Gaúcha in Austin

  They are everywhere. Sometimes they are alone; sometimes they are in a pack. No, I am not talking about animals. I am talking about the scooters in Austin, a business that has grown enormously in the past few years in the United States. Along with e-bikes and other sharing mobile services, they are called micromobility business. Here in Austin there are some scooter rental companies like Bird , Wheels , and Lime . All you need to do is download the app, make an account and pay for the ride. Almost all companies charge a fee of $1 to unlock and then about 10 to 35 cents per minute. As it is a dockless system users are not supposed to leave them at a certain spot. They can ride their scooter and simply leave it anywhere they want. If you want to know how the Bird Scooter works, you can watch this video: For me it was quite shocking to see all these scooters left all over the city. It's something we don't see in Brazil, not even in big cities like São Paulo. I started wondering ...

  The tower at University of Texas in Austin So, here I am, in Austin, Texas. I arrived here on January 16th along with 35 other teachers from all over Brazil and we will stay until the end of February studying at the University of Texas at Austin. We have classes every day, from 9am to 5pm, with a 1h30-hour lunch in the middle. When we travel to a different country it's common to become enthusiastic in the first days. It's like you are not going to have the time to see everything you planned to see. That's what most of us did. Many teachers went out every evening to go shopping. And obviously many of us were exhausted by the end of this first week. That's understandable, we want to make the most of it. At the Lady Bird Lake So far, I have not seen much of Austin. We spend much time at the Campus. Still, I could notice that this is a city that values open areas. There are many parks around the city, specially by the Colorado river. Last weekend I walked by the area th...

It's Texas, baby! This is a page created to share a lit bit about the time I am spending in Austin . How did I, a teacher from Southern Brazil ( São Leopoldo ), get here? Read on and I will tell you everything! It all started back in the end of 2019, when the Brazilian government announced the opportunity I had been waiting for a long time: to study at a university in the United States. I immediatelly applied and some weeks later my application was accepted. As all very good adventure stories, there was a set back just around the corner. I am sure you can already imagine what I am talking about. That's right, Covid reached all parts of the globe and the program was put on stand by. That was pretty frustrating, but I was obviously more worried about keeping me and my family healthy. Those two enduring pandemic years passed by and we survived one challenge after the other. Getting back to school was definetely hard. We learned how to deal with students who were depressed, anxious...