Thanksgiving Break in St. Louis

Tim, Laurie, Fabio, Felipe, Natalia, Juan Pedro, Carla, and Claudia. 

Wednesday morning, sunny day, Pittsburg empty. After spending the entire Tuesday night cleaning my house, Thanksgiving break in St. Louis was waiting for me. A good coffee in the car, awesome friends, and a lot of fun.

Even not finding a place to have lunch on Thursday, we enjoyed every single moment of our trip. Also, the dinner was wonderful. We went to Walmart and bought a cooked chicken, garlic bread, grapes, an apple pie.

Our Friday started in BestBuy's line. After having good food, we went to visit the Arch and shop at the mall. Hurry up. We still had time to get ready to party.

Last day was to have lunch in The Cheesecake Factory. And, while boys went to visit a beer factory, we girls stayed shopping at the mall.

It's difficult to explain in words what happened in our trip, the only thing I can say we had a lot of fun. It's awesome and, of course, we did our best.

To see more photos, click here.

First Snow in Pittsburg

It was cold, cloudy and windy. It was Wednesday. I don’t know why, but cloudy days make me feel upset. The cold was not so intensive, but the wind made me feel my face hurting and frozen. 

I was heading to my last class, and some ice flakes started to follow down from sky. In few minutes, they became more intensive, and a wonderful white view took place. 

There were still some orange leaves in the trees, and squirrels were playing. 

That day, I spent my class time looking through the window and enjoying the beautiful view.   

   

When I Have Some Time

Ca and I taking pictures before partying.

I know that I can complain about a lot of things here, and I know that Pittsburg is not the best place in the world to spend some time, but at least I can say that I like to be here. There are a couple of things I need to list to never forget; they are being essential for my happiness in United States.

First of all, I am pleasure to have made awesome friends; half of my happiness, or more, is just true because they are with me. I swear I'm gonna miss every single moment with the wonderful guys I met here. 

Second, I am so happy with some activities I am taking here. In Brazil, I had never given me time to do that, such as going to the gym. I will miss the opportunities to ride my bike after my classes or late at night to go to the Rec Center, and I will probably miss the safe feeling of going out without caring about dangerous places.

Another thing that I really enjoy is the weekend. We use to start the weekends on Fridays, going to Walmart to buy food to cook. Saturday night is fantastic; I love to cook, and I am enjoying trying different foods as well.

In the end, Sunday is a day to study, go to the mass, and wait Monday arrives. However, when I have some time, it becomes a day to write and express my feelings. I miss my chronicles and my good writings.  

Click here to see more pictures. 

Halloween: a day to remember

Red Riding Hood and Buzz.

I was pretty excited to spend my first Halloween in the United States, and now I can say that I really lived the magic of Halloween. In Brazil, we don’t commemorate it. Sometimes we have some costume parties, but it’s not like here. I was impressed.

Actually, the Halloween started for me when my American roommates began to bring a lot of stuff to decorate our apartment. We had pumpkins, bats, spiders, and web spiders spread all over the house.

Unfortunately, Friday night I was sick, and I couldn’t go out with my friends. I saw my roommates dressing up, and everybody in the street happy with their costumes.

On Saturday, one of my roommates and I carved our pumpkins. It was awesome. At night, I dressed up my Red Riding Hood costume and went to a fraternity party with my roomies. Late in the night, I went to another party with some other friends. 

On Monday, 31, I went to the SAB’s Halloween Party (Student Association of Broadcasters) at Fat Daddy's. I skipped the Trick or Treat because I didn’t have enough time, but I wish I could have done it.

I will never forget the time I had here during this Halloween.

If you wanna see the pictures, click here.   

We Had Fun

I know that I didn't have the best Fall Break of my life, but I can say that been here it's already a big deal.

When I read the comments in my previous post, I felt so happy to have helped some people to see how important is to be together.

I miss a lot my family, my boyfriend, and my friends, but I'm here trying to learn more and improve my English.

I hope that this experience be the best one in my life, and I'm pretty sure it'll be.

Nevertheless, talking about Fall Break, I think I don't need  to write anything about that time.

Just click here to look at the pictures and imagine how awesome it was.

How to Survive in Pittsburg During the Fall Break

Carla, Natália, Juan Pedro and Me. 

