How my ICLR in Brasil went (1) • Jinsung Lee’s Personal Homepage

…or, how my Brasil went in ICLR

Have you ever been to Brasil?
(In this post, I’ll stick to the portuguese way of writing Brazil, which is Brasil. A sort of courtesy.)

For Koreans at least, I’m pretty sure that not so many people will have a chance to visit Brasil for their whole life. Speaking with numbers, the Brazilian city closest to Seoul is approximately 16,000km away, and Rio de Janeiro, where ICLR happened, is approximately 18,000km away.

Google says the farthest city on Earth from Seoul is Montevideo of Uruguay, which is 19,600km away, so going to Rio should definitely be one of the longest travels a Korean could have.

Anyways, I was so excited to go to Brasil to even make myself train portuguese for a month and find a local friend online to exchange language with. I’ll talk about this later.

Since Brasil is so far from where I live, the flight itinerary also looked quite funny.

Seoul ——(14h)→ Mexico City (4.5h layover)
Mexico City —(6h)→ Lima (11.5h sleepover)
Lima —(5h)→ Rio De Janeiro

— — — — Enjoy ICLR and Brasil (4/22 - 4/28) — — — —

Rio De Janeiro —(6h)→ Lima (22h sleepover)
Lima —(6h)→ Mexico City (7h layover)
Mexico City -(2h)→ Monterrey (1.5h, wait inside the plane)
Monterrey ———(16.5h)→ Seoul

Total flight time was 55.5 hours, with some 46.5 hours of sweet layovers in between.

Some might say it’s a crazily bad choice to buy this ticket, but honestly I loved the journey haha. The ticket was relatively cheap—about 1700USD—and I could travel other countries as well! It was more than enough to enjoy ceviché and taco, signature dishes of Peru and Mexico.

Ceviché from Punto Azul , Lima — Ceviché from Punto Azul, Lima

Tacos from El Torito Tacos , Mexico City — Tacos from El Torito Tacos, Mexico City

From now I’ll talk less, and show more.

The airport of Rio de Janeiro was HUGE. It took very long to get out of this endless hallway.

The sun went completely gone on the way to the hotel, sadly.

Is this normal in Brasil? Apparently the Uber was on the wrong side of the lane… hmm.

Day 1.

Where I stayed is Wyndham Rio Barra , which was located in a quite rich and safe neighborhood in Rio.
The bus on the righthand side is the bus provided from ICLR, which helped us getting to the conference hall. — Where I stayed is Wyndham Rio Barra, which was located in a quite rich and safe neighborhood in Rio.
The bus on the righthand side is the bus provided from ICLR, which helped us getting to the conference hall.

In front of the hotel, you’ll see these every day…

Muito bonito…

In the bus

Riocentro

Arrived at Riocentro, where ICLR happens…

During the registration, the power went down 😅 and everyone queuing at the moment went quite angry

The venue itself was a very beautiful place…

Eat, walk, eat, walk.. precisamos que sempre comer e caminhar na conferencia né?

Some posters… of course…

Oops… where am I going during after the conference?

Museu do Folclore Edison Carneiro

Actually, the first day of the conference (23rd of April) was O Dia de São Jorge (St. George’s Day), which is quite big in Brasil. There were parties and performances happening everywhere.

How did I know it?

Luana. She runs her own business ‘ Sal de Ibiza ’ — Luana. She runs her own business ‘*Sal de Ibiza*’

There (always) was a live music going on

I made a very nice local friend, Luana, before I go to Rio. As mentioned here, my goal was to learn Portuguese as much as I can, maximize my short experience in Rio, and have maximum fun with local people there. She indeed helped me a lot to not miss any perks of Rio, and I feel so grateful and lucky that I made such a good friend! She’ll appear again and again in this blog post. Hope she comes to Seoul so that I could welcome her with similar hospitality in Korea.
Anyway, Thanks again Lu 🙏🏼

We moved to the nearby park and there were even more people..

Luana, Thata, Minjune , and me. — Luana, Thata, Minjune, and me.

Public bathroom nearby. Smelled really bad.

Lapa

We moved to a famous neighborhood, Lapa.

(Apparently famous) stairs, Escadaria Selarón

This sums up the first 30 hours of minha experiência do Brasil. A bit rough for such a short time haha 😅

Was definitely a Brazilian form of meeting with numerous people, so I’d also call this a full conference experience? 🤔

Anyway, the post is already full.

I’ll come back with other posts shortly to share the rest of the trip!