Finally!

Hello strangers!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written, and I’ve been busy. Here’s what I’m going to write about: the end of my week after the futebol game, my new host family, a week in Bahia, and international student orientation.

Wednesday before last, before the futebol game, we took final tests in the Portuguese classes, which were really easy, for the most part. There were a couple of sections of the phonetics test that were sort of tricky, because I still have a hard time identifying open and closed vowels when they’re spoken, and I couldn’t for the life of me hear the difference between “meu” and “mel” (in Portuguese, the letter “l” is pronounced like a “w”).

The test for the grammar class had nothing to do with anything we’d been “learning” - there was a section where we watched a video and had to answer comprehension questions, two pages of reading which we were supposed to respond to, and an oral exam. I guess it made sense for the test to be like that, because we didn’t learn any verb tenses or vocabulary that we could have been tested on, but I feel like I could have wandered around Belo Horizonte for a month and gotten the same grade on the final test. I didn’t feel like it was a real final test, because it wasn’t cumulative at all (not that there was really any way that it could have been). Renato, one of the planners of the course, explained that we hadn’t learned verb tenses or lists of vocab because the point was for us to be immersed in the language and learn Portuguese like children do, naturally. This is a nice idea, but the problem is that 1) we’re all at least 20 years old, and our brains don’t work like children’s brains, 2) we’re all used to verb charts and vocab lists, maybe if we didn’t know any Portuguese before coming to Brazil this method would work, but most of us have already had a lot of exposure, and 3) for those of us who are staying for a semester, or a year, we need to be able to write intelligent academic papers in Portuguese, and in order to do that we need to be able to express ourselves in a way that is grammatically correct. Children have several years to learn how to speak their native languages - we had a month to learn as much as we could. I think that the immersion method could work for some people in some circumstances, but a month is not long enough for it to be effective and teach us everything we need to know, in my opinion. I do feel like my comprehension has improved greatly since I’ve been here - however, my production has not improved comparitively because I haven’t learned many new words or had the opportunity to review verb conjugations in the classroom. OK, that’s enough of that now.
Thursday we took a class field trip to the Museu de Brumadinho, which is also called Inhotim. It was modern art/really pretty gardens/lakes with water birds. I had a really nice time walking around the grounds and enjoying the (sort of) nature. I say sort of because it was definitely controlled and planned and landscaped nature, but it was a nice change from city. I liked a lot of the art too - there was a huge piece that took up an entire wall and looked like a haphazard pile of huge garbage that I really liked, and one of the outside pieces was an igloo that you go in, and inside there’s just a fountain and a strobe light, but it makes the water look like it’s a lot of still individual droplets - if it weren’t for the sound of the water falling, you wouldn’t know that it was moving at all, it was really cool. There was also a room that we could walk in that had white walls and it was set up like a living room, with a couch, tv, bookshelf, and a live bird in a cage, but everything in the room except the walls was red. I really liked the look of it, it would be fun to do a room in my house like that. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that the snack bar had a vegetarian sandwich. It wasn’t the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten, it was bread, a big hunk of cheese, a tomato and some lettuce, but it was nice to not have to pick meat off, like I usually have to with sandwiches here. All in all, it was a good day.
Friday we got our test results and our final grades (I got an A) and had a mini Festa Junina. I still don’t exactly understand the motives behind what goes on at a Festa Junina (June Party), but there are certain foods that are served (which I didn’t taste because they all had meat) and there always seem to be women wearing really loud country bumpkin dresses with fake braids and freckles painted on. They tried to get us to do a circle dance, but no one was really buying it. After socializing and eating for awhile, our diplomas were presented, and then everyone went their separate ways. Barbara, Lourdes, Fernando, Salamão, and I spent the afternoon trekking all over campus figuring out what classes everyone wanted to take. One of the differences between UFMG and USF is that at USF, all the courses and the class schedules are online, in the same place, and registration is done either online, all at once, or in the registrar’s office, all at once. At UFMG, however, all of the colleges are totally separate and there’s not much online, so in order to find out what classes are being offered and at what time of day, you have to go to that department’s building and look at a bulletin board, and to sign up, it’s the same thing, you have to go the department. That day, we just looked at what we wanted and filled out an application for the international student office, so they would know what we were interested in doing (registration was yesterday, but I’m going chronologically so I’ll tell you about that later).