When I arrived in Pittsburg the first impression that I had it was that even been a small place, it was beautiful, and people here were warm with international students. I came one week before the classes starting, and I was shocked when American students started to arrive.

I was alone in my dorm; I left my apartment on Saturday morning because we (exchange students) had a trip to a farm. When I came back, there was a television in my living room, a lot of dishes in the kitchen, and the shelf in the toilet area was full. Pittsburg was born again.

Now, and every weekend, actually, I feel that the city stop living. It is so sad to go to the Dining Hall and see that there is no one on the streets.

My friends and I could not rent a car to go to another place because we are not 21. For me, it is really unfair because in my origin country I am overage.

We did a schedule to try to survive alone here, in Pittsburg, for four days. Our first plan is sleep everybody in the same dorm. The second plan is to be always together.

Anyway, in my next post I hope I will be able to tell you what happened, and how we handled with our fall break. I hope to have fun here.

Free Brazilian Food

Have you ever tried Brazilian food? It is pretty good. I am saying that because I cooked for some international and American friends, and they agreed that we have a lot of good options in Brazil.

Thinking about doing something different, the Brazilian Students Association organized a day to give Brazilian food to PSU students.

As good Brazilians, we had a computer with Brazilian songs, a samba and pagode, and guys playing Brazilian instruments. We were all dancing and enjoying the good moment together in the Oval.

We were wearing Brazilian t-shirts; I saw a lot of people taking pictures of us.

I think that we showed very well how our country is, and how people are there. We are talkative; we smile a lot, and make many friends.

I had a lot of fun, and I am sure that the people that tried our food enjoyed the experience and shared with us the taste of our nation.

Sigma Hat

How can we found a fraternity in United States? It’s easy, you have to choose members and give it a name. You don’t need to live in the same house, but you need to enjoy being with those people.

When we went to Kansas City, my friends and I, I don’t know how and why exactly, decided to found a fraternity.

Like many of the best inside jokes in life, my friends and I got so lost in the excitement and fun of our fraternity, Sigma Hat, that we have forgotten some of the details in its creation. 

During a trip to Kansas City, after being refused admittance to clubs, we were forced to find an alternative means of fun. So began Sigma Hat.

The initiation process was simple: Wear a lampshade as a hat while doing the symbol of Sigma Hat. 

Now, we are a family.


Click here to see more photos.

Being Connected

As part of the activities to the Online Publishing class, one is find and share with my readers a website that can be interesting and useful for you. 

I think that one of the best sites that I saw about travel is the TravelPod, the web's original travel blog.

It is kind of a blog, good to navegate and full of information about travel, mainly about details, that is something that we always forget. 

The website gives a lot of information about wonderful places to visit and where to stay, but I think that the what makes it good is the opportunity that it opens to people share their experiences. 

No matter where you are going, it is always awesome talk to somebody that have been there before.

If you had a good experience in some of your trips and would like to share with people around the world, go to TravelPod. Also, if you are thinking about make an adventure and want to be sure that it will be nice, check website. 

I hope that you like.  

Brazilian friends and an amazing experience in the USA

Let’s go to Kansas City

If you have already been in Pittsburg, you probably know why I was so excited to go to Kansas City. But if you don’t know why, I will tell you. There is a little number of things that you can do in a small city and generally they are the same every weekend.

It was Labor Day on Monday and we did not have class. We were not interested in spending our weekend in Pittsburg. Americans were going back home and we didn’t have a place to go.

We were in eight people – six Brazilians, an American girl and a Paraguayan boy. We rented two cars and went to Kansas City. We booked the cheapest hotel that we found, stopped in Wal Mart to buy some food, and left.  

It was Friday, 6 p.m. The two cars that we rented were awesome. We were feeling like rich people living and enjoying United States. The sun was with us most part of the trip, and we took beautiful photos while we were driving on the road. You can see some of them below.

We just wanted to have fun, but we could not enter in clubs because we were not 21. So, parties were in our rooms. It was difficult to wake up on the next day, and more difficult it was to the ones that did not remember how they had got to sleep.

On Saturday morning we went to The Legends and spent almost the whole day there, just shopping. On Sunday we tried to go to the Brazilian Market, but as good Brazilians, they were not working. We went to the zoo, had a funny and tired day there and went back to Pitt State. To conclude our trip, we went to Wal Mart and bought some food to cook. At night, we had a Brazilian dish with a really good taste.

