We received a group of students of the North Dakota State University for faculty-led program on which students get to know Brazil in a different way, visiting places that regular tourists wouldn’t get to visit. The goal of this program is to watch lectures and learn more about Brazil simultaneously as they experience our culture.

First we welcomed them in Curitiba with a typical all you can eat Brazilian Churrasco and went to a brewery bar with live Samba and Sertanejo! The girls got to try their first Caipirinha  and danced our traditional music.

To continue their adventure, we took the group to a touristic local community in São Miguel – Paranaguá, South Brazil. This place is an island where people can only get there by boat and there are approximately 300 people living in this bay. The exchange students were placed in local family houses’ and got to know how it’s like to be part of a family of the community.

Through different activities such as walking trail around the community, collecting crustaceans in the mangrove, local canoeing, bike ride and sea bath the students got immersed in the culture and we helped them to reflect about every experience they were having over there.  They were also engaged to play with the children and do different activities so both parts could interact with each other without the language barrier.

The American girls also got to show their culture to the community! During a bonfire they prepared s’mores for everybody in the island, they also brought chalks to draw and write messages on the floor, took photos of the children and then let they make photo frames with popsicle sticks and realized many other interactive things.

On their way back to Curitiba we stopped in Morretes, a small historical city in the South and ate a traditional barreado, then they took a touristic train where they got to learn and see many important things about the Atlantic Rainforest.

And there is more: now the group will travel to Rio to live the last part of their adventure here in Brazil.

We are happy because this exchange program didn’t only give them a period of discovering a new culture, language and country, but also gave them a lifetime of opportunities and new friends.

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