May 11th or: mother's day

"Waking up in the morning, feeling like P-Diddy, grab up my glasses, I'm out the door, I'm gonna hit the city .. " pretty much sums up the start of our day. (if this sounds familiar: Ke$ha -- Tik Tok). We wanted to have breakfast. On a normal sunday this would be an average challenge. Good thing there is the "mercado municipal", it's always open on sunday. Unless it's mother's day, which is basically a combination of christmas day, easter and new year's eve -- everything is closed. Except for the mall. So we went once again to get food there: rice, beans, meat, you know how it is. Love it though. 

The nicer part of Sao Paulo: Jardims Paulistas

Afterwards, we went to see the Central Park of Sao Paulo. Frankly, I don't recall the name, but it certainly reminded me of NYC. Huge park with lots of bicyclists, coconut water shacks (doesn't quite taste like coconut, but it is pretty refreshing) and of course trees. Basically, it's the lung of the city, providing a tremendously big green area near the center. Interesting fact: the owner of the businesses that rent bikes around the park makes 2 million R$ per month (around 1 million USD). That's even more than Jordan Belfort in "The Wolf of Wall Street" makes. 

Palm trees in Winter? Not bad

Feeling relaxed, it was time to get down to business. We still hadn't come forward with the selection process of the trainees that much, so we went to a church where refugees are supposed to live. We didn't encounter any, but only the priest, who gave us an appointment with them the morning after. The area around the church was rather interesting though: lots of buildings that certainly wouldn't be around in Germany anymore because they look so badly. Seemed like a rather poor neighborhood, yet we made it out alive. Sao Paulo isn't as dangerous as everybody thinks. 

At night, the rest of the team arrived, except for Deniz. We moved quarters and now Jakob and I are staying in a small apartment with a genuinely nice girl who even speaks german. Feels good.