Friday night, most of our Portuguese class went to Cafe Travessa because one of the girls from our class was singing there. Katrina’s studying music performance at Florida International University, and she has a really good voice. Apparently she was at a jazz club a few days before, just listening to the music, and some guy approached her and said, “Hey, you look like a musician, do you sing?” and when she replied that she did, he asked her to come to his studio and sing something for him, and after she did that he asked her to accompany he and his band at Cafe Travessa Friday and Saturday night. It was her first gig, and to make things a little more difficult, she didn’t speak Portuguese before coming to Brazil. Everthing went really well though, she looked and sounded great, and we all had a really good time. After she was done, a lot of us were hanging out in the plaza outside the club, and guess who happened to be there? Our guide from the museum we went to on Thursday! We got to talking, and I found out that he’s a vegetarian too, and I gave him my email address because he told me he’d email me the good veggie restaurants in Belo, but I haven’t heard from him. After that we went back to Eni’s place and packed, because Bea was coming for us at 8:30 Saturday morning.

I don’t think I’ve talked about this yet - Barbara and I decided not to keep living with Eni for three main reasons - #1, she lives really far away from the university, #2, we’d rather live with a family with kids our age, and #3, she was asking 900 reais a month (around $450), whereas everyone else who was staying with a family was paying 600 reais at the most, and many paid a lot less. Bea was coming to get us so early on Saturday morning because we had to be out of Eni’s place by Saturday and also because Bea, Barbara, Lourdes, Niels, Leslie, Fernando, Salamão, and some of Bea’s other friends were all going to Ouro Preto for a concert and their bus left at 10, I believe. I didn’t go with them because I was meeting what I thought was going to be my new host family Saturday night. Barbara and I had arranged with Bea to stay at her house until we left for Bahia, and for our stuff to live there while we were gone, so Saturday morning was the best time to move us and our stuff there.

Saturday during the day, after everyone left for Ouro Preto, I hung out with Bea’s mom, Claudia, and her older sister, Carolina. I was sort of sick (cough, runny nose, no energy), so I talked to them while they prepared lunch, then we ate, and then the three of us went to a market that was all sweaters. The women in this family are obsessed with sweaters - it’s pretty much all Claudia wears, and the daughters have quite a collection themselves. I didn’t like anything I saw there/I was barley able to stay awake, so I didn’t buy anything and when we got back I took a two hour nap.

Saturday night, after I woke up from my nap, I went to a concert/party at Jake’s host family’s house. Jake was one of the other students in the intensive Portuguese course, from Florida, and he and I were talking in class one day and he told me that his whole host family was vegetarian. I had him ask them if they’d like to host me for the semester, and he said that they’d be interested, and that I should come to their place Saturday night because the band that some of the sons play in was having a concert, and then I could meet them and they could meet me and I could see the place and we could see how we got along. Claudia and Bea’s dad, José, drove me there, and I arranged to call them when I wanted to get picked up. When I got to the house there were probably 35 people in their large front yard, listening to the band and eating and drinking (the family had set up a food and drink area and were selling things). I didn’t see Jake, but I did see our phonetics teacher, who’s apparently dating the family’s oldest son, so I went to talk to her. She found Jake for me, and he told me that the parents had gone to church but would probably be back in an hour or so. He gave me a tour of their house, which was nice, and we listened to the band a little, and just sort of hung out. I hadn’t spent much time with him before, and it was nice to get to know him better. After awhile the parents and some aunts and uncles and cousins showed up, and I talked to them for awhile. I liked their house, and the oldest brother was really nice, but I didn’t really feel a connection with anyone else in the family, and Jake said that he didn’t see any of them very often because they were all really busy. Around 10 I called Claudia and Zé to pick me up, and in the car on the way back I told them that, if the offer still stood, I’d like to stay with them for the semester. Bea had told me earlier that her family would be willing to have me if I didn’t find another place to live, and I felt a lot more at home with her family than with Jake’s.

