By Stefan and Silvie,

After a short sleep, we felt it was necessary to sleep as long as possible. Except for one group, who still had to do some measurements. However, that group was the lucky one, because the showers were still hot. When the rest woke up and wanted to take a shower, there was once again a power blackout. This cold shower, or not even a shower at all, caused quite a bit grumpy faces at breakfast. Luckily the weather was good and we decided to spend our last few hours in Sao Paulo, and Brazil, in the city.

One part of the group went to the Ibirapuera park. It is said to be one of the top ten places you need to visit when you’re visiting Sao Paulo and it was well worth it. The rest of the group had lunch at the mall and went shopping afterwards. At least, that was their plan. Most of the shops in the mall were still closed, so they took the metro to the center of Sao Paulo to continue shopping there. Too bad that all the shops were closed except for the McDonalds.

We set 15:00 as a gathering time at the hostel for one last Caipirinha before we would take the bus to the airport. At 16.00 we were all waiting on the sidewalk in front of the hostel to catch the bus, but there was no sign of a bus. After many phone calls with headquarters all the way in London, the bus finally arrived at 16:45. Luckily there was no traffic jam in the city and the bus driver really drove flat out. After some rushing at the airport, we were all in the plane on our way to Schiphol.

Shortly after the plane had taken off, we flew through a storm and lighting hit the plane. This caused fortunately no problems, as far as we know. During the flight, almost everyone has slept long and deep, but there are also a lot of movies watched.

After many hours being on the plane, we finally landed at Schiphol. We found out that our flight to Brussels was twenty minutes delayed. Not a problem, but the delay continued when we were on the plane, until we had more than one hour delay in the end. Some people were already saying it would have been more advantageous to simply take the train from Schiphol to Eindhoven, but unfortunately our suitcases were also going to Brussels. We type this now, we just got into the bus to Eindhoven and the weather is real Dutch weather. Rain, not too warm and cloudy. The not committee members of the trip surprised the whole committee with a little gift as their appreciation for organizing the trip.

We had a fantastic time in Brazil with all the 20 students and we even made some Brazilian friends who wants us to come back! Perhaps in the future…?