Submitted by Meghan O’Brien on the 2020 winter session program in Brazil sponsored by the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences…
My second week abroad has been amazing and so much different than the Amazon. Rio is such a beautiful and modern city! We arrived at our hotel on Saturday and immediately went to the laundromat after sweating constantly for a week in the Amazon! Since then, we have gone on amazing excursions like visiting Jardim Botânico (the largest garden in Brazil), a landscape architect’s office, a green roof garden, the museum of tomorrow and an art museum. For lunch one day, we visited a fish market where you could choose your fish and then bring it upstairs to the restaurant and customize how you would like it to be prepared.
Outside of Rio, we have visited Lapa where we went on a bar and food tour with a tour guide and also Santa Teresa where we took a cable car into the mountains and enjoyed Feijoda, a popular beef dish served with rice and beans. The food is definitely different, but I have enjoyed many different dishes like guava jam and empanadas! We are staying two blocks away from Ipanema Beach and three blocks away from Copacabana Beach. I have grown up on the beach and these Brazilian beaches do not compare to any beach I have ever seen before. Vendors walk up and down the beaches everyday selling anything from coconuts, hammocks, or fried cheese!
We continued our two classes in the breakfast room of our hotel. We learned about Roberto Burle Marx who has an enormous presence in Brazil. Burle Marx was a landscape architect who designed many gardens, sidewalks, and parks. His famous black and white design runs along the beaches in Rio and can be found on towels, hats, and in many buildings. His work seems to unite everyone together and it is a unique characteristic of Rio. Moreover, for the field sketching class we practiced drawing at different distances in the famous Flamengo Park and we also tried to replicate pieces of art from the modern art museum. I think the most important element that we have talked about is a sense of place. There are many contributing forces that influence sense of place and we have compared and contrasted these among our homes, the University of Delaware, the Amazon, and now Rio. This is not something we usually analyze, but it is interesting to see how we adjust and what defines our different sense of place.
I am sad that we only have two weeks left in this vibrant city. Walking outside the hotel to musicians or street performers and interacting with the locals has allowed us to get a feel for the city. I am so grateful to experience the welcoming Brazilian culture.
View of Ipanema Beach before dinner