Sunday mid-day everyone came back from Ouro Preto, and I went with Zé to pick them up at the bus stop. On the way, he was telling me about how the streets of Brazil are not safe, and that I had to be careful walking around by myself, but that during the military dictatorship, the streets had been very safe, and he missed that. He went on to explain that under the dictatorship, there weren’t people robbing other people on the street, probably because the military was such a strong presence, and that he really missed that safety. He went on to assert that he wasn’t a political man, and just wanted to live his life and have security for he and his family. I asked him, “But didn’t the military kidnap and kill people they thought were subversive?” and he replied, “Well sure, but that wasn’t me, and they had to do that to keep things in order.” I didn’t take the opportunity to share my opinion on the subject, which is that I’d take an unstable democracy and dangerous streets over a stable and “safe” dictatorship any day. I’m going to be living with this guy for the next 5 months, and I want to keep on his good side, and I also don’t know if I could explain myself adequately in Portuguese and his English isn’t that good, but I thought it was really interesting to hear his point of view - I’d never in my life heard of someone missing a military dictatorship. I understand his point, that the dictatorship wasn’t after him, so for he and his family it was safer then, but I still value free speech and fair elections over safer streets. I guess that’s probably because I grew up in the U.S. and have been conditioned to regard political and personal freedom as a fundamental human right - maybe if I’d been born in a country that’s had a military dictatorship (pretty much everywhere in Latin America), or if I’d lived in a country controlled by a dictator, I would feel differently, but all I’ve ever known is democracy and that’s what I’ve been trained to think is best. Another side of the coin is that if I, as I am now, was suddenly plopped in a country that was under military rule, I would for sure be targeted by the government as subversive - I’m leftist, I’m a college student, and I don’t hide my beliefs. So for Zé, who doesn’t really care one way or the other about politics, the dictatorship was safer, but for me, it almost certainly wouldn’t be. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting, and I’d like to hear what you guys think about this too - please leave comments!

After we got to the bus station and the Ouro Preto bus arrived, Barbara, Lourdes and I bought bus tickets for Porto Seguro, and then Niels and Barbara and I went back to Bea’s house for lunch. Monday Barbara and Lourdes and I bought plane tickets to get back to Belo (we opted to bus there and fly back to make everyone happy - we didn’t want to spend a ton of money, and I hate flying and Barbara wasn’t that excited about the bus, so this was the compromise we decided on. Niels flew both ways, but he also spent more money than we did). After buying the tickets, which involved going to the airport because the internet won’t take our US credit cards, Barbara and I bought bus snacks (which turned out to be all week snacks because we went a little crazy) and then went back to Bea’s house to pack.

Our bus left Monday night at 8PM, and we arrived in Porto Seguro, Bahia, at 1PM Tuesday. I enjoyed the bus ride, and would have gladly bussed back, but I was a good little compromiser and didn’t whine about it. Barbara and I were sitting in the first two seats of the bus, on the passenger side, and Lourdes was across the aisle from us. We’d opted for the fancy bus, which cost us about $20 more than the regular bus, and it was worth it. It was a really nice charter bus, with air conditioning and footrests and lots of leg room and free pillows and blankets and a snack box. Right after the bus left we watched “Tokyo Drift,” which seemed like an odd choice to me because it has a lot of car crashes and we were in a bus, but whatever. I hadn’t seen it before, and it was entertaining for two hours. Just like on the plane, the noise was coming through speakers that everyone could hear, and it wasn’t that loud - I could sort of hear it, but there were times when I had to rely on the Portuguese subtitles. After the movie was done, I tried to sleep, but, as some of you know, I have a really hard time sleeping if I’m not laying down, so I mostly just rested my eyes. The driver was listening to music, which we were also getting through the speakers, and it was louder than the movie had been, so even if I could have slept reclined in the seat, the music kept me awake. I listened the driver’s music for awhile, but when he switched to country music from the U.S. I put on my headphones and listened to my iPod. I think I may have dozed a little, but I spent most of the night listening to music with my eyes closed, which is almost as good as sleep. Oh, and the bus stopped every two hours, so I got up and walked around and went to the bathroom a lot too.

