Hooray!

Hooray! I found wireless at UFMG, so now you can read the 18 pages I've written. I'm not kidding, it's really 18 pages. So grab a snack, get comfy, and enjoy!

Saturday

When I finally got to Belo Horizonte and found my baggage, I found Mariana and her boyfriend/fiance (they’re both wearing rings on their left hands, but aren’t married, so I’m not sure exactly what their official status is) and they drove me to Mariana’s house, where I spent the night. When we got there, about 3 AM, Mariana’s mom woke up and insisted on serving food and chatting a little. We had guaraná, which is some sort of carbonated juice drink, cheese and crackers, and pão de queijo, “bread of cheese,” which was really good - they’re tiny little rolls, about the size of a dollar coin, that have cheese mixed in with the dough and are a distinctly Brazilian food, originating in Minas Gerais. I went to bed about 4:15, woke up around 10, showered, had breakfast (grilled cheese), and then Mariana and I went for a drive.

Sunday

Mariana took me to the Parque de Mangabeiras, which is a park sort of up on one of the mountains surrounding Belo. First we went to the Praça do Papa (Plaza of the Pope) which she said was built when he came to visit Belo, and he gave mass there. There was an amazing view of the city, but unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me. I’ll go back and take pictures later though. After that we drove a little more and got to the park. It was really beautiful and green and there were a ton of trees that I’d never seen before. We went into a little visitor’s center and I got a map of Belo and some information about the park, and then we went on a stroll along one of the trails. There were two different kinds of birds I’ve never seen - one of them looked like a small wild turkey, but it was all black except for some red on its throat and red eyes, and there was another one that was about the size of a pigeon and was yellow on its head, blue on its midsection and wings, and gree on its tail and back end (I think - I’m not exactly sure about which colors were where, but that’s the general idea). There were also regular old pigeons, which I also saw in Guatemala - they seem to be an international bird. The most exciting thing about the park, however, where the monkeys. There were probably six or eight of them in this little tree, and a kid was feeding them peanuts. They were small, no bigger than a textbook, and had adorable little faces. I’d never seen wild monkeys before, and it really made me feel like I was in Brazil. After that, we went back to Mariana’s house and had lunch, which is the big meal of the day, and then Mariana took me to Eni’s house, where I’ll be staying.

Eni lives in a really pretty apartment in a nice middle class neighborhood, and also happens to live in the building next to Mariana’s aunt. The apartment is spacious and has a lot of art, and from what I can gather there are four bedrooms, a kitchen, a laundry room, and a living room. Eni is probably in her late 50’s or early 60’s, and her older sister Elsy lives here too. Both are widows, and Eni is diabetic (so I guess I won’t be giving her the box of See’s I brought as a thanks-for-taking-me-in gift). They both seem nice, and Elsy knits so we talked about that some. I’m sharing a room with another exchange student, Barbara, who goes to Gonzaga. She’s nice and seems like she’ll be a good roommate, but I would prefer not to share a room the whole time I’m here, and I think she feels the same, so after the month of Portuguese class is up, I have a feeling one or both of us will be moving out.

Sunday

Last night Eni made us something, I don’t remember what it was called, but it was hot and involved granulated peanuts, shredded coconut, milk and something that I think had something to do with kernels of corn and may have been called carangeiro (although that could also be the word for crab, which it certainly was not). It was sweet and we ate it with a spoon and it was really good.

This morning we ate bread, cheese, and papaya for breakfast. I’d never had papaya before, and I liked it a lot. Eni doesn’t refrigerate her cheese, which I think is a little odd, but I’ve been eating it and haven’t gotten a terrible disease yet, so I guess it’s ok. The tap water here isn’t good to drink, but Eni and Mariana both had the same ceramic filter system, which apparently takes out whatever’s bad in the water. They fill the jug with tap water, it drips through a ceramic filter thing, and then come out a spout and the bottom. I’m really happy about this because it means I won’t have to buy as much bottled water, which, as you all know if you’ve heard my spiel, is the devil.

Eni has three kids, all of them grown and married, and this morning Barbara and I met one of her daughters her two kids. I hope we get to spend some more time with them, so I can unload the stickers I brought.

