Conhecendo novas terras na Argentina

Dear Universe,
Since last I wrote to you I have partaken in a number of exotic, fantastical adventures that have brought me not only to my lovely home of Rio de Janeiro but to Argentina (Buenos Aires and Mendoza) and Minas Gerais (the state directly north of Rio). In addition, I have passed my first set of international midterms with surprisingly flying colors, gotten frustrated with my English class almost to the point of tears and decided that I hate teaching, subsequently experienced the warm fuzzy feeling of volunteering and decided that I actually kind of enjoy it, and realized the depressing truth that my skin has once again returned to the same pasty shade it arrived to Brazil in, among other things. So you see, I'm really not a lazy blogger - I just have a lot of nifty things to do. For the time being, however, I will focus on the grandest adventure of recent times - Argentina.

Argentina was, in a word, fantástica. Packing up my bags and saying tchau tchau to all obligations for nine days was a wonderful feeling, and the knowledge that I would be spending my trip with two of my favorite people in the world made it all the more exhilirating. I left for Buenos Aires on a Friday afternoon with the intention of cramming in some much-needed studying on my voyage, but the gentleman seated next to me on the first leg to Montevideo, Uruguay who was buying a perplexing amount of women's luxury beauty products and overpriced hard alcohol made sure that my academic pursuits were pushed aside, inviting me to join him in several rounds of screwdrivers en route. Montevideo to Buenos Aires was remarkably mellower, especially considering that the flight only took about 35 minutes, and by the time I first set foot on Argentinean soil I was in great spirits, to say the least.

I stayed in a hostel conveniently located about three blocks from Sophie's homestay and immediately befriended about two-thirds of South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile) upon entering the premises. More on them later. After an emotional reunion with Sophie that involved me physically attacking her in the middle of the street in front of a confused/judgmental family, we went out to dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant (ethnic food? what?) and I sampled my FIRST ARGENTINEAN WINE, much to the delight of my mind, body, and soul. I don't really know what to say about the dining out experience in Argentina besides that it is delicious, includes FREE TAP WATER that is SAFE TO DRINK, costs about a third of a similar meal in Brazil or the U.S., and consistently made me feel like a grown-up who could actually afford such a dazzling meal. Food and wine were no doubt two of my favorite things about Argentina; I should probably just stop talking about them now so as not to end up writing a novel. Anyways, after finishing our meal at a tardy half-past-midnight we tested out the Buenos Aires nightlife (cheaper drinks but worse music than my Brazilian home) and I returned to my hostel to find the sun rising over the beautiful city.

I spent the next few days exploring Buenos Aires with Sophie and her friends, some fellow UC Davis students I met by chance at the hostel who were visiting for the weekend from Mendoza and who, coincidentally enough, were studying on Kevin's program there, and the South American crew from the hostel. Partaking in communication within this little group in three languages (Spanish, English, and Portuguese) was quite the cool experience and really helped to (marginally) bring back my Spanish. Exploring the neighborhoods of Palermo, La Boca, and Recoleta I noticed old, beautiful, Madrid-like buildings, adorable cafés with outside tables filled with people eating pastries and drinking coffee, stylish girls that ranged from thin to emaciated, attractive men with awful haircuts, and many other things one might find in a European nation.


(Posing with some graffiti in Buenos Aires - "El paraíso es vivir, disfrútalo hoy")

It wasn't until I boarded the 14-hour bus to Mendoza that I really even noticed I was in South America at all. After enjoying some excellent-as-always Malbec at lunch with Sophie I was feeling toasty nearing feverish and foolishly dressed not-so-warmly for the bus ride, assuming that I'd be able to perform my usual magic talent of falling asleep in any place at any time. Not so. As it turned out, the bus was freezing, at least in my tropically-accustomed opinion. My ticket came with a "dinner," which would have been a nice touch if it were not the driest food known to mankind, some kind of a dieter's special that included fat-free, low-sugar cookies with a suspiciously chalky texture, salt-free water crackers (really just not a good idea), and some dried-up melba toast type things. Balanced meal? I think not, but I eventually ended up eating it more out of boredom than hunger. The bus left just after nightfall and featured a movie that appeared to be about the saga of a young boy and his pet butterfly - with the volume turned up ALL THE WAY. After the movie was finished, I found myself feeling too cold to sleep and experimented with creative sleep positions without luck. After two hours or so of feeling bitter jealous that everyone else seemed to be sleeping soundly, I noticed that the man in the seat in front of me was sending steamy text-messages to his amante, so I busied myself by peeping over the seat and reading them for a little while, but eventually even he wished his lady buenas noches and went to sleep. I continued making little games for myself to pass the night away, never sleeping for more than 10 minutes at a time, constantly awaiting the sunrise, watching the beautiful Andes appear, pondering my strange state of insomnia until we finally arrived in Mendoza around ten in the morning.

