Trip to Curitiba, Part 2: Historic Architecture

While my cousins went to work, I took advantage of my day off to explore historic downtown Curitiba.  There are some really beautiful buildings there

Trip to Curitiba, Part 1: Childcare solutions

Wow, the last month of my internship just flew by!  Between several projects that kept me busy at work, lots of fun things to do outside of work, a few weekend trips and a bad case of food poisoning that kept me away from work for a couple days, I've completely neglected this blog.  I`ll publish a bunch of posts all at once to make up for it :)

The first weekend in July was a long weekend in São Paulo, so I travelled to Curitiba, in Paraná state, to visit my cousins Larissa and Nicole (no, not IGB Larissa and Nicole :P).

The buses and traffic leaving São Paulo on the long weekend were craaazy, and by the time I made it to the bus station the next several buses were sold out, so I had several hours to waste while waiting for my bus, so I went to get myself food at the nearby shopping center (or as Brazilians call them, just shopping ).

Here I got to witness how Brazilians care for their children on a trip to the mall:

 Yes, those are giant inflatable plastic hamster balls containing children.  Yes, they are floating in a wading pool.  I was torn between crying child abuse, and begging to be let into one of these bubbles myself.  It actually looked fun, in a kinda creepy way.  I wish I had a picture from closer-up, but I didn´t want to get dragged away by the angry looking security guards for taking pictures of children who didn't belong to me :P