Urban Ninja?

Ok, so last weekend I was staying in Belo Horizonte with one of the other exchange students and her host sister, who is in Rotex. They both had to go to school that day and their parents were working, so I was alone in their apartment that morning. They had loaned me a set of keys to the apartment door and I was just supposed to lock up and head downtown where I would rendezvous with one of them there. Things did not go as planned. Before I launch into the story, let me give you the general layout of a Brazilian apartment complex. First you have to go through a big steel bar gate, which is surrounded by a usually pretty tall wall, also usually with an electric fence on the top (without giving away too much, luckily for me this one wasn't). This opens to get inside with a key or outside with a buzzer (there is sometimes a security guard there who will let you in). That gets you into the courtyard area, after that is a big bullet-proof glass door with a fancy electronic lock that you have to have a key for to get inside. THEN you can go up and unlock the 4 deadbolts to your apartment. Back to the story. So I go out, lock up the apartment, all is going according to plan. I walk out the glass door, which is unlocked from the inside and step out into the courtyard. The door closes behind me and locks. There is no security guard here and the little room where he would be is empty of all electronic gadgets. I walk down the steps to the gate. The building is built on a pretty steep hill, so there are steps down to the street. I quickly discover that there is no buzzer near the gate, where it would normally be. Panicking, I run back to the glass door, only to see the buzzer in there and the door quite quite locked. I don't have a key for this glass door (or the gate) and on cue it starts raining. Knowing it'll be about 6 hours before anyone gets home, I decide I have to take action. The top of the wall is only a small climb from the top of the steps so I (cautiously, it is raining remember and the wall is made out of some kind of faux-marble or something) hop up there and look down. Well it's only about a thirty foot drop. I look up to see the guys working at the construction site across the street eyeing me curiously. Since I'm already inside, I guess they decided I wasn't up to TOO much trouble. I sit up there (again, very carefully) trying to plan what the heck I'm gonna do. I have no phone, no phone numbers anyways, no way of contacting someone inside (the buzzer for the apartments is on the outside and I don't know anyone else in the building or speak enough portuguese to explain my dilemna) and don't really wanna wait six hours out in the rain. Drastic measures are called for. About 3.5 or 4 feet from the wall are some palm trees. I reach out and give one a kick, it's no towering oak but I don't think it will snap under my bulk either. I look back into the courtyard, desperately searching for some other option and, not finding one, I turn back to the tree, stand up and LEAP to the palm. The construction workers have now stopped and are watching this with great interest and humor. Through some miracle, I reach the palm and wrap my arms and legs around it like I'm trying to strangle it. Somehow, I don't fall. I begin to slowly shimmy down, hindered only by the fact that palm leaves begin by growing out of the "bark" of the tree, pointing up and being very spikey. I scrape my ankles nicely, get a few well placed splinters in my inner thighs, put a few new holes in my shirt and with adrenaline shakes finally touch the ground and walk off as though nothing had happened.

Every time I breathe out...

Ok, it's hot. Like REALLY damn hot. It was in the upper 90's on Tuesday. And school requires us to wear pants as part of the uniform. That was miserable. However, I have discovered a new source of humor: Brazilian shirts with phrases in English. From these you get such gems as "Great Pleasure for Clever People"(and that's all it said. Just a white sweatshirt with that in the middle), or how about "Urban Streetwalker"(Abaeté is too small for a Red Light District so you have to get shirts that advertise it now?) or try this one on for size "Glorious Activity"(uhh....which activity is that, again?). I suspect the Japanese find such entertainment in those American shirts with kanji on them. Also, the title for the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho was translated as O Homem Que Matou a Própria Mãe (The Man Who Killed His Own Mother (A bit of a plot spoiler, don'tcha think?)). Anyways, nothing particularly wild or crazy has happened of late, just the usual trecking back and forth from school, swimming at the club, and going to the academia (gym) three times a week.