After arriving in Mendoza, I took a cab to Kevin's homestay and was warmly welcomed by the most hospitable person in the world, a.k.a. Kevin's host mom, Liliana. As Kevin was still in class at the time, Liliana showed me around her huge, majestic house, telling me along the way that I was welcome to pretty much everything in her home. As charming, chipper, and Spanish-speaking as I tried to appear, I guess the bags under my eyes and the glazed-over stare gave me away because soon Liliana led me to my bedroom for a much-needed rest and (thankfully) the sleep finally came. But not for long! For at this point in the story, Kevin walked cautiously in armed with a lovely bouquet, an even lovelier smile, and a "travel beard" unlike any anyone has ever seen before (ask him about it, I'm sure he will be thrilled to explain). Naturally the reunion inspired lights and fireworks and all those kinds of nice things, and happily we set off to explore Mendoza. Obviously Mendoza is extremely different from Buenos Aires, from the size of the city to the natural setting to the accent to the men's haircuts (still bad, but different); from what I saw, it's much less a big-city tourist destination and much more an adventurey wonderland of wine, olive oil, and outdoor sports. The combination of the city structure, the agricultural setting, the types of shops and restaurants, and the fact that I was hanging out with a big posse of UC Davis students gave Mendoza a strangely Davis-y vibe. After a wonderful three days that included the best meat and wine I've ever consumed, a chance to see and spend time at the university, a view of the relatively low-key Mendoza nightlife, and my first casino experience (much more inviting when you're only betting 5 pesos or US$1.25 per round), Kevin and I hopped on a flight back to Buenos Aires for a few days.

Many a porteño had recommended to me the artsy, bohemian neighborhood of San Telmo, so Kevin and I decided to see what all the hype was about and booked a hostel there. After checking in, we were directed by a hostel employee to a street a few blocks over that was particularly happenin' and we set out for dinner with a specific goal: to find amazing seafood after experiencing a serious red meat overdose in Mendoza. As it turned out, this notoriously hip street was more or less empty besides a handful of people who stared at me strangely for wearing a skirt in the cold and an assortment of nondescript little restaurants. We finally came across one such restaurant with a large-ish seafood section and hungrily settled down with great anticipation. Unfortunately, the squid and mushroom salad was gummy, overcooked, and covered in blobs of yellow mayonnaise - kind of a bummer, but the seafood risotto looked decent enough so we dove right in, never stopping to notice the questionable texture and flavor of our meal. Half an hour later, we began to feel like some strange things were going on inside our bodies, and so we bypassed the San Telmo nightlife (which, as far as we could see, was actually not such a terrible thing) and went to bed. The remainder of the weekend consisted of many bodily fluids doing unusual things, feeling like we were going to die, gagging every time we saw or smelled food of any sort, taking naps, forcing ourselves to get out and sightsee, and having kind of a great time making fun of our puny selves. I left Sunday morning to return to Rio already dreaming of the day when I return to the land of the Andes, alfajor, tango, emapanadas, Malbec, and so many other marvelous things.

Apaixonando com Brasil

The problem with not writing in your blog for three weeks is that when you finally do, there are so many things you've neglected to say that completing a single, jam-packed entry is such a task that it drags the blogging process out to nearly a month. This is my semi-excuse. But I'll stop complaining now and just suck it up and write, because there are a lot of really fascinating updates in my little Brazilian life that are well worth mentioning.

A few days after my Paraty camping adventure, it began to rain in Rio. No big deal considering it's kind of the tropics. No big deal until the amount of rain projected to fall in Rio throughout the entire month of April descends within a period of about twelve hours. No big deal until whole communities (almost exclusively favelas) are practically destroyed by mudslides and thousands of families have to evacuate their homes. No big deal until over a hundred people within the state of Rio de Janeiro are killed, most of them living in areas too poor and too shabbily built to sustain "natural" disasters. The whole city was kind of a wreck for almost a week; everyone was warned to stay indoors as much as possible and not to drive, even the biggest stores were closed, and school was canceled for four days. Fortunately for me, the area where I live was basically completely unaffected, but the entire time I was lazing about indoors, all I could think about was how many lives had been interrupted and even destroyed a few miles away. The whole disaster really exposed the economic disparities in Rio to an extent I hadn't seen before. So many of the problems caused for people throughout Rio could have been avoided if Brazil's poorest had been living in better-situated, more high-quality, sustainable housing, but the illegal housing in favelas so dangerously placed along the mountains are all that is affordable for a huge proportion of the population.

On a more upbeat note, last weekend my friends and I ventured out to São Paulo by bus and had an incredible time. Not to be discouraged by our previous attempts in Salvador, we ended up couchsurfing with a wonderful man named Felippe who completely redefined good ol' Brazilian hospitality. First off, his apartment used to be a hotel, which kind of gives you an idea of its luxuriosness - pool, sauna, private movie theater, gym, beautiful, wealthy neighborhood... by far better than any hostel we could have found, and free. Did I mention the built-in tour guide? Everything we did in São Paulo flowed so smoothly, especially after having gotten used to the slow, dysfunctional nature of most things in Rio. We lived a completely different lifestyle, if only for a few days- apart from Felippe's generosity, we took cabs, took advantage of São Paulo's incredibly diverse (particularly in comparison to Rio) culinary palate by treating ourselves to fine dining we could never afford in daily life, and generally just lived the good life. As much as I loved São Paulo, though, I would never choose to live there over Rio - it was gray, the smog was so thick you could feel it in your throat, the traffic was the worst I've ever seen, and there's just no comparison to Rio's beauty and charm.

