Haha, oh boy. Where to start? The plane ride was miserable. But that was to be expected. Especially Saõ Paulo airport. I didn´t sleep at any point during my previous travelling. My flight supposedly left from gate 1ABC. Yea, as you may have guessed, that´s three gates. So I asked a guy there which one, he said it was actually gate nine. So I run down to gate nine. Gate nine says go back to gates 1ABC. They say just kidding, it´s really gate seven. Gate seven says "Oh, it just changed, it´s back at gate one" So I get back there and sit and try not to fall asleep. Pretty much failed. Two hours later when we loaded into the plane, I fell asleep before we even took off and woke up after we landed. Although some of the views from the plane to Saõ Paulo were really nice. We were still over the ocean, soon to be in Brasil when the sun started to come up. The ocean was black and the sky was still black, but in between, on the horizon, it looked like a rainbow, with all the reflections of the sun on the water and in the sky. In fact, it was a perfect rainbow.
My host family is really great and I´ve been accepted pretty quickly. My host mother is an awesome painter and her paintings are all over the house. She does these really cool impressionistic stuff along with more abstract style things. I´ll post some pictures later. My host father plays guitar (supposedly everyone in Brasil does to some extent) and was really psyched that I play harmonicas (in Portuguese: gaita (gah-yay-ta)). I played a Bob Dylan tune (Hey Mr. Tambourine Man) and he went berserk. Bob Dylan seems to be pretty big down here.
On Sunday I was introduced to a few of the Rotarians at a sort of impromptu Rotary meeting at the club (a combination of a bar and sports club (three guesses which part we were in)). At some point I used the phrase "sort of". I didn´t really think that much about it but they went WILD. That phrase blew their minds. I have no idea why. They spent a good 45 minutes arguing about what it meant, despite my explanations.
Oh, and let me tell you a bit about driving here. They go fast. Like...taking ninety degree turns doing 50 mph. There doesn´t seem to be any sort of speed limit and there´s no one enforcing it anyways. Needless to say, I was wearing a seatbelt. The road signs say things like "Sharp turn, slow down". I noticed they go especially fast in areas that I think would be described as "favellas" (slums). Which makes sense there were people standing in the middle of the two lanes who looked like they had trouble in mind. So, with all this speed, you don´t stand near the road unless you have quick reflexes. No one enforces the road laws and no one is ever going to slow down for you, much less stop. If you got hit (which you would) no one would do anything about it for a goodly amount of time. And my second or third time out of the house, on day two (Sunday), we did actually slow down since there was a feral horse in the road.
My first night, rather than go to bed at a reasonable time, I went with my host brother to a party. I hit it off with everyone there and learned one thing. If the bathroom door is closed, it´s not cus someone is using the toilet. If someone is using the toilet, the door is left open and it´s not at all absurd for someone to come in there with you and start peeing in the sink. If the door is closed, there´s a drug deal going on and you don´t wanna be there. Although, after making this mistake, all the people involved were still really friendly, so I don´t think it was that big of a deal (issue, that is).
I started school yesterday as well. They only have a school t-shirt for uniforms and all the schoolwork is done out of these notebooks. I don´t have either and I don´t think I´m going to be getting them. My going to school (at least for this year) seems mostly for show. It´s almost the end of the year and I don´t have any clue what´s going on anyways. It´s a little frustrating though, for trying to learn Portuguese since all the girls cluster around me and chatter to themselves and ask me about music I like and all the guys try and teach me stuff that....may not be usable in day to day conversation. And what should be applicable, they are lying about. But that´s no different from what I´d expect in the states, so no big deal. Plus they are way nicer and funnier. So Sunday night I was thinking "Hey, maybe I won´t end up needing that Ciproflaxin after all." Yea, spoke too soon there. Right about 2nd period on monday, my light stomach cramps gave way to...a certain urge that needed immediate satisfaction. That is to say, it was gonna satisfy itself whether I was prepared or not. I´m sure you can infer my meaning. Well this all hit right about the time the new teacher (the teacher´s rotate rooms, not the students) walked in and locked the door behind her. Well I tried to hold it for as long as possible but resistance was futile. Fortunately, someone came in and started talking to the teacher and I was forced to ask the only person in the class who spoke enough English to help me. This happened to be this wired, peppy girl who sat next to me. But rather than use any subtlety and discretion, she stood up, interrupted the teacher´s conversation and explained that she was going to show me where the bathroom was. So we both left and she pointed it out and off I went, in quite a hurry. So I go in there and the bathroom is pretty dilapidated but no worse then most american bathrooms (there were some funny streaks on the wall but in my school in Bandon they used the same material to write things) and I noticed a few things. Thing #1: Only one stall has a door and it´s on the verge of falling off Thing #2: No toilet seat, you´ve gotta hover (no small task, I might add) Thing #3: No toilet paper. A necessity in this case. So I walk out of the bathroom and start to look for someone to help me. The only person out there is the principal, who speaks no english. He must have psychic powers cus he looked me in the eye, smiled and walked into a room and came out with a roll of toilet paper. My entire digestive tract emptied itself in about 30 seconds and I went back to class. Oh, and just for the record, they don´t flush toilet paper here, they just use baskets next to the toilet. I don´t know what happens after that and I didn´t ask. And due to those stomach cramps I previously mentioned, I´ve lost most of my appetite which I´m trying to convince my host mother is the reason I eat very little, that it´s in no way a comment on her cooking or Brasilian food, as both are awesome.
The music preferences among students here is pretty interesting too. Most guys seem to like stuff in the rap, country, and reggae veins. Things like heavy metal, hard rock, etc. seem to be restricted solely to the preference of the girls. This is pretty much completely backwards from the U.S. and I have no explanation for it and I´m trying not to show my true musical preferences and thusly alienate myself from the guys.
That´s about all I can think of for the time being, but keep checking back as I´ll probably be updating this as often as possible. I don´t know what kind of access I´ll have to the computer so we´ll have to see.