Politickin'

Last night was the big city elections deal. I don't know what positions were elected or who won but this means that all those people driving around in cars with huge speakers either hanging out of the trunk or strapped to the roof blasting songs about candidates won't be around anymore, which is definitely ok with me. The weather broke 100 degrees today too. That was FUUUUUN. Not. I went to the gym anyways. Oh, and I'm a little over two months into my exchange and I just figured out how to change the temperature of the shower. I thought the little switch on the shower head would effect the pattern of the water or whatever but it actually is there because there are only three temperature options. #1: Scalding hot #2: Pretty cold and #3: This setting is for cryogenicly freezing things, I don't know why they would put it where some poor confused American might accidentally switch it on and damn near give himself a heart attack. I felt like Han Solo in Return of the Jedi. Also attached are pictures from my trip last weekend (mostly of us in Araxa, a city famous for its sulfur springs and huge hotel), some of people burning stuff in the streets, one of my host dad and brother and I at 2 in the morning after he dragged me out of bed and insisted I sing with them (I've mentioned the Rod Stewart obsession, right?), some graffiti of...Brazilian words of wisdom and finally cashew fruit (cashew nuts grow on top of a cashew fruit, which is like a cross between a mango and a pineapple). Ok, they aren't uploading. They'll be there soon though. Just use your imagination and Google Image Search for now.

The Weekend

Well, on the verge of another weekend. You see, here, the weekend starts on Thursday with Rotary meetings. These are more or less a party. Then tomorrow I'm going to a costume party, despite my lack of costume. I think a group of girls were discussing painting my face like a squirrel, as my nickname here is Esquilo (squirrel). Also, starting tomorrow (Friday), there is a weekend long motorcycle show in the middle of town, which I've been invited to attend with a number of crowds. Should keep me busy. On a slightly different note, if, when it comes out in February, anyone can get me a copy of the Max Payne movie, legal or illegal, I would love you forever. That, my friends, is a lot of commas in one sentence. These are the updates from your humble narrator. *Edit* Of course, all these plans were viciously karate chopped out of existence when my host father told me we would be spending the weekend in some small town outside of Uberlandia visiting his parents.

Pics

Ok, so I was gonna go back and just insert photos at random into other posts but that's a pain so I'm just gonna throw them all into one fell post and do my best to deal with layout issues. At the top, we have my host sister and her boyfriend and I at a lake we went to. We didn't swim. We didn't really do anything. I don't know why we were there. It was a long, hot and dusty car ride though. Then is the firebreather/juggler/trick bartender/general party enhancer guy from the anniversario (birthday) for one of the younger girls who goes to my school. It was a pretty formal event, I had to wear a suit and have a ticket to get in. I didn't have a ticket, I wasn't invited, I don't really know how I got in...I totally brought the party though. Then are the bathroom signs at the Rotary building. I thought they were funny and maybe provided a little insight about the Rotarians here. Below that we have a stray puppy who followed me home from school one day. Next, we have Virginia, Chrys and Yara (in that order (Yara, wearing my hat which she proceeded to steal)), my classmates. And the final is photographic evidence of Yara wearing my hat. Or...I guess Adam's hat if you wanna get technical. I don't have any pictures of my host family yet but I'll get on that. I'm sorry if these labels are all out of order but I figure you can more or less piece together what I'm getting at. I declare jihad on the layout editor for this site.

Move along, little dogey

So no real major updates here, just a funny story. So Chrys and I are walking down the hill to the club when I hear a rumbling sound behind me. I turn around to see a small herd of cattle charging down the hill towards us, being chased by two dogs and a guy on a motorcycle. Well Chrys doesn't look TOO phased (relatively) but I'm a little nervous and pick up pace a wee bit (understatement, I took off) and just when they seemed to be a little too close for comfort, they veered off into the field next to us and the motorcyclist who is herding them gives us a thumbs up. Then we went to the pool. And the picture is of a horse drawn cart, which are not at all uncommon.