Now for some cultural differences - no one that I’ve seen here so far is terribly overweight. Some people are bigger than others, of course, but Americans are definitely chubbier, on average. Also, all the young women seem to wear high heels, all the time. Mariana wore heels when she took me to the park, which involved a lot of walking up and down hills on cobblestones, and all the young women at the airport were wearing them too. Odd. On the flight from São Paulo to Belo Horizonte, which was like an hour long, we were served hot dogs and drinks and there was an informational video playing the whole time, on speakers everyone could hear, about points of interest in Brazil, peppered with ads for the airline. In the US we’re lucky to get a bag of peanuts on a flight that short, and the TV sound is always through headphone ports.

When driving, people don’t usually stop at red lights, unless there’s another car coming, because of the possibility of being robbed. All the street signs have little pictures next to the names of the places they describe - some trees and a bench for plazas, a cross for hospitals, and an incline and a question mark for the Rua Amendoim (Peanut Street), which Mariana took me to. It’s right by the Praça do Papa, and it looks like it’s going uphill, but when she put the car in neutral it rolled downhill. The picture was pretty descriptive, I’d say. The traffic lights have black blinders around them, just like in the US, but there’s no bottom - they’re shaped like a horseshoe, I guess to keep birds from nesting there.

I haven’t had much problem understanding people and making myself understood - understanding what people are saying over loudspeakers, on the phone, or on TV is a little tricky, but face to face I feel like I’m comprehending about 86% of what is said to me. Mariana’s mom and Eni were both surprised to learn that this was my first time in Brazil because my Portuguese was so good, so the two hour language classes, four days a week for two semesters, looks like it has paid off. I still have to ask for clarification sometimes, and there are words I don’t know, but Eni has been taking me around the house teaching me the words for pillow and pillowcase (which I’ve forgotten) and sugarbowl and spoon, and anything else she can find. Let’s just hope that my professors speak slowly and clearly.

I’ve been noticing people using some of the slang we talked about in class - Leon said that my water bottle, with all the rubber bracelets on it, was “bacana” (cool) and Mariana told Eni on the phone “tudo joia” (ok, that sounds good, etc.). Mariana was also explaining to me that people use “tren” (literally, train, like choo-choo) as a generic noun, like we might use “thingy,” and that a lot of people will say “why” (probably not spelled like that) at the end of sentences, but that it doesn’t mean anything, it’s like Canadians saying “eh.”

After we had breakfast this morning, Beatriz, who picked up Barbara from the airport and was an exchange student at Gonzaga, took us around. First we went to a mall to find an ATM (the fifth one I tried finally decided to give me some money), and we had lunch there too. The place we ate was a buffet where you pay for food by the kilo - you fill your plate and then they put it on a scale and tell you how much it costs. It wasn’t too hard to find vegetarian stuff - they had rice, and beans that didn’t have any obvious chunks of dead animal, and some pasta with pesto, and mashed potatoes, and carrots, and tomatoes. Everything was good except the potatoes, which didn’t have any flavor at all. They were bright yellow, so I thought they might have butter or something in them, but it was like eating nothing.

After that we got gelato, which was good, and then Barbara and I both bought magazines, in Portuguese, to practice reading. The one I got is for pre-teens, it looks kind of like Teen Beat or Bop (are those still around?) but it had a picture of Harry Potter on the front so I was hoping it would have some information about when the book and movie are coming out in Brazil, and it was cheap, 4 reais, which is around $2.

After the mall we went to the Parque Municipal, which was a lot of fun. There was a lake with some ducks, and a playground, and an amusement park with a ferris wheel and some other kiddie rides, and someone giving rides on donkeys, and a lot of trees and people, and a lake with boats that you could rent, which we did. I ended up rowing our boat, because I got in last and it was the only seat left, but I didn’t mind and it wasn’t too hard after I got the physics of it figured out. We rowed all around the lake, and only hit another boat two or three times, and everyone was very good-natured about it. We also saw some people doing capoiera, which was fun to watch, and there was a guy singing religious songs in English nearby, which struck me as a little odd. After that Beatriz took us back to Eni’s house, because she had to study. It was a really fun day, and I’m excited to meet the other students tomorrow and explore the university a little. Beatriz told me that in the literature building, there are a lot of people who are vegetarian, so I should eat at that cafeteria for the best selection, which I’m excited about.

