Sao Paulo, Birthday, Brasilia

So, I'm finally writing this! For the sheer reason that we're going to Rio (going to Rio!) in late December, and I'll definitely want to write about that. That, and there's also been a lot of other stuff going on. I stopped keeping a written log of everything a bit before we went to Sao Paulo, so my pictures are going to guide my memory. Luckily, I took pictures of pretty much everything, so this shouldn't be much of a problem.

Sao Paulo, I don't think, is one of those places that everybody has on their travel list. People want to go to places like London, Paris, Rome, New York City, Rio de Janiero, Shanghai, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Sydney, etc, etc. I think that Sao Paulo belongs on that list of 'cities that don't get nearly as much hype as they deserve', like Xi'an, Istanbul, Boston, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Athens, Seoul, Oslo, Vancouver, etc. It's a beautiful city.

If you haven't planned on going, well, you should probably fix that.

We flew into Sao Paulo late at night (or was it early in the morning?). I should mention here that Sao Paulo was Bella's departure city, and that was the reason we were there.

We stayed with Mae's sister, Manula (but we just called her Manu). To put this in perspective, her apartment was about three blocks from the Sao Paulo equivalent of 5th Avenue.

Meet Manu! 

First, since it was a holiday, we went to a museum...or, we planned to go to one, but got there too late and decided not to wait for over an hour to get in. But we still looked around the gardens and the monuments, which were really cool.

And that's the museum. The whole, grand thing.

In a lot of ways, since Sao Paulo reminded me of Washington DC. For those of you who have been, remember all of the little monuments? I'm not talking about the Lincoln Memorial, but the little monuments you see scattered around that area of DC. Sao Paulo has those.

And those museums? They go hard. 

There were also some bigger ones; grander, more majestic, the kind that people tend to gather around because the planning was exquisite and wonderful, and the details and minutiae are carved with a stunning amount of patience and care, and the overall presence of such a magnificent structure is something rather alluring and attractive to the passerby.

Manu showed us around the city (accidentally including the ghetto, which was extremely terrifying - GPSes around the world really need to learn to block those routes). With Mae, I went to the downtown area, which was, well, downtown. Manu told me not to go, if that's any indication of how it was. Basically, it was what most large, urban city downtowns are like. Crowded, impossible to get on the metro during rush hour, etc. General city stuff.

However, we did take a taxi to a cathedral and saw a couple of the other structures.

And this guy. "Senhor que quereo que eu faco?" means
"Sir, what do you want me to make?" If memory serves, he was
one of the founders of the city.

The cathedral was beautiful. Ironically, we got there about fifteen minutes before mass started, so we were stuck until it was over. ("You went to Church!?" my brother asked.)

The next day (or later that night...I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact details) we went to see Mamma Mia!. Yes, the smash-hit musical based off of ABBA songs. Thankfully, I've seen the movie so many times that I basically have the script memorized (it's kind of pathetic), so I knew exactly what was going on. Of course there are differences between adaptions, but we musical theatre nerds are always prepared for that sort of thing.

I mean, really, what else did you expect?

But anyway, we went to this really nice theatre and had great seats. I was really interested to see how they would pull off all of the different roles, since it's an American musical that takes place in Greece, so it's obviously more American than Greek.

I observed the same kind of thing - there was a distinct Brazilian air to the adaption, which I thought was really neat. It was like...the Brazilian version of Greece as opposed to the American version of Greece, I suppose. The woman who played Donna, Kiara Sasso, was excellent. Truly, the entire cast was excellent, but she stole the show. She really did.

At the end, they did an encore and sang some of the songs in English. Manu, Mae and I were all singing along and Bella was like, really? We're gonna do that?

Saturday was the date of Bella's departure. She woke up and looked at Mae. Mae looked back at her.

Another pneumothorax. For those of you who don't know what that is, a pneumothorax is essentially a collapsed lung resulting from the formation of an air bubble. So, when you go in a plane, that air bubble expands...and I shouldn't have to explain it any further

Luckily, the hospital at which Manu works was only two blocks away from the apartment, and they did the same thing they did before. We ended up returning to Fortaleza that night and Bella went through the proper surgery this time. However, this meant that she would be leaving in October, and not with everybody else from Brazil.

Needless to say, she was not happy.

Happily, she is finally in Germany, having a great time with her host family.

Alright, time for a cheerful subject, my Birthday!

I actually had three birthday celebrations on the same day, which was wonderful (this was possibly because I am, among other things, wonderfully efficient). In school, my friends brought me a giant cupcake (and let me rephrase that - a GIANT cupcake - seriously, I was like, "Thank-you so much! But um, how do I eat this?") and sang. In the middle of the school.

It was break time. This was allowed, and it wasn't unlike what happens in the cafeteria at my old school. No, strike that. It was more boisterous, but that's because there wasn't nearly as much white noise. This stuff is relative.

But still, it was really fun, and when I wasn't puzzling over how to eat my cupcake, I was laughing. Probably bent-over, on-your-side laughter, but still laughter.

Then, when our Geometry class came, we all sang Happy Birthday to her, as her birthday had been the preceding day.

I suppose everybody was in the mood!

