Tuesday, August 31, 2010

First day of class!

Aug 30
Today we had a test in Portuguese class and it was all in Portuguese, a little hard but its okay. My school is within 5 minutes but you can get there in 4 if you get if you don't have to wait long for the elevator. I went to the bank today which was a bit of a walk, about 25 minutes each way over the cobble stone sidewalks that have been moved and raised up over the years because the tree roots have moved them. After the bank adventure i came home to eat lunch and it was sooo good, my mom had made feijoada, chicken, rice, salad, juice, and fruit for me to eat. We also have a maid-like person who comes a couple times a week to help out around the house, my mom doesn't like to call her that because she grew up with her as a child, i think her mom was the maid to my moms mom. She is afro-brazilian so i think this is why my mom doesn't like to call her maid and made a line between the races.
Anyway after lunch we all went the to beach around 2 and stayed until sunset, it was so beautiful. The hours in the sun were so much fun i really do like the beach and there are so many shapes and sizes here and i feel a lot more comfortable than i would in America. The beach is really relaxing, there is no one yelling at you or telling you not to run, it like the peoples beach. We even played chicken, and i won :) I got a little bit of a tan, but i need to keep working on it because those Brazilian biquikis are calling my name. haha i need to buy one to fit in better. Well i have school tomorrow, first official day and i have to get up at 930am, i love Brazil :) tchau

Brazil... eu te amo

Aug 29th:
I love Brazil, i should just get a tattoo (just kidding, that whole on you for life thing is scary) and i have only been here for a day and have had a wonderful time. I woke up at exactly 9am and started to eat the cereal that was on the table for me, but then my mom,Carla,brings me coffee and milk, then watermelon, then some juice of some topical fruit, and then fry's an egg and gives my butter bread to put it egg on. To say the least it was a never ending breakfast and was a bit overwhelming. After that i got ready and we picked up my grandparents here and she drove me around a tour of the lower city as my grandpa tried to describe the entire Brazilian history of bahia in 40 minutes. We stopped by a wonderful little shop where they but me soverete de coco, coconut ice cream, the best in the world pretty much. We all drove to my aunts house, like 4 buildings over to mine where we picked up a couple more people and drove to lunch.
We drove around and ended up on a hill and went into a small door that was covered my tent-like material and it looked like a house (which i later realized that it was) where a lady named dona zuzu lives with her extended family ( she is 104) and makes food for a restaurant, she is really famous here they said. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get the food but Brazilians don't seem to mind, they drank like 2 liters of beer each before the food so they didn't really notice, or maybe it was because they were all dancing... who knows. So when the food came it was amazing, fresh, delicious, and tasty. I met my whole family here, like 20 of them at least, and but the end of our 4 hour lunch there were 9 left, myself included. So we went to the car and drove home. But we didn't get there because as we turned the corner, the rest of the 9 (of whom 5 were in the car) couldn't find a taxi so my mom told them to get in. 9 people in a car, wow, i mean if they fit your going i guess, my uncle told me that this was Brazil and as we dodged the police on the way home my legs feel asleep, but it was so funny that i didn't care. We drove to my aunts house and after that long lunch, they started cooking more meat to eat and drinking more beer. My cousins who are siblings also started fighting about soccer with my brother, Paulo, in the fastest Portuguese ever. To say the least, i almost understood nothing, but everything at the same time, maybe its the excitement in the voices or i can read minds, either way works. Overall i feel like i got to know Brazil in a day and i already want to stay.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Brazil's beginnings