Speaking of "I love Rio" moments, I had a big one yesterday when I made the long and treacherous hike up to Pedra da Gavea, a huge rock that extends 842 meters above sea level. The hike itself was only a little less than two and a half hours on the way up, but it was by far the toughest hike I've ever done - the constant steep upward incline, in combination with the stretch of rock that had to be completely free-scaled, made for one very worn-out Eshtephanie by the time we reached the top just at sunset, but let me just say (and I know I say this all the time when talking about Brazil): the view from the top was the most beautiful thing I've seen. Each part of the rock had a different incredible look out at the city, and by the time my pink, thirsty, sweaty, tired self had sat down to simply stare, I was overwhelmed with love for Rio in a way I've never been before. I know I haven't traveled as much as I'd like to or seen all of the wonderful places the world has to offer, but as of now I think that Rio is the most stunning city on Earth. Our large group camped on top of the huge rock, sitting and talking and eating but never turning away from the view. We descended early this morning, excited to take a shower and eat something (anything) other than cheese sandwiches and cookies, but already nostalgic for such an incredible glimpse of Rio. As much as I kind of wanted to die the entire way up, the experience of climbing Pedra da Gavea was really an important one for me and I highly recommend anyone who has the chance (and physical capability) to climb it to do so.

(A Pedra da Gavea in all her glory)


(A view of Rio at nightfall from the top of Pedra da Gavea)

As always, I've got some travels in the works, this time to Argentina, Buenos Aires and Mendoza to be exact. I leave for Buenos Aires in exactly a week and will be taking an unappealing 13-hour bus ride to and from Mendoza back to Buenos Aires, which will total nine days in this glorious country that I have been so looking forward to visiting since I got here. That's it for now, I think - beijos e feliz Dia de São Jorge!

Ensinando em Vidigal

Oi gente, today I will be speaking about a very new experience in the life of Eshtephanie Kasten: ensinando ingles. Let me begin by saying that teaching feels more than a little strange in a country in which I have become accustomed to being the perpetual student. Aside from a year or so of extremely casual volunteer tutoring in high school, a summer of giving piano lessons in middle school, and several years of sadistic games of “school” with my dear little sister when we were just tots, I have no real teaching experience whatsoever. The program I’m working with gives us very little structure – no required curriculum, no lesson plans, no tests or means of otherwise marking progress.

The school, Stela Maris, sits at the very bottom of the favela, but even from such a low spot on the Dois Irmãos, the two mountains on which Vidigal and Rocinha (another favela, the biggest in South America), the views are some of the best I’ve seen in Rio, and that’s saying something. Stela Maris is really a nice school, and much bigger than I was expecting; four floors of classrooms, a basketball court, and lots of hyper kids with High School Musical backpacks running around in every which way.


(That's a very zoomed-out view of Vidigal behind the Sheraton, a super-chic luxury hotel on the beach)

My class technically has seven students enrolled, but only five seem to show up – four chatty girls and one lonely boy. All have already taken four years of English in school, but they are all at extremely different levels; one girl understands literally every word we say in English and basically functions as a teacher’s aid, while two of them are perpetually giving me blank stares and refuse to say anything in English ever. All the girls are huge fans of Twilight, but one, the most hyper of all, takes it a little too far and has so far gotten in two semi-physical fights over disagreements about the plots of the second and third books. In general, they would rather talk about “Hobertchee Pattinson” than describe their family members’ physical appearances or learn the present progressive, but what 13-year-old girl wouldn’t? Meanwhile, the lone boy looks out the window, makes occasional noises of disgust, and turns around once or twice to ask me for my phone number and email address. As sincere and enthusiastic as they are, it is basically impossible for Maria and me to hold our students’ attention without talking about Rihanna or Justin Bieber or Beyoncé. One day I brought chocolate, which I realize was kind of a cheap shot, but it didn’t even really work anyway.

Despite its difficulties, I am really enjoying this new adventure. The kids are all really sweet, and I think that they really do want to learn English even if they sometimes act too cool for it. Plus, I just get a huge kick out of being called “Professora Eshtephanie.”

In other news, I moved out! As much as I enjoy Dora as a person, her place was getting to be too much for me – it was tiny, which wouldn’t normally be an issue, but Dora is without a doubt the biggest packrat I’ve ever encountered. There was stuff everywhere, not to mention a huge amount of dirt, dust, and little tiny bugs that every so often would completely take over the kitchen. The fan in my room there broke about a month ago, and as much as I adore the feeling of entering the house and immediately soaking through my clothes in sweat, it was starting to get old. On top of that, my “Brazilian breakfast” had slowly been wittled down to two pieces of bread.