That night, my family and I went to the same restaurant that we went to my first night here. Ladyjane was there as well, and so was Laura and Elif. One of the AFS counselors/volunteers, Julia, came as well. AFS Fortaleza is very much a participant in what we do. By that, I mean we organize things through them, they invite us to do stuff, etc. Even though we live all over the city.

I had a chocolate cake, in case you were wondering. It was delicious.

Clearly, I was happy.

That night, I Skyped with my family. One of the perks of being a twin is that, even when you're away from your family, you can Skype with them and see the cake. (Because that's what birthdays are all about, right?) My brother told me that our FLEX (read: homeroom) threw him a party (and me too, although I obviously wasn't there).

In some ways, it was very bittersweet, as this was my first birthday without them (and my brother!). But it was also nice to see that they're getting on just as well without me. My father spilled cake all over my mother's keyboard, if that's any indication...

That said, as it had only been a bit more than a month, I didn't start to miss everybody (sorry guys). I was still drinking in the high of being in a bunch of new surroundings. Of course, not everything was great...school was boring because I didn't understand anything, I was still adjusting to the family life, etc, etc. But, they say that anything difficult is worth doing. I'll let you make your own implications from that.

I also saw my dogs. Is it a bad thing that I miss them more than my actual family? Does that make me a horrible person?

Regardless, let's talk about Brasilia.

Bella left for Germany a few days before we went to Brasilia. Mae and I flew in a day before Rapha, who had the Brazilian equivalent of midterm exams. I didn't take the exams. Lucky me!

Difficult to see, but the two white  towers at the end, and then
the two buildings on either side of them, from a political triangle
not unlike the one we have in DC...except they're much closer.

Brasilia is the capital of Brazil. It's a planned city, so in theory you would never need to leave your small area. The blocks contain restaurants, cafes, clothing shops, supermarkets, etc, etc - everything necessary to sustain modern life.

Guess what this is!

After breakfast, we went to an outdoor market and took a ride to a lookout point, where I got some great pictures.
 Then we headed back, went to lunch, explored the marketplace, etc. Brasilia is very, very dry (and hot), so almost everybody drinks a glass of water before leaving the house.

Every inch a modern city

And speaking of water, did you know that you're supposed to get at least 8 glasses a day? Brazil is so much hotter than the US, so I just drink it mindlessly. I probably go through 20 cups a day, easily.

But regardless, a few days later Rapha and I met Manu at her the JK Memorial. For those of you who don't know much about Brazilian history, JK, or Juscelino Kubitschek (that's a Czech surname, not Portuguese) was the president of Brazil during 1956-1961, and was the guy who decided to construct a new capital, guess, Brasilia.

After the memorial, we walked to the Office of Foreign Affairs - where all of the foreign heads of state meet to discuss politics and whatnot. It was a very classy building - a mix of contemporary and historical.

Office of Foreign Affairs! Which we toured. That one.

After taking some photos and reading about the building itself, we exiting to find ourselves at the back of a growing protest.

This protest.

 And then I said, "I like protests," and Manu eyed me weirdly, as if to say, "What did you just say?" It was one of those you-know-what-I-meant moments.

I suspect that people in capital cities everywhere protest around government sites. Washington D.C. does it too.

We then got picked up and went our separate ways. Later that day, we went to visit the iconic cathedral of Brasilia. It seriously is iconic - whenever I saw a souvenir shop, there were always a few repeating motifs: this cathedral, the bridges, and the Congress building.

This one was absolutely magnificent inside,
and there were statues of the gospelmakers outside.

There was a mass going on, so I thought it would be rude to take pictures, but there were carved angels hanging from the ceiling, and the entire cathedral had this very modern and classical feel to it.

In fact, that's how I'd describe Brasilia. It's very modern, but it's also very Brazilian and very historical at the same time.

Since this was my third time flying into Fortaleza, it felt pretty regular. The first time I was with Alex and Laura and very nervous, the second time I was with Mae and Bella, and this time I was with Mae and Rapha. The route from the airport to the apartment was more familiar.

In fact, a lot of things feel familiar now. Like I never did all of those things back in the US. It's not routine anymore.

I can't believe it's been four and a half months already.

To Defeat the Culture Shock

Ten points if you got the reference. I figured a happy Disney musical reference would set the tone for this post. (It's Mulan - "Let's get down to business/To defeat the Huns...".)

Culture Shock, as defined by AFS in their:

AFS-USA Guides and Orientations
The AFS Guides for Participants Going Abroad with AFS
Copyright September 2009, AFS-USA, Inc.

(doesn't that look like a mailing address?)
...actually isn't explicitly defined, so I'll give what they mention (pg. 50):
"...it is easy to imagine how frustrating it might be for you not to be able to communicate as well with others as you would like, especially in the beginning of the experience, or the sadness you may feel as a result of being away from your family and friends. These intense emotions are signals that you are learning and growing in many new ways as you strive to adjust to your new surroundings. We refer to this as 'culture shift.'"

Then it goes on to explain some other aspects, such as everything being an effort, feeling critical of host country/community, longing for familiarity of home, isolation,discomfort, and physical manifestations.

