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.