Aug 28th
So i feel like the last 2 days have been squished together, and to add to that awkward feeling the plane ride from buenos aires to Salvador was awful because i was a bit sick and it basically felt as if my brains were being pulled out through my nose and then my eyebrows, so it hurt a lot. Bryant and I met 2 of the girls that were in our program on the plane to Salvador so we all shared a taxi together which was fun because we were all pretty close together even though we had just met. But it got the job done and for 100 reias we all were safely (if you consider not getting hit by traffic safe) delivered to the hotel in the middle of the city. The hotel is amazing, it has a floating bar, isn’t that cool?! You take like a little tram down in the cove like area and they have a dock where there is a water slide and then you can drink beer and eat fish while you go swimming. Pretty Brazilian or at least I think so. Some of the group then went to the beach and it was my first time in the Atlantic Ocean and it was so salty, I was not expecting that! It got in my eyes, mouth, and I had a cut on my leg and that didn’t feel good! Well I guess I will get accustomed to it. The beach an experience though, a guy asked me if I wanted a ride in his kayak and Brazilians have this real strong eye contact thing going on that would make anyone a little more than nervous. The next morning we had an American breakfast at the hotel, which mind you was not American, unless since I left the states America added fried banana, slices of white goat cheese, and fresh juice with peel and all (which I doubt). We had our general orientation for 3 hours where our organizers preceded to tell us every scary story about the traffic here, but I still think Mendoza is the worst.
Lunch was really good too at the hotel, I got to meet my mom Carla, she is so nice and she always wants to get you anything that you want, seriously no joke. I also have a host brother who is 20 and he speaks English and understands Spanish so it helps a lot. I also got to meet the girl from ucsb named melba who lived here with the family for a month and she tried to tell me everything about the city and what to do in 2 hours. So my brain hurts because I am thinking too much about Portuguese.

Another stamp to the passport!


Aug 26th:
Yesterday we went to Uruguay for the day, and when i say the day i mean it, we had to arrive at the port before the sun had risen and we came back to Buenos Aires after the sun had when down. We were tried from the day/night before because we had to wake up early to be a the port and went to bed late because of the tango show ( which was better than last year because i was on the top floor and it was super fancy) So we arrived at the port where we met a south African named Daniel and then 2 guys from New Jersey, Mark and John, and then a girl named Iris, who is American but had been in Argentina for 5 months. Colonia was amazing, it was a nice change from the busy city and it smelled fresh and different than the city. It has a colonial feel (hence the name) with cute old cars, ancient houses, dogs and even horses everywhere! We had like 14 hours to explore the city and after the 1 hour tour with the guide we basically walked the whole city, so we had a lot of time to ourselves. There is nothing like 14 hours that will make you make friends fast because no one else speaks english and did i say there was free time, oh yea and there was a lot of free time. We ended up renting mopeds which were fun and after i almost ran into a metal pole in the middle of a field with mark, and cut of a car with john, and rode it with the kick stand up i am pretty sure i got the hang of it, and thinking seriously about getting one in the states. None of the guys would drive it, i was the only one with enough balls to drive it ( weird because i have none, litereally). But near the end of the day we walked up (6 stories of stairs) the lighthouse to see the sunset, which was so beautiful... you'd think it was a postcard. You could see almost to buenos aires, but not totally, and not to worry i didn't leave my favorite souvenir capital of the world without good intentions, i dragged mark and bryant on the moped with me to buy cute Uruguayan souvenirs too with uruguayan pesos, which means like 30 dollars. But i am sure Mark was the one who really boosted the uruguayan economy, more precisely colonia's because he gave $15 dollars to a 10-year boy and we are pretty sure that that kid is the King of Colonia at the moment, getting rid of school tests for every Uruguayan child. Today i am a little sick from the moped riding but its okay it was worth it!

Aug 24th:
Elva's birthday is today! happy birthday girl... i wish you were here with me! Bryant and I went to the plaza de las madres today and saw some kind of demonstration because there was a lot of police there to handle whatever they thought was going to get out of hand. I took pictures of the police for janice because i know she'd love them, i think they knew because they were smiliing. But we also went to la recoleta today and found eva perons body ( all of you who think im creepy, it is a cemetery and its a tourist attraction, i dont just walk through cemetaries looking for the decomposed). But after that we were hungry so we ate the the same restaurant that i did last year, and it wasn't as good but the waiter couldnt understand me but i don't know why, but i didn't understand him either, so it was mutual. we had the best food at the tango show later that night, and i hope thats not a bad sign because i havent worked out in a week, but not to worry mom and dad i am not fat... yet, just kidding.