AFS also has a nifty list of things to do to help with Culture Shift on the next page (pg. 51), which I've paraphrased below:

• Recognize that low periods are common when you are living in a new culture/away from home
• Look to your immediate surroundings for support
• Share with your hosts/friends something that you do at home/your culture
• Establish good sleeping habits
• Limit contact with home
• Exercise (preferably with the people in your host community)
• Help other people! 
• Learn about the host community
• Focus on making the most of your experience

Some things that AFS didn't mention that I found helpful were:

• Get involved in your host community - my school had us do a play in English (my class did Scooby-Doo), so it was a nice change of pace for me to attend those rehearsals. Plus, I actually felt useful since I understood what was going on half the time (when they weren't speaking Portuguese). That, and I like theatre anyway, so it was a nice breather, a good way to connect with my classmates, and a way to share what I like to do at home.
• Take a "gringo day" - I went to Beira Mar (the city beach avenue) with Alex, Elif and Elif's host sister (Laura had school). We ate ice cream, and since Elif's host sister doesn't speak English, I was forced to speak Portuguese to her, and I actually did pretty well. It was the first time I actually thought I could get the hang of this whole functioning-in-another-language thing. Definite confidence boost. We also ate ice cream, went to the mall, took possibly-offensive touristic pictures (read: imitating statues) and walked a lot by the beach, all of which are simply fun. 
• Present your home - one Saturday morning, I presented Westminster to an international club/organization/association/group/I-don't-know-exactly-what-it-was at my school, and the kids and teachers were genuinely interested. The concept of a historical small city with old buildings and nothing over three stories where people lived in houses on 1/2 acre lots or greater and had a large amount of community involvement with the two high schools and the two colleges was simply fascinating to them. It was like describing Santa Clause to a small child. So while I thought Westminster was mundane, they helped me see that it's actually a pretty cool place, and I didn't miss it as much because now I knew how to look at Brazil in the same way. 
• Eat food! - I have an unhealthy (?) addiction to juice/smoothies, so I drank lots of juice of the indigenous fruits (caja, tangerine, acerola, passion fruit, orange, etc). Acai, which is eaten/drank in a sort of gooey smoothie, is also really good. And it makes your tongue purple. Bonus points for purple tongues. 
• School - I officially started being graded last week, so I've been diligently studying (read: vehemently agonizing) and I've found that it's paid off, because now that I'm more like a normal student, the kids in my class have an easier time relating to me. 

But still, I stand by my belief that laughter is the best medicine.

I am also a firm believer in hybrid concepts. So, I thought, for this fortuitous moment, I would introduce/elaborate upon the American concept of the "fail". 

This is an example of the "Fail". 

(See the above: sharing your culture)

Let's start this with some culture-education. In Brazil, people generally wash their own underwear in the shower. Kill two birds with one stone, right? You shower AND get clean underwear. Talk about efficient. Well, this was a ritual that was irritating me, because then you have to hang the underwear in the shower to let it drip-dry, and then you have to come back and wring it out to make sure it doesn't shrivel and become starchy and uncomfortable. It made me long for a dryer. (See Culture Shock: feeling critical of host community, longing for familiarity of home, and effort.)

The bathroom, as I mentioned in an earlier post, has a single window "shaft" that provides ventilation. Usually, when you take a shower, you close the window (which is conveniently located on the shower wall), and then you open it again when you're done to let all of the humid air filter out. Thus, the shower window is open before you enter the shower. 

(I'll upload a picture later once I buy new batteries for my camera)

It's simply too much effort to open the shower door with the underwear in hand and then take a shower. It's much more fun to toss the underwear over the shower door and into the shower.

You see where this is going. 

So I threw it, in quite a happy mood, and it sailed over the shower door and made a beeline for the window. I dashed towards the window, hoping that made it had been caught on the ledge or the latch on the panel.

No such luck.

Being a logical person, I find that we can resort to mathematics to explain any situation. And there it was - somehow, I missed it - the infallible equation that I had circumvented for the previous three months:

Throwing underwear + open window + apartment building + force of gravity = underwear in parking lot. 

Cheers. 

I quickly dressed and rushed down to retrieve it (thankfully we're only on the 3rd floor, so it took all of thirty second to reach the ground floor) and then cautiously returned to the apartment. 

This ranks as one of my bigger fails.

Just imagine that awkward kid dashing up the stairs with a pair of boxers in his hand. Wouldn't you love to know that story? Now you do. I promise, apartment building, I did not throw my underwear out of the window on purpose. That's weird, even for me. 

So yes, lesson learned. Underwear fails. They get me every time.

Let's add to the list of ways to cope with Culture Shock: combining hilarious aspects of American culture with frustrating aspects of your host culture. Now, every time you go to do this previously frustrating thing, you will begin laughing at your previous fails and it shall no longer be frustrating. 

Just don't break anything. I'm not responsible if you choose to follow my advice. Consider this a disclaimer. 

Since I'm on a roll with corny funnies in this post, here's a lame joke (stolen from one of my friends):

What kind of flowers do you have on your lips?

...Tulips! (Get it? Tulips, as in, tu - lips, or two lips?)

That was so not funny.

This is Jake, signing off.

