The Beginning of the End

People have been telling me for months that my time in Brazil is drawing to a close. I've laughed at the notion, but in the past few weeks, the next "generation" of IGERT students have been visiting Rio to plan for their research semesters next year and so the beginning of the end is now taking a more realistic form. 

As I showed the students around the university campus and parts of the city, I realized I know these areas better than I thought. Between walks on the beach, endless pay-by-the-kilo restaurants, and bizarre street-sign explanations, I realized that while I may still be an estrangeira, I still know Rio better than most tourists and I now have my own stories and soundtracks to supplement the typical city guide. And yes, I have thought to myself that if there weren't people to see and places to be back home, I could surely stay a while longer ...

In the next few days, I will have two final university meetings: one with each of my Brazilian advisors.  I didn't get nearly as far as I had laid out in my pre-semester research plan and I never did get to present my research progress to the department (my fault, not theirs), but I am still relatively content with what I did accomplish.  I learned how engineering research is conducted at a typical Brazilian university, I learned about the state of life cycle assessment and other sustainable engineering analyses in Brazil, and I learned more than I could have ever imagined about sugarcane ethanol production in Brazil. While I could have gathered much of this knowledge in the U.S. by poking around online and finding the pertinent contacts, one of the biggest advantages of working directly on a Brazilian unviersity campus proved to be my colleagues' desire to make sure I understood. Perhaps they didn't want me misrepresenting Brazil in the U.S., but for whatever reason, I am truly thankful. Several times, people started spewing forth as many names as I could possibly write down at once: "X is interesting, and so are Y and Z. In São Paulo, A worked with B, who then conducted multiple projects with C, D, and E [...]" and so on and so on. E-mail is a poor medium for such spontaneity.   

Today I am preparing my semester summary for my Brazilian advisors, detailing what I have accomplished while under their guidance and describing my plans for the next few months. (I intend to finish this PhD by April 2012!) After my final meeting Tuesday afternoon, I will leave the campus island of Fundão and set my sights on the greater South American continent. For the month of July, I have the distinct pleasure of being a nomad (of the graduate-student thesis-writing type). My only restriction is that I return to Rio by July 30 for my flight back to the U.S. There are so many possibilities, many of which pull me in completely different directions, so expect a travel calendar in one of my upcoming posts. Tchau for now! 

You never know where the path may lead. (Parque da Cidade)