So how did I find myself in this gorgeous apartment that takes up the entire floor of its building with functioning air conditioning, my own spacious, CLEAN room, living with two of my closest friends here in Rio, oh, and paying R$150 less per month? My friends Grace and Theresa were placed in the same homestay in Copacabana with a woman named Lucia who rents out all four of her bedrooms, including her own (she sleeps on the couch). When they moved in, two German girls were occupying the other two rooms, but one moved out in March, leaving a vacancy in the home of Senhora Lucia, so here I am. The bad news is that I will probably have to move again after this month as Lucia already has another renter lined up for May, but maybe I can use my undeniable charms to convince her to let me to stay. Maybe. Copacabana is also significantly further from PUC, with means that I won’t be able to walk to school anymore unless I have a free hour and a half to spend trekking, but I so far I much prefer the area to my previous ‘hood, Leblon. Copacabana is said to be more dangerous, but I find it so much more interesting and heterogeneous than chic-chic Leblon. Time will tell if my feelings toward my new home change, but for now I am extremely happy.

One more thing before I set out to conquer my 200+ pages of reading in Portuguese: this Sunday is Easter, and for all of us non-Catholic studiers abroad, that means one thing: a long weekend for traveling! Not to be sacreligious or anything. Tomorrow I shall set off for camping in Paraty, a Portuguese colonial and Brazilian imperial town/vacation spot despite the fact that it’s supposed to rain for the next four days. An Ilha Grande repeat? One can only hope.

E o semestre começa...

So after a solid two months of studying abroad without actually going to [real] school, the semester has finally begun and I actually have stuff to do. Rude. Actually, I lie: having a schedule has proved to be quite the welcome change; I've realized that February's overload of entropy and adventure, however luxurious and enlightening, did make me miss academia a little bit.

(PUC-Rio entrance)

That being said, higher education in Brazil is considerably more, well, Brazilian than in the U.S. Duh. What I mean is this: my experiences with every structural level of Brazilian society, from the federal bureaucracy to the line at the grocery store has shown me that efficiency is not a high priority in this country, and PUC (Pooky) is no exception. Instead, Brazilians value pleasure and leisure in a way that even a perpetually spaced-out, laid-back American like myself often fails to understand. I don't mean to say that Brazilians are a bunch of lazy pleasure-seekers who don't know how to get anything done; rather, they go about their daily interactions in a style that is different, not better or worse, just different, from Americans and, it seems, most other societies around the world. If your professor comes to class half an hour late or just doesn't show up at all (which has happened to me three times in the past week), you assume that your instructor had a decent excuse, which could range from breaking his or her ankle to simply indulging in an extension on a lovely weekend. Instead of getting annoyed or complaining, you get coffee with a friend or take a nap on the beach for two hours. If you end up spending quite a lot of time walking around campus to get signatures from various departments just to confirm the classes you already signed up for four months ago, you walk slowly and notice the tiny monkeys jumping around in the forest that runs through the campus. It's a beautiful way of life, and Brazilians do it well.

(Yes... this is my school. Jealous?)

Anyways, my classes are going quite well. Seeing as my program requires me to take only classes taught in Portuguese and I didn't want to completely screw myself over, I decided to limit my academic classes to three: Portuguese III (a continuation of the intensive language course from waaaay back in January), Latin American International Relations, and Brazilian Culture. I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I understand just about everything in my classes (save for the one class I ended up dropping after the first day - the professor resembled a ball in that he was about as wide as he was tall. He also seemed to have the public speaking and enunciation skills of a ball, meaning that his voice sounded like blllllaaaargh bluugh glub glub glub. I don't even think most of the Brazilian students could understand him). The readings so far are long and take a long time to get through because I have to look up definitions every page or so, but luckily academic writing in Portuguese contains an awful lot of cognates, so it's not too bad. I'm a little nervous for the tests and papers that await in the coming weeks, but I'm trying to approach these with a Brazilian attitude, i.e., not stressing.

(These little houses are actually the department buildings)

I'm also taking yoga, which may be one of the best decisions I've made recently. I've always kind of resisted when every single person I know has recommended it to me, adopting the "I'm not stretchy and I never will be" attitude, but a bunch of my friends here are taking it and convinced me to go to a class. I'm kind of in love with the teacher; she is an adorable little bendy Brazilian hippie lady who loves to give spirituality spiels. The other day there were only four of us in class, so we did a special exercise in which she instructed us how to give massages to a partner, not to mention the best techniques for feeling someone's energy and getting to know their soul by touch, or something. I'm not feeling noticeably more elastic or in touch with the energy of others yet, but give me a few weeks and I may be looking like this.