The Labor Day was a day to study and finish our works.

I loved that weekend.   

Click here to see the photos.

A Farm Trip

In my first week here, in Pittsburg, everything that everyone offered to me I accepted. I was alone in my dorm, I did not know the city, and I was looking for some entertainment. The opportunity to go to a farm seemed good, even knowing that I lived in a small countryside city in Brazil. Anyway, my friends were going and I would like to go with them. 

I was wearing boots, a chess t-shirt, and jeans. When I arrived in front of the Glass Point in the Student Center, I was glad to see the bus that would take us to the farm. It was a yellow bus and it looked old, but it was beautiful, something that I just had seen in movies. When they opened the doors, we ran to take our places. We took a lot of pictures with the bus. It was awesome. 

The farm that I saw there was totally different than the ones that I had seen in Brazil. The biggest tractors that I have ever seen in my life were there. The huge rolls of field piled one over another were amazing. There was a lot of machinery that I could not imagine to what it served. I felt inside a movie because it was a film scenario. 

To complete that view, there was a huge truck waiting to collect the grains that were stored in big compartments. I saw in a story some time ago the difference between the trucks that carry grains here and in Brazil, and I could identify this difference here. In Brazil, trucks are not totally closed, so they lose a lot of grains during the transportation. I liked the process to carry grains here. 

We had lunch in a church and after that we went to see a corn harvest. The huge tractor was there, destroying the plantation to take the corn. We were in the middle of the plantation and we could see so far. We went to visit a church in another place, and then we went back home. 

Everybody was so exhausted that for the most part, the ones that were in the same bus that I was slept. I slept too. I arrived in Pittsburg tired, but I really enjoyed the day that I had. It was wonderful.

Travelling is an adventure

Photo: Natália Lorandi

How about a trip without happiness, worries and sadness? It would not be a good beginning if our first flight was not late. I say this because my friend Natalia, the one that took pictures, was with me. Our first flight from Porto Alegre to São Paulo was late almost two hours. We could do nothing, just wait.

Arriving in São Paulo, we had to wait about five hours to take the flight to Dallas, Texas in the United States. Our dream had already started. When I gave my ticket to enter in the plane, something started to whistle. It was me, or better, my ticket. I was guided to another place and a woman inspected me. Everything was all right and fortunately I am not a drugs trafficker.

No big problems so far.

We were sitting down in Dallas airport waiting for our next plane to Joplin since 6 a.m. It was time to go but we could not see other people waiting. We thought that the flight could be delayed, but we did not imagine that the gate could have changed. We missed it.

“The next one is at 7:30 pm”, the woman that was working in the ‘correct’ gate told us. Not having other options, we sat down and waited until 8 p.m., because the flight was full. We did not know the city, and there would be no available flights in two days and we started to cry.

The company woman offered us a plane to Arkansas and told us that we would take two or three hours by car to arrive in Joplin. To not forgive details, our baggage was already in Joplin airport.

There was a woman on the waitlist to Joplin too and we found her going to Arkansas. We asked her if she would like to rent a car and go with us. “My daughter is going to pick me up. I live in Joplin. Would you like a ride?” Of course we would.

Natalia and I went to Joplin with our new ‘friend’. She was about 45. Joplin Airport was closed because we arrived there at almost midnight. She offered her house, towels and a good bed to sleep in. She lived on a farm, there were cows, and everything there was beautiful. She and her daughter were like angels in our trip. 

They really helped us.

In the morning, they took us to Joplin Airport to get our baggage and wait for someone from Pittsburg State University.

I left my house on Thursday, 11, at 7 a.m. and I arrived here, in my new home, on Saturday, 13, at 5 p.m. Can you believe it? I promise, it is true.


See more photos here.

Let’s start at the beginning

Photo: Natália Lorandi

When I was thinking about travelling, a lot of friends came to me and asked me to do a blog and post there everything that was happening with me. This was not only a way to be close, but it could be also an online class about travelling.

I have my personal blog where I used to post some chronicles, but this space is not supposed to be like that. I intend to put here all the good and bad happenings that take place in my life and share with you, dear reader, my feelings.

This blog is a required activity for my Online Publishing class in Pittsburg State University.

Enjoy it!