May 13th or: time to throw up

The title partially refers to the Brazilian laws about glasses. You'll learn about the other part at the end of this entry. 

Starting off the day, we visited "Abioptica", the association of Brazilian opticians. They asked (from what I understood, I'm still not fluent) lots of critical questions, that we only were partially able to answer. All in all it seems that we won a possibly strong partner there. 

Training outside ...

Afterwards, we had lunch with our trainees (surprise meal: salad, rice, beans, meat). An hour later, training was scheduled to begin. The difference in skills of the trainees is striking -- some basically learn by themselves, you just have to show them once, whereas others don't get anything after explaining it approximately 8123291 times. Though the language barrier is a factor, it certainly isn't the only reason. However, this is the usual process of a training and imposes a quite interesting challenge.The weather was great though, so we spent lots of time outside teaching our fellow Enactees our craft. 

... and inside.

At night, we went to the mall (really? yeah, no joke) to eat. The only positive thing about this is that you have lots of different foods to choose from. I had classic Brazilian food: Yaki Soba (japanese brazilian food, ya know). 

By the way, did I tell you about the traffic? There are lots of weird rules about it: 
1) There are Omnibus only lanes. Really handy because otherwise, buses would just take forever to get somewhere.
2) It takes forever to get somewhere, I've rarely spent that much time in a car. Good thing gas is cheap. 
3) On one day of the week, you're not allowed to use your car during rush hour, depending on the last letter of your license plate (it's called rodízio, just like the dinner type).
4) On sundays between 7am and 16pm, some lanes are blocked for bicycles only. 
5) Traffic during rush hour is terrible, duh. 

Also, costs for personal seem to be incredibly low. A couple examples:
1) A lady in the elevator who presses the buttons for you.
2) Two guys with flags who stop cars when a pedestrian is crossing the street ... on a parking lot.
3) Everywhere you go, there's at least 3 guards (there might be another reason for that)
4) Stores and restaurants usually have more staff than customers. 

So yeah, what about throwing up? Check out this picture (Germans only): 

Zeit zum Ko(t)zen (= time to throw up)

Goodnight!