Before I left for Brazil, other American students who had gone my program had warned me that PUC students were not the friendliest, but I'd been refusing to believe this until I could find out for myself. After almost three weeks of school, I still don't know exactly what to think. No one has been particularly rude or unpleasant to me, but I think I can count on one hand the number of Brazilian students who have started a conversation with me that didn't have to do with the time, tomorrow's reading, or the fact that I was standing in their way. The majority of Brazilians who have approached me at PUC have been dorky freshman boys with glasses who very earnestly ask me how I'm liking Brazil and what I think about American foreign policy. One such darling showed me his reading, a chapter about the Bush administration, for an International Relations class and asked me what I thought of it. The chapter was called "Um Deus do Nosso Lado" - With God On Our Side. "Você está de acordo com isso, né?" he asked. I started chuckling without meaning to, not knowing where to begin... did I think God was on our/George Bush's side? This was not a question anyone had ever actually not known my answer to before asking. "Não, cara... por tantos razões." He seemed a little surprised, and I really wanted to start this conversation but by that time it was finally his turn to use the copy machine and I needed to get a signature from the IR department before it closed. Next time I see young Thiago, though, it's on.

(Kennedy Building, where most of my classes are held)

In addition to taking classes in Rio, I'm about to try out a new role: teaching. I've got a volunteer position lined up teaching English in a favela near my homestay called Vidigal, and I start on Monday (I was originally supposed to start this week, but the first day of classes got pushed back because the community wasn't informed of the class times in time... oh, Brazil). I'm volunteering through Educari, an NGO with an elementary school that offers language, music, and art classes to students whose parents want more for them than the regular grade-school curriculum. I'll be teaching intermediate English to 12-to-14-year olds (tweens... oh joy) two days a week with one other person, another girl from my program from California. I'm going to hold off on saying anything else about teaching for now because I just have no idea what to expect. Later installments will surely have much to say about this exciting opportunity...

Well, that's The Rio Deal for now, folks. Hoping all you gringos back at home are beginning to get a taste of spring... I assure you, it's pretty nice. Teehee.

Aventuras no fevereiro

By now Carnaval has come and gone, and the city of Rio de Janeiro is now at its calmest I've seen so far. Nearly two weeks later, confetti still dots the sidewalks, rainbow glitter is still ingrained in my skin, and all of Rio seems to be collectively experiencing a massive hangover.

I guess I should begin by saying that Carnaval was a lot different from what I expected. I told myself I would make no predictions, but in retrospect I realize that what I was anticipating was a hyper-cultural experience that would show me what it truly meant to be a carioca and probably end up being the best week of my life - no pressure. After returning to Rio from Salvador, I expected the bus ride from the airport to Leblon to take about 4 hours due to the millions of revelers bombarding the streets with extravagant floats and ridiculous costumes involving sparkly bras. As it turned out, the ride took the usual hour or so and was completely devoid of any sign of the so-called "world's biggest party." Okay, I thought to myself, this must be resting time - come nightfall, the city will be vibrating with activity! Dora had informed me that my very own 'hood, Leblon, would be hosting a huge bloco that evening, so as the sun went down I was applying my glitter, adjusting my purple wig, and generally preparing for a night of utter mayhem. Word on the street was that the bloco would be starting in Ipanema and gradually traveling toward Leblon, so my friend and I optimistically made our way over to Ipa only to find that the bloco had already moved to a location that proved impossible to find. In typical Brazilian fashion, everyone we asked, from drunkards in the street to hotel attendants, pointed us vaguely in a nebulous direction, leading us on a 2-hour goose chase for our first bloco. The closest we got was a plaza that seemed to be the meeting place for all the people who were too drunk to continue on with the parade. We were confused; this was the CARNAVAL, and the idea of actually having to search for something to do hadn't even occurred to us before.

The next day proved to be more or less of the same, and when we finally successfully encountered our long-awaited blocos we were disappointed to find that we were spending most of our energy on fending off crude drunk men and trying to move through the packed crowds in search of danceable music or at least a spot of shade to rest in. The more entertaining and festive street parties seemed to take place in Centro (the downtown area), and I did enjoy myself at some of those, but overall I was somewhat underwhelmed by my Carnaval experience. By the final day, I was tired of getting groped, sick of cheap beer, ready for the tourists to leave, and left without a real understanding of why so many people would travel from all parts of the world to spend thousands of dollars on this ordeal.

But then, something wonderful happened: a friend invited me to the Sambódromo, the huge arena in Centro built for the purpose of showcasing the top samba schools in Rio during Carnaval, to watch the top six samba school parades in their last performance. This is one of the most special aspects of Carnaval in Rio; the samba schools spend the entire year (at least) preparing ridiculously over-the-top parades for crowds of millions of people. This was where the huge party I had pictured in my head with thousands of women in sparkly outfits being rained on by confetti was taking place. During the week of Carnaval, the biggest twelve or so schools of samba compete for the top spot in Rio's apparently very important samba ranking. I had previously thought I wouldn't be able to go because during Carnaval the tickets rise to absurd prices of R$500 and appeared to me to be just another tourist trap, but since Carnaval was technically over when I went, most of the estrangeiros had already left Rio and I was about to buy a ticket for only R$25. The celebrations began at 9pm, and as each of best six schools performed for about an hour and a half, we were in the stadium until about 7 in the morning.