At 6:30 AM the sun was up and the driver decided we should be too, so he put on “A Walk to Remember.” I don’t know if any of you have seen it, and if you liked it I’m sorry, but it is one of the corniest movies ever produced, in my opinion. At 6:30 in the morning it was too much for me to handle, so I listened to my own music and looked out the window. The countryside was really beautiful, the whole reason I’d wanted to bus (aside from that I hate to fly) was that I wanted to see Brazil go by, and I wasn’t dissappointed. We went through a section that was sandy and desert-y, and then a section that looked like the pictures I’ve seen of African grasslands, and then an agricultural section where the primary crop seemed to be tall, skinny trees with a little bit of foliage on the upper third of the plant - I’m assuming they were rubber trees, but I really don’t know - anyone want to look it up? Or maybe I’ll google image “rubber tree” and see if they look like what I saw. At any rate, there were a ton of them. I would have taken pictures, but my camera was in my bag in the cargo area underneath the bus, unfortunately.

Once we arrived in Porto Seguro we took a cab to the ferry port, and then a ferry across a river, and then another cab to our pousada. Had we known better, we could have taken a bus instead of a cab both times, but we didn’t, so we didn’t. Niels arrived later that evening, and we went in to town to eat and happened upon a giant capoeira thing (check out my pictures to see more).

Leslie was supposed to catch a bus from Maceiô (which is where she’s staying for the semester) and meet us on Thursday, but she had problems and didn’t arrive until Friday. She told us that she was on the bus, minding her own business, when all of a sudden the driver pulled over at a police station, and a bunch of armed police people surrounded the bus. All of the big men were asked to get off the bus, and they joined the barricade. Then some of the police folk opened the cargo hold, guns and flashlights aimed inside, and pulled out two would-be hijackers. Leslie said that the driver had heard something funny in the cargo hold and had suspected robbers, and luckily there was a police station nearby. No one was hurt or robbed, but because of the delay, Leslie missed her second bus and had to wait in Salvador for 8 hours until the next bus left for Porto Seguro. She was understandably scared and frustrated, but she arrived safely at 7 AM on Friday, and decided to take a plane back to Maceiô. She told us later that her host sister had told her that the bus from Maceiô to Salvador was really unsafe because a lot of merchants from Maceiô go to Salvador to buy goods to bring back and sell, and robbers know that there are going to be people on those particular busses with a lot of money, because they’re going to buy things. So, if any of you ever find yourselves in Maceiô, wishing to be in Salvador, fly.

I’m just going to go over some of the highlights and lowlights of the trip, because the pictures and their captions will give you the general gist of what we did, and I still have to talk about the week after we got back. On Friday after we picked up Leslie, we went to a water park, which was a lot of fun - it had a lot of really good slides, a “river” that you could float down in an inner tube, and a zip line that landed you in a pool (that was my favorite part). Three of the days we were there we ate dinner at a really good Japanese restaurant, and almost every day for lunch we ate fish on the beach, which was super delicious. The first morning we were there it rained, which I thought was really novel, but by the end of the week it was raining off and on all day long, and it made it difficult to go anywhere because we were periodically drenched. The rain was warm, as was the ocean, but it’s still not nice to be soaking wet all the time. We spent some time shopping, I bought some really neat earrings and necklaces and some artsy-craftsy stuff. Overall, it was a fun trip, and very relaxing except for worrying about Leslie for a couple of days.