Monday

Well, now I’m going to talk about the first day of classes, because the internet at my house is horrible and doesn’t work, it would be less frustrating if she didn’t have it at all. Every time I try to load any website, the whole thing freezes, Skype doesn’t work, and I got fed up and was playing solitaire and when I tried to quit it that froze the computer too. She’s running Windows 98 and dialup internet, so maybe I’m just going too fast for it, I don’t know, but it’s really frustrating so I hope someday soon I can find reliable internet somewhere and post this, it’s getting really long.

This morning I got up at 6:30, showered, had breakfast, and then Leon came and met Barbara and Caleb (another American, from Chico State, who’s in the same language class and lives in the next building over and looks like the middle Hanson brother, but taller) and I and showed us how to get to the university from where we’re living. We left at 7:30 AM, had to be there at 9, and arrived only a little early - the bus stop is a 20 minute walk from our apartment, and once the bus comes, it’s a half hour ride, and then another 5 minute walk to our building. It’s doable, and Barbara has a really good sense of direction and I have a map, so hopefully we’ll be able to find our way tomorrow - Leon has an early class, so he can’t escort us again.

Our class today consisted of some welcoming remarks, a written test to see whether we’d place into the basic or intermediate class, two hours for lunch, and in the afternoon we watched some episodes of a show called “Retratos Falados” (Spoken Portraits, literally), which was interesting but hard to understand because they talked really fast. The premise of the show is that people send in accounts of true stories, and if the hostess picks their story, she interveiws them on camera and also acts out the story herself, and the pieces are spliced together. Some of it was funny, although it was mostly very physical humor, which I’m not as in to. After we watched some of it, we discussed it a little, got clarification, and then wrote a synopsis of each of the stories and wrote our own story. The point of the activity was to see how well we spoke Portuguese, orally, and to see how well we understood the video and each other.

It was good to see Lourdes, who, for those of you who don’t know, is the other USF student in the program. We’ve never been terribly close, but I was surprised at how nice it was to see a familiar face. She likes her family a lot and has had a really good time so far, so that’s good.

Something I think is really funny is that Leon has the habit of saying stuff like, “There are three things you should know about the bus, which are the following:” and then he goes on to list them. I’m not sure if that’s really how he talks of if he’s speaking more formally because he thinks we’ll understand him better, but it’s just funny. My lunch today, which I ate in one of the cafeterias on campus, consisted of an assortment of fruits and veggies, some rice, some pasta, half a hard boiled egg, a drink, and cost a grand total of around $3. I really like the prices here.

Another thing I really like is the pronunciation of English words in Portguese. For example, one of the girls from Florida International University (there are 12 or 13 of them in the Portuguese class) was talking about how her family really likes the Red Hot Chilli Peppers - with Brazilian pronunciation, the Hedgee Hotchee Shilly Peppers. Lourdes’ family asked her if she like what sound like hockey - she replied that she wasn’t a big sports fan, but that sure, she liked it ok - and then they explained to her that they meant the music, you know, hockey ee holie? Rock and roll? Lourdes was also telling me that she was at a restaurant and saw on the menu an X Burger, but couldn’t remember how to pronounce the letter X in Portuguese, so she just pointed. The waitress replied, in Portuguese of course, “You’d like a Shees Burger?” and sure enough, a cheese burger it was.

English is a really big influence here - a lot of the stores have names in English, like a shoe store we passed in the mall that was called “Authentic Feet” and something called the “Hot (pronounced hotchee, of course) Zone (zonie).” There was a clothing store called Zoomp, which doesn’t mean anything in any language that I know of, but I thought it was funny. Leon was telling us that most of the students and professors at UFMG will speak English to us if we need them to, but that outside the university it’s not as common for people to speak it. It seems odd, then, that there are stores and food items with English names. That’s neoliberalism and cultural imperialism for you, I guess.

