. Luckily for us, he was extremely untalented at what he was doing but it was still very annoying. Professor Tait had to get up in his face in order for the pick pocketer to leave us alone. Situations like what happened this morning are eye opening, it is a good reminder that you have to be aware of your surroundings at all times regardless of how good of a reputation a city has. Our meeting today was with Curitiba's Integrated Transport system, at one of their central bus terminals.Curitiba is home to a very intricate bus system that runs like a subway system. The BRT (bus rapid transit) system is so widely accepted in the city that 45% of Curitiba residents take the busses compared to a 22% that use cars. The BRT is constantly improving as well, they are trying to use some electric busses as well as busses that run off of biofuels. The city of Curitiba has a good handle on their carbon footprint. After we were finished our lecture on the BRT system, we got to see the central control room. It was like something out of George Orwell's 1984. Each light had a camera nearby and they were being monitored at all times. It was extremely creepy, but it sort of made me feel better about walking around the city because I knew they were always watching...I guess? After walking back to the hotel, we all decided we wanted to take the tour busses around the city. I was so excited to take the busses because that meant we would be surrounded by other tourists and not homeless people. It was actually a very nice ride- we stopped at the botanical garden and the opera house. The botanical gardens were beautiful but the opera house was fascinating. They build the entire structure on an old quarry to repurpose the land into something beautiful and useful.The bus trip was much needed for everyone to relax and take in the sights of Curitiba. After our nice bus ride, we went back to the hotel and split up for dinner. A group of us stayed back at the hotel and ate at the restaurant in the lobby. It was there that Erika went crazy for the second time. She legitimately hit her head on the dinner table and fell asleep then disappeared back to the room. We were all very concerned, and we told professor Tait right away. He gave her the option of going to the hospital, or drinking pedialite and sitting with him at every meal so he could make sure she was eating. Erika chose the pedialite option and she seems to be doing a little better. We have been drinking crazy amounts of water and getting a decent nights sleep so it had to have been her diet that caused this all. I am hopeful that she will feel well enough to continue with us tomorrow, and I am also hopeful that we take taxi's tomorrow. Curitiba is a pretty city, but a little scary. Reflection 1/11/17 I woke up early this morning to get my clothes from the laundromat so that I would have nice clothes to wear for the day however my clothes somehow smelled worse than they had before I even dropped them off. Laundromats are so different here than they are in the states. After the whole laundry ordeal, we went to a meeting with more city officials to talk more about Curitiba and its future plans. I did not care for this presentation at all whatsoever. They us in their cities cultural center and had tons of people attending the lecture to basically watch them talk to us. It was uncomfortable because they had asked us to ask alot of questions but then they dismissed every question that we asked them. For example, they presented their project to us called the Vale de Pinhão and we had asked if they were going to displace any residents from their homes. They kept telling us that they don't believe in displacement and they will never do it but on their last page of their powerpoint they stated very quickly that they were going to displace 200 people in 20 days. I also asked about a timeline for their big project and they couldn't tell me anything about it. All they said was that they believed in "think big, small steps, act quick", which I'm pretty sure was once one of Nike's slogans. After we left the meeting, we went and toured the Oscar Niemeyer museum of Art. It was a nice museum but I personally am not into art. I have to admit that the best part of the museum was this huge room with a ramp made of carpet that we got to run up. Today was an interesting day to say the least. I was kind of disappointed with todays presentations but tomorrow should be fun, we will be back to exploring again. Reflection 1/12/17 Today was awesome! We woke up early and got on a train to coast of Brazil into a little town called Morretes. The train ride was about 3 hours or so but it certainly did not feel like it. The views were spectacular and it was very relaxing until we accidentally got these little boys all wound up on the train. Tyler and I started to dance in middle of the aisle and Georgie said "no music." Little did we know that "no music" would be haunting us for the entirety of the train ride. The little boys kept screaming it and at one point they went up to the front of the train and took the microphone and started screaming "no music" into it. It was hilarious because I don't even think those little boys knew what they were saying, all they knew was that it made us laugh. At one point they even started singing Bob Marley into the microphones because they knew it made us happy. It was a strange train ride but it was definitely a great memory. When we arrived in Morretes, we had lunch at a tourist restaurant in town. The restaurant kept bringing you food until you physically couldn't eat anymore. After we were finished eating we walked around the little town and went shopping a little bit but the only thing we really bought was ice cream, which was delicious. We took a smaller bus back to Curitiba and then we decided we would ride the BRT system. The best part about the BRT system is the tubes that are used to get on and off the bus but other than that it was just like any old bus. I'm glad that we actually got to take the busses though because we had studies them so much prior to coming to Curitiba. Today was my favorite day in Curitiba, because half of it was spent in Morretes. |