Curitiba

When I tried to buy a bus ticket for the overnight bus to Curitiba, the man at the counter refused to understand the number 19, no matter how I pronounced it or spelled it out, so I ended up with seat number 9. I knew there had to be a reason, and sure enough, I became good friends with Fernanda, the girl in seat 10. She is a 23-year-old biomedics student who recently moved to Curitiba to do her specialization in heart surgery equipment. I ended up wandering around downtown Curitiba and visiting the fire department with her and her two friends in the afternoon.
In the morning, I left my back pack in a locker at the station and walked from there to the botanical garden. It's a nice little park, with a beautiful glass dome building (notice that I was carrying my winter jacket... it was about 15 degrees all day!). From there I took the bus to the other side of town. The bus system is one of the main reasons I wanted to visit Curitiba. It has it's own set of lanes in the middle of the road and neat boarding tubes that make for efficient payment/ embarkation.
For lunch, I went to my host family's uncle's house. His wife prepared real feijoada (not the ice cream kind, lol) and his daughter and her two daughters joined us. I went from not knowing any one in Curitiba to having 10 friends by the time I left! On the bus to Pomerode that evening, I also met a lady from a nearby town whose 2 daughters live in other towns, so I have more people to visit whenever I come back here!