Tuesday

For those of you who read my Guatemala blog, remember how I was missing San Francisco busses? Same thing here, but for a different reason. Here, the busses seem fairly safe and we haven’t been stopped by the military, but there are no bus maps - such a thing doesn’t exist, according to Leo. It’s not very user friendly - if you end up 25 blocks from where you’d rather be, unless you already know which bus goes where there’s no way to tell where any of them are going to go. Luckily, I know which bus I take to school, and so far that’s all I’ve needed to do. Also, the busses here give change, which is really cool, although each ride costs two reais (about a dollar) and they make two real bills, so I haven’t had occasion to receive change. The busses are color coded somehow, the UFMG bus is blue, but some are red and some are green and some are yellow. The green ones, according to Leon, go the same place as the subway - nowhere to nowhere. A green bus passed us when we were walking yesterday, and he remarked that he didn’t know there was anyone on it, it wouldn’t take them anywhere important. There are also a TON of busses on the road - there can be as many as 6 of them in the same block. I’m really glad I don’t drive here - I would have a heart attack trying not to get squished by a bus.

This morning I found the internet at UFMG, but I hope there’s somewhere else that offers it - this was a room full of printers and copy machines, and on the outside were two computers, with the monitors behind closed windows and the keyboards and mice on the windowsill. Also, there were long lines for both computers, and the person behind me was definitely reading over my shoulder, so all I did was check my email very quickly, and reply to a couple of people who were asking about my blog. We passed an internet cafe on our way home, but Barbara didn’t want to go in because it looked a little sketchy and cost money. Tomorrow I’m going to find the international student services office, which I’m pretty sure is in the building where I have class, and ask them where to find free, reliable internet that I can use for more than 5 minutes. This whole fiasco is really frustrating, and I hope I find some sort of actual computer lab soon.

On a happier note, Eni has a maid who comes every weekday, Luzia, and she’s really nice, and a good cook too. She lives in Sabará, which is about an hour by bus from Belo Horizonte, and her accent is a little bit difficult and she talks really fast, but she’s very patient about listening to us and trying to decipher what we’re saying. Eni told her I was a vegetarian, so she’s been cooking meatless soups for dinner, which is really nice of her, and she’s going to do our laundry every Thursday for 10 reais a week (about $5) which I think is a good price for saving me the trouble of finding some sort of laundromat or something or washing everything by hand myself.

This morning we had phonetics class, which is going to teach us how to have good pronunciation, and then split up into basic and intermediate groups - Barbara, Lourdes and I all got in to intermediate. Both of the professors, for phonetics and for language, seem really nice and are both very engaging and funny. The phonetics teacher is doing the class in English, because everyone is at different levels of Portuguese and she wants everyone to understand what’s going on, and her accent in English is one of her own invention - it’s a little bit British, a little bit Brazilian, and a little bit odd. Interesting to listen to, though.

This afternoon we took a field trip to the Central Market, which is this huge building with 400 stalls which sell everything, including herbs, pots and pans, fruit, beer, puppies and peacocks, just to name a few. Lourdes and I spent most of the time looking for an ATM that would give her money, since she hadn’t found one yet and had been borrowing money from her family members - we finally found one, after visiting two other banks. After that we walked back to the market and did a little perusing. Our language professor found us and asked if we’d seen the section with animals - we said that we hadn’t, and she said to follow her, it was worth seeing. There was a whole section of the market selling every kind of small animal you could think of - fish, guinea pigs, puppies, kittens, parakeets, finches, ducklings, full grown ducks, chickens, roosters, fancy chickens, turkeys, doves, pigeons, peacocks - and we didn’t even look at all the different stalls. I felt really bad for the puppies and kittens, they didn’t look very happy in their wire cages in the middle of a bustling market, but Lourdes and I petted them through the bars and wished we could take all of them home and cuddle them. The professor assured us that people do buy pets at the market, so there was a good chance they would find good homes, and I asked her if the guinea pigs were for eating or keeping as pets, and she checked with the salesperson who said that Chileans eat guinea pig but Brazilians don’t, which made me feel a little better about their fate. I wonder if the animals stay there all night, or if they are transported there every day? I don’t know which would be worse. The conditions were certainly not as bad as factory farms, there were only one or two chickens per cage instead of 6, but it still didn’t seem very nice to me.

Last night I watched Pretty Woman, and it was really nice to have that little taste of home, familiarity, and American language and culture. I’m looking forward to moving in with a family with parents and kids, I think having more, and younger, people around will be nice. In the evenings, it seems like Elsy sits in her room by herself and Eni watches TV. Barbara and I have been passing the time reading, talking, or, in my case, watching movies, but I’d like it better if there were a wider variety of interesting people and/or pets around. Or internet that worked, either way.