Três Meses!

Today, October 29th, 2011, is the three-month-mark for my stay in Brazil.

For those of you who don't actually know me personally, this doesn't seem like quite the shock.
For those of you who do personally know me, this is quite the number.

Three months. Already. Já. 


The funny thing is, I'm still in the adaption phase. I'd think that after three months my brain would actually start processing the differences/changes. No such luck. My intellectual self understands these differences perfectly, but my subconscious/whatever self apparently doesn't. Thankfully, my skill at eating pizza with a knife and fork has improved, although only in the most unfortunate of times (read: most of the time) does the fork slip on the plate causing the pizza to nearly fly away. But that's usually funny, so it's allowed.

Money
I went to the mall the other day to buy index cards and a notebook and spent 20 reals. I was like, "What? I spent R$20 on index cards and a notebook?" And then I remember that R$20 only goes as far as about $10, so then my panic subsides. And honestly, I don't even remember how much three packs of index cards and a notebook costs in the United States. I have, however, been actually trying to calculate my finances, and I'm definitely spending more than I would at home. But that's because I live in the city and actually have places to spend my money.

English
I'm losing English. Seriously. When I type I'm making more typos than normal. I still retain all of the specific rules/quirks of the language (don't end sentences with prepositions, subject-verb agreement, adverbials, etc, etc), but I have to look more carefully to make my English more correct.
My vocabulary is also shrinking. I was reading a book and saw the word "penultimate", and I recognized it, but I couldn't remember the meaning. For those of you wondering it's the second-to-last thing in a sequence. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the penultimate Harry Potter book.

School
I am finally starting to get real grades in school! On Monday I have a Physics test...yeah. I understand everything that goes on during Physics class because I had AP Physics, but I can't do the problems unless I guess how to do them. Angel of reflection equals angle of refraction, then we complete the triangle, then I think you take the sine of this.... It's not that I can't do Physics, but it's that I can't do Physics.
I now know everybody in my class by name (or I think I do), which is good, and which brings me to my next point.

Portuguese
It's improving. A lot. (This is good.) I can understand people much better, although speaking is still more difficult. I find that it's easier speaking Portuguese with people I know don't speak English...I think that's somehow psychological. Generally, this means with AFS and the select few kids in my class that don't speak English very well. There are two girls in my class that I understand almost perfectly, although I'm not entirely sure why, because I don't talk to them any more than with anybody else. I'm also understanding more of our lectures, save for Philosophy and Mathematics. But History? I gotcha covered. There's one class that covers all of my history jokes and I have to make an effort to restrain myself from laughing. The best part is, since I've already had this material, I understand it. I suppose my brain fills in the holes.
I have excellent reading comprehension, but listening is much more difficult. But we're making progress. Those index cards I mentioned? Vocabulary words. I need to get more...

Momentum
My life has slowed down a bit. Ironically, I barely remember anything from the past month. The first month is fraught with vivid memories, but the past month blurred by. Funny how, when you're in constant motion, your memory performs better, but when you try to take things one at a time, it fails. My internal timeline is becoming kaput.

Tonight I'm planning on going to the movies with the other exchange students to celebrate our three-month milestone, but my calls aren't going through. I can never understand anybody over the phones here in Brazil, although I'm not sure why. I shoulder probably figure out how to work the volume controls.

Hopefully, this is going to be the end of me neglecting this blog. I still have to talk about Sao Paulo, and that was a month and a half ago. Good thing I still remember that!

Tchau vocês.

Aula de Portugues, One Month, English Video, Rapha's Birthday

And so week four coverage begins! And sorry guys, no pictures in this one. Just words.

Sunday night Mae said that she talked with the AFS coordinators about a Portuguese class to help us exchange students learn Portuguese. It takes place at the school of Elif and Laura, and every Monday and Wednesday at 12:00 I've been leaving school and going to this class.

Problem was, Mae didn't have the time to drive me 30 minutes across the city, and Pai worked. So what did I do? What kind of transportation do they have in the city?

And if you guessed Subway, you are so wrong. Buses, baby. Fast, crazy, dirt-cheap, big, fat, wonderful blue buses. All the way.

The Portuguese class started at 1:30, so I had reason to leave school by noon and hightail it back to the apartment, wolf down some lunch, get changed and prepared and then hightail it to the nearest bus station and hope I got there before 12:30 so I wouldn't have to wait for the next bus.

The bus is an interesting experience. When you finally do get on the bus, you have to do it quickly so the door doesn't close on your leg, and you have to grab onto something so when the bus moves (which is when the door is halfway closed, mind you) you don't go flying somewhere or fall on the floor and scream (not, by the way, that this has ever happened to me. Ever.). Then you pay your R$2 and try to find a seat, and if you can't find a seat, you stand. You should approach the front of the bus a stop or two before your actual stop, because otherwise you will not make it off in the provided 5-second time frame and will need to get off on the next stop. Once again, not that this has ever happened to me.

We went over basic stuff - the alphabet, the two "to be" verbs, how to say where you're from, etc - before class ended at 3:00. I liked it because it was very personal help and included a lot of speaking practice, something I needed.