Field of pain is where I graze

So I've been working out. It hurts. I have never had much upper body strength and the trainer guy picked that up almost immediately and set me up with an intense upper body workout (or it seemed intense to me). I've been doing this for two weeks now and I'm improving slowly. Anyways, today I went and did my workout and was pretty exhausted. As I was about to leave, a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go check out the Brazilian jiu-jitsu class that was being taught downstairs. Needless to say, I did, and we went downstairs to watch. Well right off the bat the instructor asks if I'd like to join today and I said sure. So we stretched out and started practicing a pretty basic maneuver, which I got pretty quickly I'd like to think. We went over it a couple times and started on another. It was really warm in this room, by the way, and everybody was really sweaty, so not the most pleasant conditions along with being exhausted already. So we finish practicing the second move and the instructor motions for everyone to leave the mat, then selects two people who come out and spar. It was pretty intense as all the guys there were taller than me and REALLY ripped. What really threw me for a loop was when I got called to come out and fight. I know NOTHING about ground fighting (wrestling) and these fights were strictly ground fights. So I got my ass whooped. And again. And again. We continued rotating for 2 hours. Nothing is worse than having to pick someone elses armpit hair from your shoulder. It's just no fun. But I had fun anyways, in a way that only a practiced martial artist can appreciate. The kind of fun you have when getting your ass kicked. So I came home two hours later than usual and my host mother asked me if I was hungry and wanted a sandwhich. I trounced. This sandwhich was two chunks of steak with a slice of cheese in between and a fried egg on top in between two pieces of this tasty potato bread. Also had an apple. With all those endorphins flowing it was amazingly good.
On a slightly less violent note, I got in trouble at school today. One of my teachers was in a foul mood (I have a sneaking suspicion she got busted sneaking out of a class to go smoke, school is like that here) and we were waiting for her to get to the class (teachers rotate, not students) and we were waiting outside the classroom. She finally got there, clearly not a happy camper and we all turned around to follow her in when she slammed the door in our faces and locked it. So myself, the other exchange student (a girl named Chrys) and half of my class were given a detention for that period. We all together got hauled into the principals office and lectured (lightheartedly) and then all sent to the gym to wait for the end of the period. Basically, he turned us loose in the gym and we played music from cell phones and played tag for 45 minutes. Hardly an effective punishment but I'm not complaining.
Oh, and I registered in the country on Tuesday. I went up to Belo Horizonte Monday and we stayed there with my host brother and in the morning went to the Policia Federal. We left around 6 in the morning since my host father had some work in another city. We hiked up this really steep street to the PF, where we found out it didn't open til 8:30. We hiked back down the street and ate breakfast. Back up the street where we got started with the paperwork, only to discover that I needed a bunch of photos taken. Unfortunately, the bank was closed til 10:30. We didn't have that much time so we went back down the street and payed 10 reais to have a lady at a copy shop take them. Back up the hill to find out that rather than the $60 tax that Rotary forewarned about, it will actually cost more around $150 (198 reais, to be exact). So my host father payed it and we got to run all over the building getting more pictures taken, getting fingerprinted, all that fun stuff. Finally they gave me a little strip of paper with my name and picture on it and said that my ID would arrive in the mail. I still don't know if I'm gonna have to pay that tax or if Rotary is gonna cover it. I guess that would be why there is a $200 difference between the amount of money Rotary in Oregon told me to bring and the amount Rotary here told me to bring. If I do, I can just dip into that money and I'll have it covered and still be in the clear with my emergency money for Rotary here. So all is well and good. No major worries except for a nasty letter from Uncle Sam saying that if I don't register for the draft mighty quick that they'll be sending someone to the airport to (as my dad put it) "Escort me on an all-expenses payed 12 year vacation to Club Fed" Either that or my US citizenship will be revoked. Don't know where that leaves me but I guess I better get on it.