Friday

Well, now Barbara (with the help of Eni’s son in law) has gotten Skype off the computer here, so the internet works just fine and it doesn’t crash anymore - however, the computer has no USB port, so I’m going to have to wait to post this until Monday, when I’m back at UFMG and can finally use the wireless there (I brought my laptop to school yesterday, but no one knew the password, so it did me no good).

Wednesday we all went to the Museum of Arts and Jobs, which was in a really pretty building. It had displays of stuff that related to different jobs that people had done in Minas Gerais over the years - there was a section on leatherwork, a section on fruit selling, a section on energy production, a section on cooking, etc. It was neat for what it was, but I’m definitely more of an art museum girl - looking at old rusty tractors doesn’t really float my boat. I did like the section about knitting and crocheting, there were some really pretty examples of stuff, and a really creepy diorama of a headless mannequin using a spindle (which made me wonder whether or not they tell the story of Sleeping Beauty here - not that she was creepy and headless, but she did prick her finger on a spindle, and this was the first time I’d seen one in real life).

The thing about our field trips is that they’re really unorganized - we’re told one time and place to meet when we’re on the bus, and by the end of the excursion it’s changed. This was kind of a problem on Wednesday because Barbara and I wanted to walk from the museum to our apartment (about 15 blocks) and we’d planned to meet up at 4:30 in front of the museum, when the whole class was supposed to meet. She and some of the other girls from Gonzaga got done with the museum and decided to go find something to drink, and Lourdes wanted to buy a calling card, so we went our separate ways (me with Lourdes) and everything would have been fine except in our absence the plan changed to meeting at 4:00. Luckily, Lourdes and I got back to the museum as the group was taking a group photo, but then the professors tried to herd us on the bus. I explained that Barbara and I were going to walk home, but that she probably wouldn’t come back until 4:30 so I wasn’t going to get on the bus and go somewhere else, and that the girls with her might want to take the bus back to school. Long story short, the bus left, one of the professors stayed behind with me to make sure that Barbara showed up, and she and the others did, about 10 minutes later. As I’d thought, the others did need to take the bus back to the university, so the professor called the bus and had it come back for them, and Barbara and I walked. That whole headache could have been avoided by one of two things - everyone having cell phones, or the group having a consistent plan. Grr. We got back to the apartment just fine at the end of it all, and on the way I bought some earrings for the equivalent of 25 cents that are round, about a quarter inch in diameter, and have a picture of some random guy. No one I’ve asked knows who he is, so he’s not a movie star or singer or anything - just some guy. The whole concept cracked me up, and for 25 cents I just couldn’t leave them in the store.

Today Lourdes and I took an unintentional walking tour of Belo Horizonte after classes got out at 12:30. She wanted to go back to the Mercado Central, since when we went on the field trip we didn’t get a chance to look around since we were bank hopping, but she hadn’t brought any money or her camera with her, so we went to her house first. We decided to walk, which seemed like a good idea, but it ended up taking us about an hour and a half to get to her house, get her stuff, chat with her mom, accidently let her little dog out (luckily he doesn’t go far before stopping to smell stuff), and get back to university to take the bus in my direction. I also realized that I didn’t have much money with me, so we tried to go to my apartment - however, this was my first time trying to get from the bus stop home without Barbara, and I took us on a six block detour in the wrong direction. We finally arrived, after leaving class at 12:30, at my apartment at 3:00. We went in, I had a handful of almonds (we still hadn’t eaten lunch), we unsuccessfully got directions to the bus stop that would take us the the market, and in the end Elsy walked us the bus stop and gave the driver the what-for about making sure that we got to the market and knew where to get off. We arrive about 4:30, ate lunch, and walked around a little. We took some pictures, and I bought a string of strawberry flavored honey packets that a bunch of people were selling and I thought were really pretty (I took a photo of them for you guys).

I think Luzia might be illiterate - when I was asking her for directions to the bus stop, I pulled out my map and asked her to show me on the map where I was supposed to go, but she called Elsy over to show me. Either that or she’s just really bad with maps. Also, I gave her the box of See’s candy last night - she was telling me that she’s a single mom and has three kids, two of which live at home and one of those is mentally disabled and so can’t work. Working for Eni is her only job, and I don’t imagine she makes very much, so I thought that some chocolates would probably be a welcome treat, and she’s been really nice to us and she does really funny impressions of Eni and Elsy. She was really happy about them, so that’s good.

