Welcome back guys!  Today I am going to be discussing my time in Araraquara, Brazil.  The summer before my senior year I went on my last trip as a delegate with CISV.  Hopefully in the future I can be a leader with CISV, but unfortunately you need to be 21.  If you, like me, are interested in traveling and meeting people from around the world you should definitely look into being a CISV leader.  As a CISV leader the organization pays for the traveling fees, food, and housing during your trip, and you don’t need any experience with CISV, just an open mind.  Now back to my time in Brazil. To get to Araraquara I flew to Sao Paulo and took a bus for about 3 hours outside of the city. Araraquara is a lot smaller than Sao Paulo and has a population of about 226,000.  I went to Brazil in June which is actually the winter in Brazil. During the day it was hot and sunny, but at night it would get pretty cold. Some of my closest friends at this camp were from Amsterdam, Denmark, Spain, Norway, and Brazil.  At this camp there were 25 17 year olds and 3 adults, so we, the delegates, controlled the camp and organized the activities we did. The goal of a seminar camp is to have the youth run the camp in order to foster leadership skills and create intercultural discussions. 

One interesting topic I discussed at this camp were the similarities between the United States and Brazil.  It is interesting to compare these two countries because they are similar in size and diversity. Brazil has around 210 million people and the United States has around 326 million people.  Both countries have similar debates going on surrounding gun safety laws, and I think the United States could learn a lot from Brazil about gun control. In Brazil there are 17 million guns and in the United States there are around 330 million guns.  Brazil also had the most firearm deaths recorded in 2016 at 43,000, and the United States had the second most at 37,200.  

Some of the gun safety laws in Brazil are also very interesting.  In Brazil no one under the age of 25 is allowed to own a gun and in 2005 Brazil started to take firearms from citizens who do not need them.  This meant that self-defense was not a valid reason to own a gun. After this restriction the amount of guns in Brazil decreased significantly.  I think the United States needs to do something in order to decrease the amount of deaths related to firearms and looking at the restrictions on guns in Brazil is a good place to start.