We flew back to Belo Horizonte on Tuesday, and international student orientation started Wednesday morning. To make a very long story short, we got talked at a lot, received our student ID cards, and most people signed up for classes. Some of my classes I’m still not signed up for, because we’re meeting with the head of the department to sign up on Friday, but I’ve chosen what I want and there shouldn’t be any problems getting in to the classes. I’m happy with my schedule, and Bea and Barbara and Niels and I are going to sign up for a dance class, and maybe capoeira as well, except I don’t know about that because I can’t do cartwheels, and they’re sort of important. So far, here’s what I’m taking, clumsily translated into English:

History, Music, and Politics (Thursdays from 3:10-4:50)

The Press, History, and Politics in Latin America (Wednesdays from 11:30-1:10)

Modernity and Cinema in Brazil (Tuesdays from 3:10-4:50)

Either Brazilian Politics II or Art and Society in Brazil (both on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:30-9:10 AM)

Brazilian Anthropology (Mondays and Wednesdays from 9:30-11:10)

Ecological Foundations in Sustainable Development (Wednesdays from 7:00-9:40 PM)

Portuguese for Foreigners (I don't know the timing yet)


So there you go. Friday we had a party at the on-campus sports place, it has two pools and courts/fields for just about every sport you can think of. After eating a ton, we had a capoeira lesson/demonstration, and then a forró lesson (forró is the kind of dance class I'm going to take, it's similar to salsa but the music is different), and then we socialized for awhile and the people who had brought swimsuits swam. Friday night Fernando was singing at a bar, so Bea, Niels, Barbara, Lourdes and I went to see him. The bar was pretty far away, but it was really fun. All the seating was outside on the sidewalk on little plastic stools, there was an inside but it was all kitchen, and Fernando and his band were set up at one end. The drinks were really cheap, as was the food, and the people were really nice - we met a 40-something couple who want to invite us to their house for a barbecue sometime. Fernando sang really well, he's a very expressive performer and was a lot of fun to watch. He's singing again on the 17th, and I think we're going to try to go back.

Yesterday afternoon/evening I went to a bbq that was put on by some Brazilians living in the moradia, which is like a dorm but it's not owned by the university. There were a couple of Brazilians, but it was mostly international students - there are a bunch of people from Argentina, a girl from Uruguay, several Germans, some guys from Quebec (not Canada, Quebec, mind you), some English girls, a few other Americans, some Italians, and Niels and one other girl from Holland. On Friday afternoon I drank mate with the Argentines, it wasn't as gross as I was expecting it to be, and it was really fun to experience some of their culture. The bbq was fun, I didn't eat the meat of course, but there was music and dancing and socializing and it was nice to hang out with everybody.

Today Barbara moved in with her new host family (she'd been living at Bea's house since we got back from Bahia), I haven't heard from her yet but I really hope she likes them. Niels went to meet the vegetarian family yesterday, and he didn't like them at all and isn't going to live with them, so he's crashing on Salamão's couch for now, and I would hate for Barbara to be in that situation too. We're all going to see Harry Potter tonight, so I'll see her then and hear how it went.

Now for an interesting piece of Brazilian life - food on a stick. It's big here. So far I've seen beef on a stick, chicken wrapped in bacon on a stick, chicken heart on a stick (Bea's favorite), crepe on a stick, garlic bread on a stick, cheese on a stick, pineapple on a stick, and ice cream on a stick. Oddly enough, I haven't seen any corn dogs or mixed kebobs, but hey, I could probably find them if I looked hard enough. Food on a stick is really easy to eat, and it's better for the environment too - the sticks biodegrade and there aren't any plates or silverware to wash or throw away. It's not usually the healthiest stuff, but it's quick and easy and I like it.

I miss fabric softener. My t-shirts stand up by themselves, I suspect because it's hard to get all the soap out when rinsing by hand. I configured my computer so now I can plug into the DSL here and use my computer, so hopefully I'll be better about blogging and posting pictures more frequently, and now if you skype me you can see me because I'll be able to use my camera.

That's all for now, talk to you later!