(One of my favorite floats, but by no means the most extravagant)

I can't really describe the flamboyance of it all; I'm including borrowed photos, but pictures really don't at all do it justice. Pondering the unimaginable amount of money and resources that goes into financing this party instead of aiding the vast and numerous problems that plague Brazil bothered me a little, but many people have pointed out to me that tourism during Carnaval does bring in extraordinary wealth that is redistributed (however unevenly) back to Rio's various communities, so I'm withholding judgment for the time being. To make a long story short, my expedition to the Sambódromo definitely provided me with a better understanding of what Carnaval is really all about, which I am so thankful for. I was really starting to feel like a downer for not loving Carnaval, and now I feel that I got the full experience of the most extravagant party in the universe.

Now that that's out of the way, I can talk a little about another recent adventure in the life of Eshtephanie: Ilha Grande. Most of the people in my program chose to travel after Carnaval during our month off, but since I'm going to do most of my voyaging during and after the semester, I stuck around Rio. However, the little posse of those left behind (myself included) got a little jealous and decided to make a very last-minute getaway to Ilha Grande for some wilderness shenanigans. To get to the island, one takes a bus ride to Angra dos Reis, a small port town three hours outside of Rio, followed by a 45-minute ferry ride. By the time we arrived to Angra dos Reis it was already 9pm and the last ferry to Ilha Grande had already left, so we slept on a small but exceedingly well-lit beach and waited for the sun to rise. The next morning, we made the first ferry to the island and arrived early enough for a full day of adventuring.


(Oh you know, just floating)

Perhaps I should begin by saying that Ilha Grande is one of the most beautiful places I'm ever been in my life. From a distance, it bears a strong resemblance to Jurassic Park, but instead of dinosaurs the island is crawling with endangered (rather than extinct) species including monkeys, sloths, parrots, and turtles. The beaches are the cleanest and clearest I've ever seen and everywhere you look on the land is pure, beautiful GREEN. Three of us embarked on a hike that was three hours each way and found ourselves in Dois Rios, a seemingly deserted, almost ghost-like little community at the top of one of the island's mountains. After inhaling lunch at the only restaurant for miles around, we saw a creepy old prison and a former leper colony and eventually made our back down the mountain so that we would return before dark.


(Taking a dip in A Piscina dos Soldados on the hike up to Dois Rios)

Upon our return, we met up with the rest of our traveling squad and dined on cheese sandwiches, cookies, bananas, and screwdrivers on the beach. The two men in our clan wimped out and booked a hostel for the night, but we females were determined to camp (illegally, so as not to spend our precious remaining money) and staked out a spot on Praia Preta, so called because of its black sands. After successfully setting up our tent in a semi-hidden local so as not to attract the attention of policemen who might try and kick us out, we noticed that the tide was beginning to rise dangerously close our spot. Left with literally nowhere to sleep, we made our way back to the main beach and decided to just sleep out in the open and simply charm our way out of any hassling we might get from the authorities. This was all well and good (aside from the many obnoxious travelers who spotted us on the beach and came over to try and hang out with us at 4 in the morning) until it began to rain extremely heavily about an hour later, when any hopes of actually getting any sleep were officially extinguished. Not to worry though; luckily we were just delirious enough to actually kind of enjoy the many hours we then spent huddling in the only open café eating more of those glorious bread and cheese sandwiches. By the time we made it back to Rio, we were wet and cold (for the first time since arriving in Brazil nearly two months ago) but filled with longing for more time on one of the most beautiful islands in the world.


(The beach at Dois Rios - our reward after hours of hiking)

Speaking of being back in Rio, classes finally start tomorrow and I wish I were more excited. More contact with Brazilians will be great for my Portuguese, and I am looking forward to starting a volunteer project, but after going so long with no schedule whatsoever, I'm kind of doubting my ability to sit in a classroom now that I know the wonders that await outside. I've been spending so much time exploring, hiking, swimming, and just generally living in the open air that school is failing to muster much enthusiasm. Soon to come:
a) Classes in Portuguese: fail or not fail?
b) Rio being cold(ish) and rainy: will my pants and sweatshirts actually come in handy?
c) Planning a trip to Argentina in the next few months: affordable or not affordable?
d) Confronting the housing market and moving out: can I make it happen?
e) Any suggestions from readers like YOU!

Salvador da Bahia

Since my last blog entry (side note: yes, I realize and feel kind of guilty about the fact that my posts are slowly being dispensed less and less frequently. I will try and do better.) I have traveled to and returned from Salvador and have found myself caught in the midst of Carnaval in Rio. Being a creature of a chronological nature, I think we should start with Salvador.