Each class we got more and more advanced and did more speaking, and we reviewed everything we learned previously and went on to learn states of being, nationalities, and prepositions, as well as random words. Having a Portuguese teacher that doesn't speak much English is actually really good, although sometimes I had to resort to French to understand her. (Ah, French, you haven't failed me yet!)


This weekend was my one month of arrival in Brazil! I had very mixed feelings. On one hand, I was happy to reach this milestone, and on the other hand, it was a total, "yikes, only 10 more months to go!" The day was an emotion high.

That Friday was actually a day where Joao invited me over to his complex (Rapha tagged along) to play soccer and meet some of his friends. When speaking to me, the guys mostly spoke English, although I tried my best to answer in Portuguese and understand what they were saying when they weren't speaking directly to me. I told them Westminster had about 8,000 people, and they asked me if I lived on a farm. Thanks guys. They were a pretty chill group of kids, though. I liked them.

That Friday was also the day where Bella was released from the hospital. She was having respiratory problems.

Saturday, I left to walk to Alana's house to work on a film for our English project. We did a film on the Powerfuff Girls, and it's probably one of the funniest things I've ever done in my life. I'll post a link to the Youtube video once it's up, I promise.

Around 9:00 Pai came around and picked me up, I changed, and I went down the block to Rapha's birthday party, which also tripled as Bella's going-away party and my birthday party.

It started at 10:00, and I really struggled to keep my eyes open. (I was exhausted, and I didn't understand anything. This generally makes people even more tired.) and went home around 12:30. It was too late to try to understand Portuguese or even party. My lame parties in the US lasted until 11:00 - and that was really late - before it was time to go home. Reportedly, this one lasted until...much later.

Note to self: power nap needed before parties.

Beach House, Coming Out, Pipa, Natal, School, and Survival Orientation

Gah, I haven't been updating this as much as usual. At the time of writing this, I am two days into week seven (I know, seven weeks, already?). This covers weeks three and four. Also, muitas palavras. You have been warned.

------------------------------

Saturday morning Rapha had a friend over, and we went down to the soccer cage and played a game called gol a gol, where the cage is split down the middle and each person plays both the role of goalie and offensive person. Barefoot. It's very simple, but actually pretty challenging, and it works both on aiming the ball and defending.

Is that not a beautiful staircase?

Later that day we went to a beach house...it's Mae's uncle's. Here are some of my favorite pictures that I took: 

Two beats, side-by-side

The house and backyard

The trees in Brazil are generally friendly

Bella and Rapha in the pool

It's symbolic of something, right? ;P

I can just imagine an old couple sitting in these chairs,
remembering the old days by the ocean...

I enjoy the beautiful simplicity of this picture

Out of the barren sand springs life....

Do you see the stairs?

Dead fish! :D 

Stretching to reach the horizon

A praia é muita bonita....

---------------------------------
That following Monday, I took a big step in my transition process: I came out to my classmates. 

The attitudes towards gay people in Brazil are so much different than they are in the US. In the States, there's a stigma with being gay - you can't be gay and do this and you're expected to act a certain way and talk a certain way and walk a certain way and there is this cultural misunderstanding that gay people are fundamentally different from other people.

There's brain research and digit-ratio theory and the like, but that's just biological. That's the difference between me and my sister. We look different. I'm a boy, and she's a girl. Her skin is darker than mine. I'm older than her.

Remember AFS's golden rule: It's not better, it's not worse, it's just different.

And so therefore, we should treat it the same.

In my region, the Northeast, I've been told that there's something called machoismo, which is best described as the idea that a man should be, well, macho. Prove his manliness. I have encountered little of this.

-------------------------------------

We had Friday off for Student's Day, and Monday off for the Patron Saint of Fortaleza, so it was a long weekend. My family took me to Natal.

Natal is another major city in the Northeast, although its not as large as Fortaleza. Because it's about a 7-hr car ride, and because the Brazilian countryside is sparsely populated (thereby creating a monotonous landscape), people usually go by plane, but, because I am not made out of money, we went by car.

For the first few days, we actually went to a beach called Pipa. The beach is called as such because when the Portuguese arrived, they saw a rock that looked like a barrel, and in Portuguese word for barrel is pipa, so it was called Pipa. I get the feeling that, in general, European explorers are not creative. Newfoundland? Iceland? Cape Horn?

But, regardless of their names, Pipa and Natal were a lot of fun. We went to the Praia de Amor (literally Beach of Love...it's named because the waterline at the shore dips in the center, so it looks like the top of a heart), but first we had breakfast. 

There. Were. Monkeys. I kid you not, there were adorable little monkeys that would come to eat the scraps people left at the tables. They let us get close, and consequently, we snapped dozens of photos. They didn't care. They wanted our food.

Mae's friend from Natal, Kelva, came to visit us at Pipa. She brought her husband, Aldaberto, her son Filipe, his girlfriend, another boy named Leo who is the son of another of Mae's friends that lives in Brazilia (the capital), and Leo's girlfriend. Kelva also has another son, Pedro, but he couldn't come. Both Leo and Filipe were in college. Pedro is in his last year in HS, although he's two years older than me. In Brazil, when people go on an exchange year (as both Filipe and Pedro did...to Austria and Germany, respectively), they have to repeat whatever year they missed. This is due to the structure of the Brazilian school system. 