Argentina round 2

Aug 23rd:
The taxi experience of the trip would be complete without a guy trying to cheat us, but no worries i put him in check. So today we walked to San Telmo with Richard and Sain (the people from New Zealand) and Bryant and i acted as translate rs most of the time which was funny most of time. But i wanted to show the 3 of them La Boca and Caminito, which is the cultural part of the city from the original Italian immigrants first arrived. We got in the taxi and i told him where to go and he typed it into his little gps but he took us to like the shanty part of the city, which I'm pretty sure is like the ghetto because there was a lot of poverty there. Anyways, i told him that we didn't want to be there (obviously) so he took us there and it was only 20 pesos so, 5 each, less than a dollar, nothing really but he either he was a horrible taxi driver or tried to cheat us and kinda failed. The New Zealanders bought so much, and all of my friends think i buy a lot, you need to meet this lady, she bought a dead cow, a huge cow hide as a rug, and didn't stop, boots, hats, coats all of cow, shocking really, but her boyfriend could have challenged her because he bargained his way into all sorts of soccer wear and even bought a leather hat too.
One of the funnest things was that everyone kept talking to us in Portuguese, Bryant and i ( i mean), because apparently we look Brazilian... he did get Peruvian a couple times though. we also had a wonderful lunch where they give you tango lessons and a free show, it was so cool. Overall a good day but the taxi driver on the way back kept telling us that we were going to get married and we had to invite him and pay for his ticket for him and his wife in to come to the states, because the wedding well apparently be September of 2012, and to top it all off we all got 2nd hand smoke because he was smoking. Yuck!

Aug 22nd:
Today is Sunday and we went to a River Plate and Independente soccer game, a for everyone that thinks soccer is boring... needs to go to a game here, in Argentina, futbol is king, it is everywhere and rules over everyone, to say the least. The bus that picked us up was late, as usual so we made friends with the people from New Zealand and Canada and as we boarded the bus it was full of Italians and Brazilians (of course). We stopped at a shady little vendor of food and ate the delicious choripans, which is like a link of chorizo on a roll with Argentinian chimichurri sauce, i convinced Bryant to eat it and assured him in wouldn't be throwing it up 2 hours later the stadium seats. The game was crazy and the ratio from boys to girls was like 100 to 1, but i enjoyed it anyway. River won, which was best because we sat on the River side, and if they lost, they would be most defiantly quite angry. Whenever the scored, our side whistled in sync like a choir and then chanted a lot of loud phrases in that wonderful Argentinian Spanish!!

Argentina round 2

Aug 21st:
Today we woke up and ate an Argentinian breakfast of dulce de leche and bread with yogurt, cereal and coffee before our tour today. We are taking a tour of tigre, a city about 25min north of buenos aires, but first we had to wait, because everything is at least an half and hour to an hour, so we waited... which wasn't surprising to me, but bryant coming from u.s. was annoyed. So we got in the bus and sat by a very lively bunch of Brazilians (oh we were the only native English speakers on the tour) who yelled our guides name (mariela) a little to much to her liking. The river was brown but they had a lot of cool run down boats that were clearly no longer in service, but it was a nice ride and the weather was nice.
We came back into the city and went to a huge mall in the middle of downtown and its size is totally hidden by the surrounding buildings. We ate bomb Chinese food, surprising for the fact that we were in Argentina, and as we were eating we thought to each other (out loud of course, we cant read minds) that we are going to learn Portuguese here, because buenos aires have A LOT of Brazilians, which is still an understatement. We preceded to leave and go back to hostel...but we didn't, and heard tango music so we followed and saw a really cool tango show in the street, weird but i still believe that everyone in the show was related somehow, whatever. We eventually went back to the hostel and made some plans for the week and then ate some pasta at a local restaurant .

Argentina round 2

Aug 20th:
so bryant and i just landed safely and our now in our hostel in buenos aires and are about to take a nap because we are really jet lagged. I left my family at the airport this afternoon, no actually last afternoon and dad was documenting the entire trip even taking pictures of the guy who checked me in, im sure he was concerned or confused for me. So that began dads worrying which contiune throughout the time untill he picks me up in december. Im not so sure i dig the whole flying thing anymore and rene was right about from cali to peru was like the longest 10 hours of my life. To make it worst i didn't even get to shop in the lima airport because my flights were so close together, Bryant and i had to literally run to make it, like in the movies you know? The 45 mintue drive from the airport to the hostel wasnt exactly enjoyable because if you have ever been to argentina you know what i mean, they shouldnt even have lanes, lights, or blinkers, it isnt like they are used anyway, but nevertheless it make my head hurt. But getting there was just the beginning...now for some food, after our nap of course.
chao