Although I mentioned that my friends and I would be couchsurfing in Salvador, I don't think I adequately explained what this wonderful little invention really is. Basically, it's a website that connects (very) budget-conscious travelers with people in all parts of the world who are willing to let said travelers sleep on their couches for free. It's even cheaper than staying in hostels (which are actually pretty expensive in most parts of Brazil around Carnaval), you get to meet and bond with really friendly and hospitable people, and you can communicate with people from around the world and share stories about traveling. That being said, our couchsurfing experience was somewhat atypical. We planned the trip in a very last-minute fashion, so last-minute that we only heard back from one of the potential hosts we contacted, an extremely enthusiastic high-school student named Fabio who told us in broken English that his step-dad sucks and wouldn't allow us to stay with them, but that his aunt had an empty house that she hadn't lived in for years and that we were welcome to stay there. Our own little vacation home in Salvador - que chic! Well, as it turned out, the house:
a) was completely unfurnished
b) had no lights
c) or running water
and d) was about an hour and a half from the city center by bus.
The first three were actually not really a problem; we were committed to finding free lodging during our travels no matter what, so our standards were naturally not very high, but the latter turned out to be a bit more significant. Getting home at the end of our nights proved to be an adventure that was often expensive and sometimes didn't happen at all. Traveling was further complicated by the fact that none of our phones worked without a series of county codes seemed to vary from one phone number to the next. But despite the chaos, Salvador itself was really an interesting and wonderful place to be, especially in the days before Carnaval.

First thing's first: food. If could trade Rio food for Salvador food, I would do it in a heartbeat. While cariocas eat unseasoned meat, cheese, and bread almost exclusively, Salvador is known for its spicy seafood. While there, I ate shrimp, lobster, oysters, and a few types of fish, and it was all ridiculously cheap. The most common street food in Salvador is acarajé (click the link and drool), which consists of a cake of fried black-eyed-pea dough split in half and filled with various spicy sauces made from cashews, shrimp, tomatoes, and hot peppers and topped with whole shrimp. The most I ever paid for an acarajé was an astoundingly low R$4, about $2 U.S. Of course, Salvador also has much of the same bready/cheesy/meaty street food as Rio, but always cheaper and somehow better.


(Sittin' on the dock of the bay...)

I think that in some ways Salvador is actually considerably more dangerous than Rio. First of all, about 80% of baianas (people from the state of Bahia) are of African descent, so I stood out much more than I do here in Rio (even with my Brazilian tan). Living in Rio's Zona Sul, I don't see nearly as much poverty as exists throughout the rest of the city, and even the favelas I've visited are governed by strict, extremely community-oriented social codes dictating that resident not harm or steal from anyone in the boundaries of the favela. While I'm clearly aware that crime, both violent and not, does happen here all the time and while I know several people from my program who have been held at gunpoint (some more than once), I've just never seen desperation firsthand to the extent that I saw it in Salvador. In and around Pelourinho, Savlador's historic neighborhood where most tourist attractions are located, you can't walk a block without being solicited by a group of adorable children asking R$5 to tie a piece of ribbon around your wrist, or an old man (who probably looks thirty years older than his real age) who nicely offers you directions to a museum and then demands money. A group of Americans we met in Pelourinho had been robbed three times in one day, once before my very eyes. Almost every interaction I had with anyone in the street was about money. This was difficult to see and get used to because the entire time I knew that every person who pleaded for money or eyed my purse for a little longer than was comfortable really needed money, but I just couldn't give it to all of them, especially not in the quantities that they asked.


(Capoeira on the beach, anyone?)

That being said, Pelourinho is really a beautiful and interesting area, despite being increasingly touristy. My friends and I saw a modern art museum, an Afro-Brazilian culture museum, a Candomblé ritual, a pre-Carnaval drumming procession, and a capoeira performance in the street (which we eventually took part in). The Candomblé ritual was by far the most fascinating and confusing; we had been trying to find a Candomblé ritual to attend for a low price all day with little success, but in the early evening we asked one more person who pointed us down the street and told us that a free ritual was starting in five minutes. The ritual consisted of a lot of drumming, followed by some chanting, after which the babalorixá, or "father of saint" fell into trance. After this part of the ritual was over, beer and feijoada were offered to spectators. The entire ritual lasted over three hours. Throughout the experience, all I could do was wonder how authentic the ritual really was; at first, I was convinced that it was a tourist-oriented show that didn't accurately represent Candomblé, but by the time the babalorixá went into trance I wasn't so sure. The drummers, who were all teenagers, were laughing and smiling throughout the ritual, and no one involved seemed to be taking it very seriously besides the babalorixá himself. But the intensity that overtook the room when he entered trance was impossible to deny; he acted crazed, shrieking, moving with huge, dance-like motions, drinking cachaça straight out of the bottle and pouring the rest outside as an offering to the Candomblé gods. My friend and I left a little early as they were bringing out the food, but I would have been interested to see if they solicited the viewers for money after the ritual was through.


(Uma rua em Pelourinho)

Our last night in Salvador was the first night of Carnaval, so we ventured out to the biggest opening-night parade in Barra before taking a cab to the airport for our flight at 3 a.m. The first night of Carnaval was everything I expected it to be - everyone dressed up, huge floats full of partiers going down the street, each featuring a live performer, stands set up selling every kind of food and alcoholic beverage you can imagine, the works. After a few hours of sneaking into and dancing in the VIP section of a float parade, it began to rain, a perfect shower for all the bodies drenched in the sweat of a thousand other people. Somehow we made it to the airport on time, and our trip (at least the last night of it) was pronounced a success.