My Portuguese was improving to the point of being able to hold a simple conversation, so I spoke with Kelva and Leo's girlfriend, as they spoke very little English. Filipe would sometimes speak to me in English just to help out - he's actually an AFS volunteer in Brazil, and he's gone through the exchange program, so he's another great resource for me. 

Eventually, we decided to go off in search of food. Well, let me tell you, there weren't actually any roads, so we went full-out 4-wheel terrain. Jeep style. It was bumpy and sometimes painful, but definitely fun. Eventually, we reached a small brook that was too deep for us to cross. We parked, and everybody got out of the car. At first, I didn't quite understand what was going on, because we started to move. But then I figured out that we were on a raft. Ah. Understanding abounds.

After spending the night in Kelva's house, we left Natal Monday morning after breakfast and spent the rest of the day travelling back to Fortaleza and sleeping. It was a weird experience - coming back. I'd never really though of the city as "home" until then, but somehow driving into the city and by familiar roads was reassuring.

I expected the transition from suburban life to city life to be really unsettling, but I suppose my brain got overloaded pretty quickly and didn't have any trouble with that. Good job, brain.

Me, Rapha, Jeanne, Carlos, Bella

They says that the Northeast of Brazil has some
of the most beautiful beaches in the world

There were monkeys during breakfast! Isn't is adorable?

Yes, I took a picture of the sign

Actually not posing for me!

Got distracted...

Dropped his food...

They stayed like for that a good three minutes.
Staring contest. Ghost Crab vs. Stray Dog

More of the monkeys! I really liked them.

See the baby monkey?

It was rainy, but still beautiful

Eating lunch in Natal

These outfits are traditional cowboy outfits from the
Northeast. They kind of resemble our cowboys.

Rapha's face! Pfft.

Me, Aldaberto, Filipe, Kelva, Pedro, Bella, Rapha

See how high the water is?

Leo and his girlfriend

Then I started my third week of school. School was becoming more comfortable; I was beginning to know know the people in my class not only by face, but also by name.

This week, I spent a lot of time with a girl who lived in Germany. She was very nice and eager to learn about me and show me about Brazil. She gave me my first insight into saudade, the Brazilian word of an insatiable longing. There is no such translation in English. She was also very good at helping me with Physics. (In English? I can do it. In Portuguese? Gimme a rain check.) Thank-you.

That Friday night we had our AFS Survival Orientation...the one we were supposed to have right after we got here. Way to go, AFS Brazil! (No, in reality, the current AFS President was abroad in Canada and that left the local committee a little slow.) The meeting started at 7:00, but I didn't get there until about 7:15 (for social gatherings in Brazil, Bella explained, it's not the norm to be on time). Thus, only Alex (the boy from Germany) was there. Laura (the girl from Italy) and Elif (the girl from Turkey, who flew down the night we got here) were staying with the same family due to extenuating circumstances, and they arrived twenty minutes after I did. Then our Orientator (that is now a word, just fyi) showed up ten minutes later at 7:45, so we "officially" started the meeting (not that we didn't already talk about relevant material before her arrival). Two of the volunteers/counselors get there later. 

The meeting was conducted in English, since everybody spoke some. There were only four of us exchange students, one visiting returnee (from Germany), and the volunteers. I found the meeting very useful (and funny. "Why do you think you're here?" "To learn how to survive...? Cue rolling of eyes.) and I left with some new ideas and an actual focus of why I was where. What did I hope to achieve - did I have a "bucket list"? What constitutes an unreasonable expectation? Why did I come? What do I hope to learn, and what can I give to Brazil? What do I want to take back to the United States? 

I have a bucket list, and I am constantly adding things to it, but so far here are some of my favorite things - 

- Take a gringo day around the city

- Fail a class (I figured it's a good life experience, right? Then I can say I did it.)

- Learn how to dance to Samba and Forro

- Dream in Portuguese

Next time, I'll cover the next two weeks until I catch up to the present.

Jake

The First Week

So, remember how I was saying that my blank stare was becoming my most popular look?


"Como foi o vol?" Mae asked me. She kept repeating it until I used my French skills to guess what she meant. Como sounds like comment, vol sounds like voler, I know that o was an article, and I went out on a limb and guess what foi was went or something like that. And somehow, I was right. So I passed the first test. By the skin of my teeth.


We left the airport (Pai [pronounced like pie] went back to work) and I was treated to a first-hand show of how Brazilians drive. Mãe [which is Mom in Portuguese - Jeanne said just to call her Mãe (pronounced like my], and I had no qualms about doing so because it wasn't a word I had already associated anything with) was making all kinds of illegal turns and going the wrong way on one-way streets. And of course nobody wears seatbelts in the backseat, so the buckle was under the seat and I was in the middle holding on for dear life. 


It was fun.


Fortaleza (For-tah-lay-zuh) is a medium-sized city, with about 2.2 million people. Of course, to me it's gigantic, coming from the small Maryland town that I come from with anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 people. I immediately had my country-boy complex, staring upwards at tall buildings and fighting the feeling of induced vertigo. Mãe and Bella talked about landmarks and important buildings as we passed them, but I wasn't really listening - partly because I was getting used to her accent, and partly because I was too enthralled by the tall buildings and all the new surroundings. 

