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Summer time

The air here in Brazil gets more moist by the day. The main difference between summer and spring is the dryness. during spring there were multiple fires because of draught almost everywhere, now I'm even having trouble lighting the furnace. You cannot escape the moist, as I am writing this my elbows stick to the desk like glue even though I am not sweating at all. The project seems to go on quite nicely, currently we have managed to determine the pharmaceuticals that we are going to use in the toxicity assessment together with the methods we are going to use. So, the first method is with the bacteria  Aliivibrio Fischeri, the concept is that they will glow when they come in contact with toxic material. We can measure the glow amount with a device called MICROTOX and turn that into a statistic analysis. Secondly we are going to use cucumber seeds to measure the toxicity. We will grow them using water mixed with the pharmaceuticals and look at the state there in after a few days. Fi
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First month, So far I have lived here for one month now and the internship project is three weeks deep at the time that I'm writing this. The weather is amazing, it is so much warmer than the Netherlands (as expected). During the day the heat can rise to 30 C. The difference with NL though is that it cools down like crazy. the difference between day and night is about 12 degrees which makes it a bit hard to wear the right clothes. Say you go to the university around 4 pm, its still nice and sunny however, when you leave around 9pm you have to make sure you brought a jacket, one of the rookie mistakes I made. Now I have to feel the consequences, the elusive Brazillian common cold. It seems that the "summer" has finally begon here in Belo Horizonte. It kicked off after a football match (pun intended), which was a bit crazy but thats for later. So, the weather makes a whole 180 degrees turn. First it was sunny and no rain for the past 3 months and now, after the first thu

Day 3, What a day

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3-9-2017 11:00 . Yesterday, I had an amazing day. Me, Giordana and Elbe (a spanish exchange student) went to the open air art museum Inhotim. I was already impressed by Belo Horizote but oh man. The whole thing was surrounded by beautiful nature from places all over the world. For example: palm trees from Indonesia and cacti from Australia. It was really a beautiful experience and I would recommend everyone who goes to Belo to visit Inhotim. Afterwards Giordana had a suprise for us. She took us to the "top of the world"; the top of the mountain range surrounding the city. Here we had a beautiful view over the city and the sunset. On the way up the mountain we passed many orange rock-like structures, these appear to be termite hills! On top of the mountain was the option to go paragliding over the area, maybe for some other day.
Why am I here again? My name is Klaas Daalderop, a Dutch student who is now in Brazil, Belo Horizonte for the next 5 months. The purpose is to complete an internship at livinglab brazil which will start on 17 september. Untill then, who knows?
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Day 1, The first of many After saying goodbye to friends and family in the Netherlands the journey began. A flight to Lissabon was the first step and after that, a 9 hour flight to Belo Horizonte. After finally arriving in Brazil, the most kind Giordana picked me up and took us to her place where we had a drink and a bite. She told me about the do's and don'ts in Belo. For example: the neigboorhood Farfelle seems to be the place to be if you want to get robbed. Other than that it seems that the people here are very polite in a certain way: if you ask if they want something they often refuse politely but actually want to accept what you offered. Finally we drove to the place where I'm to stay for the next 5 months. the two lads who live there are very kind and helpfull, sadly I didn't talk with them much because I was exhausted from the journey. Since my internship will start on the 17th of september I will have plenty of time to explore the neighborhoods and the univer