Brick

The students from the laboratory told us it was either a very venomous coral snake or its non-lethal cousin. The only way for us to know was to check its belly for a white spot. Obviously none of us were brave enough to try and turn it around.

The start of the week was also marked with some aggravating irritation concerning our Delft3D model. As it decided to continuously run into unexpected errors, the progress on the coastal modelling side of the project was severely halted. Meanwhile the other part of the team was remodelling our report, as the previous structure seemed to become a bit disorderly.

As the unexpected visitor from last week was still present until Friday, she quickly taught us how to make our own bread and bake an apple pie from scratch. After sharing the pie with the folks at the laboratory, their faces definitely lit up. Our first attempts at our own bread were less successful, as they could be easily classified as “bricks” or “things to break your teeth on”.

Beside the nice beaches and surfing conditions, Barra de Lagoa is also known for its animal rescue centre. As it is located around the corner from our house, we decided it was time for a visit. The centre focusses on the wellbeing of turtles, and although the centre is not that large there were quite a few. We learned that in recent years the Brazilian government is doing a lot to improve the environment and create better living conditions for the animals. We were surprised to learn that the main sponsor of the centre was Petrobras, the oil company which is blamed by many Brazilians for the problems in the first place.

If all goes according to plan the focus for next week will be to start testing our proposed solutions in the Delft3D model. We have high hopes that next week the model will work without further problems and we can move on into the final phase of the project, which will focus on proposing the best solution to the port authority.