View of my school from my bedroom window

We got to my apartment complex, which is right across the street from my school. That's a happy thought. 


Then I immediately shelled out some money for a uniform, which we got across the street at the school store. The changing room was kind of open, as it was just a curtain and rod and the curtain didn't go all the way across on either direction and yeah. Privacy is a luxury.


Then I Skyped my mother. It's so much cheaper than calling - if you have the option to do this, do it. It was then that I figured out that the time difference in Brazil from EST is one hour, except for during DST, in which Brazil is two hours ahead - I suppose Brazil decided that because it's a equatorial country, the change in the hour doesn't affect the time the sun rises or sets, so they just nixed it. Good thinking, Brazil. Way to not make your citizens lose an hour of sleep as soon as school starts. Ten points for being smart. ^^


Then we went for "dinner". I suppose they thought it would be a good idea to ease me into Brazil by giving me American food, so we went to a place called "The Burgers on the Table". I said that didn't make sense. Bella got mad (it doesn't need to, she said) and Mãe said that it made sense to them. I still held my position that it didn't make any sense. 


In hindsight, that was pretty obstinate of me.


Anyway, upon ordering I was surprised to find that the cost of a simple burger was anywhere from 16 to 20 reals (pronounced hay-eyes). Mãe explained that things in Brazil were more expensive than in the US even with the exchange rate. 


Awesome.


So we ordered and got drinks - they only had soda, which I didn't like, so I tried this new Brazilian soda called Guaraná. I decided I liked the flavor, but I don't like the carbonation, so I didn't drink much of it. During this time, Bella put the wrapper around her burger and began eating. 


Let me repeat. She put the wrapper around her burger and then began eating. 


I asked her, why are you doing that? In Brazil, she said, we generally don't touch our food with our hands.


Mind blown. Obviously, there's the unavoidable slip of the finger, but I couldn't process that. But, I got my sandwich and well, when in Rome...


After we finished, we went back to the apartment and I unpacked. Mãe had two gifts for me - a book with pictures of all the beaches of Ceará and a pair of flipflops with the Brazilian colors - green and yellow. They were a size too big, so Bella said she'd take me to get them exchanged tomorrow morning during the tour of the area that she was giving me.


I decided to take a shower, since I was in dire need of one. So I got in the shower and noticed a couple of key things:


1) The shower glass was entirely clear (so you lock the door...but what if you fall? Not likely to happen, but still : P)
2) There was no fan in the bathroom (but there was a window!)
3) There was no warm water (Mae explained that you didn't need a warm shower in Brazil)
4) The water smelled different (not bad! It just didn't smell metallic like the water I'm used to.)


Yay fun. The water was frigid, and it was probably one of the most difficult experiences of my life. I counted to three and forced myself to jump under, then died a little inside as my spinal cord tingled with the assailing pinpricks of ice. So naturally I jumped right out. However, I was wet enough, so I soaped and shampoo'd up, and then jumped back under to rinse off. The second time wasn't as bad, but it was still intolerably cold.


A few hours later, we hopped in the car and went to meet friends at a place called Coco Bambu. 

Bella, Me, Samuel (Lais's Brother, Lais)

When I was emailing my host family, Mãe said that she and Pai were really close friends with about six other families, so I joked that I'd have seven host families and not just one. We were going to meet two of those families. 

Lady Jane, Pai, Mae and Lais

Coco Bambu is a fancy pizza place/restaurant with the atmosphere of a beach hut...it was very tiki-tiki. Sand for a floor, wooden tables and chairs, you get the idea. Bella's best friend, Laís, was also there, and she was also fluent in English. Mãe said that she'd take it easy on me during the first weekend, but once school started (Monday D:) it'd be mostly Portuguese. 


I took the menu and immediately stared it down to see what I could comprehend. I'd like to say that I won against the menu and the Portuguese, but I lost, and that's kind of pathetic (especially since I knew I'd be here also a year ago...in hindsight, not a good decision). Bella and Laís helped me by translating different words. I decided on something called sucu de cajá to drink, and whatever pizza was ordered. 


The cajá juice was really good (sucu = juice) and sweet and kind of tasted like orange (laranja, also one of my favorite words to say). That wasn't so foreign. It was weird for me, of course - anything new tastes weird - but it wasn't so off the chart that it was difficult to register. It was comforting in the way that it was something my brain could put in the category of "beverages that taste like citrus". 

Lais doing...something

When the pizza arrived, though, I was shocked. Bella picked up her knife and fork and started eating. I sat there and stared in horror. Brazilians eat pizza with a knife and fork? Crime against humanity. Not really.


But when in Rome, do as the Romans, and I suppose I was a Roman from now on, so I gingerly picked up my knife and fork (the tines were different, I notes, and it was bent at a different angle...Rapha later explained to me that most Brazilian silverware was actually made in Brazil) and began cutting. I immediately noted, sadly, that the butterknife was much duller than the butterknives in the US. Who knew China actually knew what they were doing? Either that, or we didn't get sharper knives, for some logical reason unbeknownst to me.