This morning in Portuguese class, we had to go out and interview somebody - we had certain questions to ask, and half an hour to do it. I was really nervous, as a rule I don’t like approaching strangers, especially not in a language I don’t know all that well, but I finally settled on a guy who was sitting by himself in an office. He was really nice and was good about repeating things and going slow, so it turned out to be a good experience, but it was uncomfortable to approach someone and strike up a conversation. I guess it builds character, though.

I found a restaurant by the morning bus stop that says “vegetariana” on the front, so I’m going to make a point of eating there sometime soon and thanking them for recognizing that dead flesh is not everyone’s idea of a good time. Today in the market in the meat section, which we accidently wandered into, there was an entire pig hanging by it’s neck, it was really gross. Sorry to be so graphic, but it’s true. There were also entire cow feet, hoof and fur and all, that were being sold as decorations or good luck charms or something. Yuck. I miss the US, where being vegetarian is culturally acceptable and when you mention tofu, people don’t respond “oh yeah, isn’t that a kind of cheese?” I’m definitely learning not to take stuff like vegetarian options and fast, reliable internet for granted.

Sunday

Yesterday Barbara and Eni and I took a walking tour of our neighborhood and the one next to it, Savassi, which is the fancy part of town. We had lunch at a really cute cafe/bookstore/bar that had an outside eating area and live music. The music was one guy playing his guitar and singing, and Eni thought it would be lovely for him to play “Girl from Ipanema” for us. She went up to request it, but he was in the middle of a song so she stood about 6 inches from him and kind of swayed to music until he finished, at which point she requested the song. After he was done, she insisted that we go up and introduce ourselves and thank him, which we did, with the whole cafe looking on. It was really awkward, but I was comforted by the fact that I was in a foreign country where I didn’t know hardly anyone and where they didn’t know me.

Saturday afternoon we all napped, which I hardly ever do, but I’ve been really tired here - I think it’s a combination of being in a new place and operating in a foreign language almost all day - it’s a lot to think about all at once. Saturday night we went out to a bar with live samba music, which was a lot of fun. Lourdes came over to our apartment first, because she didn’t want to travel by herself in the dark, and we played poker and Uno while we were waiting for Beatrice to come pick us up. A lot of the other students from our class were there, and we were out until about 2. Lourdes and Maggie from Gonzaga slept over, because they both live by the university, which, as you know, isn’t really anywhere near where we’re living, or the samba place. We pushed Barbara’s and my bed together, and all slept perpendicular to the way you’re supposed to sleep (so that no one would fall in the crack between the beds). As you might imagine, I didn’t sleep too much, but overall it was a fun night. The music was good and it was fun to go out with everyone (including our phonetics professor, who was enjoying herself quite a lot).

Sunday morning we all woke up around 9, because Cristine, one of the Brazilian students who’ll be going to USF in the fall, was coming to pick us up to go the Sunday market at 10. We shopped around at the market for a little while (I bought a purse and two pairs of earrings) and then went to the Praça do Papa and Mirante again, both of which I’d visited with Mariana, but this time I had my camera and Barbara hadn’t been there yet. After that we went to eat at one of Crisitine’s favorite restaurants, called Bolão (Big Cake, I think), which is open 24 hours and serves really good pasta. It was good, and we had a really good time getting to know Cristine - she’s very friendly and patient about speaking slowly when we needed her to.

Sunday night we went to a forró, which was pretty fun except the dance you do to forró is a partner thing, and it seemed like there weren’t any unattatched dancing partners there. The music was good and the venue was really cute, and there were a ton of people, but Barbara and I only knew Ignes, who’s a teacher’s aid in our phonetics class, and didn’t dance with anyone. I think it would have been more fun if we’d known more people and had gone with a bigger, mixed gender group. It was still neat to experience that part of Brazilian culture, though.

Taxi drivers here don’t know where they’re going. In San Francisco I know they have to take a test before they get their permit, demonstrating that they know the quickest way around the city, but that apparently is not the case here. Both times I’ve had occasion to take a taxi back to Eni’s apartment, I’ve had to give the driver directions, which is hard because I don’t really know where I’m going either and the whole reason I’m in the cab is that it’s dark, so the street signs are really hard to read too.