Then came dessert, which I honestly don't remember. We kids spent the next 30 minutes (roughly) talking. In Brazil, eating is generally a social event, so people tend to linger. Restaurants don't mind, because it makes it look fuller and that's good for business (oh, a lot of people are here, it must be good! Let's try it!). I'm also a really slow eater, so I welcomed the prospect of not consistently being the last one left at the table.


Then we went home and I immediately went to bed. I conked out as soon as my head hit the pillow. 
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The next day I woke up early (7:00...it sucked) and lingered around the apartment (which isn't very large...minus the bedrooms and kitchen, the entire thing is only 10x12 paces. However, it was plenty big enough - you have to remember that this was my first experience with staying in an apartment building...I think I've only been in one apartment before) while I waited for Bella and Mãe to wake up. Mãe got up shortly after I did, but Bella took until about 9:30. 


How I wish I could have slept that long. 


We walked down Dom Luis, which is one of the four main avenues in Fortaleza, and was also 7 car lengths away from our apartment complex. Bella showed me placed to eat, shops, malls, churches, apartment complexes, schools, and the like. Coming from a town where nothing is higher than three stories and only one street is actually urbanized enough to have been called the market in colonial times, it was mind-boggling. My brain couldn't comprehend how much stuff was arranged within an eleven-block radius. 


Actually, I've only explored that eleven-block radius doing down Dom Luis. I know that one direction stops at the beach (8 blocks) and that the other side of Dom Luis turns immediately and goes into another section of the city which is more like a highway, but I haven't been down the fourth direction or the direction towards the beach. And at the time of writing this, I've been here for over a month!


Then we went to our beach house, which we spent the weekend at. It's about a half-hour drive from Fortaleza. The countryside of Ceára is very poor. We drove through cobblestone streets with large holes filled with water, past small huts and big, gated houses that people from the city like us lived in.


They house it self have me the impressing that it was mostly meant for sleeping in (there were four bedrooms, a kitchen/eating/TV room, and an auxiliary room off to the side), but there was a patio, a pool, a ping-pong table and several hooks for hammocks. 


Oh hammocks. My family in the US used to have a hammock, but it was made for Americans, I suppose (therefore it was an American hammock). The ropes were stretched in placed and it had a base - it didn't hang from hooks. My first experience with a Brazilian hammock (and I have no idea what a plain "hammock" is, so in the interest of being politically correct I'm just going to attach adjectives)? Slightly different. I sat down and immediately capsized, thus the entire hammock swallowed me up. Then I struggled my way out (which was much less difficult than I make it sound) and tried to find the center. Eventually, Mae took pity on me and showed me how to properly use a hammock.


We went to the beach (the sand was much finer) and I tried coconut juice (gross) and Brazilian crabs. They were very watery, but Mãe says they weren't that good compared to what Brazilian crabs are usually like. Whatever. Nothing beats the Maryland blue crab. 
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School was...fun. I went in with Mãe and they showed me what class to go in. When I opened the door, everybody turned to look at me. Like, who's the new kid? The person who escorted me explained and then everyone started at me wide-eyed and erupted into applause. Unnerved, I quickly took a seat next to the one person I already knew (we went to the movies the night before...she's the cousin of Bella's friend - her name is Alana). 


More on school later. 


Since I was already friends with Alana, I started to know some of the other girls. The other girl I was next to, Rebeca (heh-beck-uh), spoke very good English was was my go-to person. Behind me sat Sarah (something like sair-rlah), a girl who lived in Germany for the first ten years of her life and consequently spoke German, Portuguese and also had very good English. In front of me sat Amanda (ah-mahn-duh), a red-haired girl who also had good English and was, until I came along, the only lefty in the class. There was also Bea (Bee-uh), whose name I learned quickly because every time I glanced in her direction she pointed at herself, and another Bea who's very outgoing and also speaks very good English. There was one guy in the group, Augosto (uh-goosh-toe). In total, there are upwards of 44 kids. 


Around Wednesday one of the boys approached me (I wasn't feeling very social due to my lack of Portuguese-speaking) and introduced himself as João (similar to Joe-aun) and told me just to call him John. He spoke excellent English and said the rest of the guys were anxious to meet me. Well, then couldn't they come over themselves instead of sending a messenger? Ah, I'm so hypocritical. 


Raphael (hah-phai-el) came home Thursday night. His English isn't as good as Bella's but it's way better than anybody's at school. I'd go as far as to call him fluent. 


João asked me if I wanted to go watch soccer with him Friday night, so I went and met some of his friends and saw some of our classmates there. Not many people spoke English, so I just talked with him. But still, it was a start. 


I noticed that Brazilians are very friendly - I've read some of the other student blogs saying that exchange students didn't feel terribly welcomed into their communities. In this case, it was too much welcoming for me to handle - I've never been such the center of attention in my life. It was a little overwhelming. I'm glad that everyone was so happy and welcoming and open and willing to receive me, and I hope that I can leave Brazil with even better feelings than these. I might have to fight the immigration department about leaving too soon if this continues. Haha.


More later. 
Jake