Well, by this time Carnaval has come and gone, so that will obviously be the subject of my next blog post, but just out of curiosity, are there any topics that any of you dear readers would like me to cover? The Rio Deal is an interactive experience, you know...

Viajando e preparando para Carnaval!

So we now find ourselves one week into February, and here in Brazil that means one thing: CARNAVAL. For obvious reasons I will wait until after the festivities to write my main Carnaval entry, but for now I’ll comment on a few observations I’ve made in this climate of simultaneous excitement and anxiety.

Everything has subtly but noticeably gotten more expensive. For example, I’ve been in the market for a certain style of bikini top for the past week or so, so I’ve been frequenting the beach, where vendors haul around huge racks of bikini tops and bottoms, among many, many, many other things, with extra regularity. It seems that even just a month ago, which was still prime tourist season, vendors were practically begging to haggle down their prices, but now my inquiries of “quanto costa?” are met with an expression of stern rigidity and a reply of “vinte” for a bikini top, which is twice the price of some department stores. Also, the average price of a beer (or rather, uma cerveza estupidamente gelada) seems to have gone up by a real or two, which is bothersome. But make no mistake, I’m definitely not complaining. If vendors, stores, hotels, airlines, and every other business in Brazil can make twice the money during two weeks than they normally make in six months, good for them; the vendors need the money, and the tourists who flock to Rio during Carnaval certainly aren’t hurting for it. R$3.50 is still less than two dollars for a beer, and hey, I bought that same bikini top plus another top and bottom at a stand in Centro yesterday for fourteen reais, so ha.

Blocos, or huge pre-Carnaval street parties, are everywhere. Even after having attended a few, I still don’t really understand them. At first I kind of thought they were supposed to give everyone a preview of what the real Carnaval was going to be like, but I shared this hypothesis with Dora and she laughed at me, telling me that no bloco was going to even come close to halfway-adequately representing CARNAVAL. Basically, big float-type things featuring singing men (usually dressed as women) on trucks roll down the street as thousands of people dance around them. There are beer vendors everywhere and everyone is very drunk. Yesterday’s bloco in Ipanema began at 4 and when my friend and I tried to buy beers at around 5:30 we were shocked to find that every vendor we sought was sold out. Overall impression: blocos are fun but being grabbed and proposed to by sweaty drunk men is not.

Most cariocas over the age of thirty don’t seem to be big fans of Carnaval. Traveling in February (which we will get to later!) is crazy around these parts not only because people visit Rio from all parts of the world for Carnaval, but also because of the mass exodus of cariocas to other calmer parts of the country. Whenever I express my excitement to Dora or any other carioca, they seem to think it’s really cute how all the gringos still get so enthusiastic about Carnaval, which makes sense I guess. As I am only beginning to see, the city really does get taken over for almost a month, making life as usual somewhat difficult. I asked Dora what she’s going to do for Carnaval, and she said she would probably watch TV and maybe visit her daughter.

On another note, I will be traveling TONIGHT to Salvador da Bahia, a city in the northeast of Brazil that is known for its African influence, drumming, laidback lifestyle, seafood, and capoeira. It is also the birthplace of Adriana Lima, thought by many to be The Most Attractive Person in the World. I highly encourage anyone who has the time to Google pictures of Salvador, but please be warned that it is very addictive and produces many a loud “ooh” or “ah.” Three of my friends and I will be staying and couch-surfing in Salvador until the first day of Carnaval and then returning to Rio for fun and games (to put it lightly). I am so, so, so excited to see another completely different part of Brazil, and if (fingers crossed) I actually end up buying a replacement camera by the end of the day, the rest of you will get to see it too!

Wish me boa sorte!

Falando como uma carioca

So word on the street is that tomorrow it will be February, which means that I have been here for almost a month. Quê?! In many ways I still feel like the same gringa who naïvely arrived in Rio with a single bathing suit in her suitcase, skin the color of a fresh bed of snow, and the strict intention of using a money belt at all times. Mostly, though, I'm surprised by how settled and adapted I am beginning to feel.

Just HOW settled and adapted am I, you ask? I now have a Brazilian phone, the price of which I haggled down by more than 30 reais. I've developed a decent knowledge of Rio's public transportation system. I'm darker ("oranger," as my dear sister has noted) than I've ever been in my life, thanks to my Brazilian-style bathing suit. I know when I'm being ripped off, for certain items at least, and most of the time I know how to get myself a better deal. I've discovered my favorite spots for açaí, sucos, pão de queijo, and caipirinhas, as well as the cheapest grocery stores (and the ones that give free samples!). Someone on the street asked me for directions the other day (I didn't know the street, but that's beside the point). Most importantly, however, I can really feel my Portuguese improving, and this is the most rewarding adjustment of all.

I really love the Portuguese language. I always have; when I think about it, it's really the main reason why I decided to come to Brazil in the first place. When I first arrived, I was rather disappointed to find that no carioca I've met speaks in the same clear, moderately-paced, comforting manner as my Portuguese teacher in Davis. Most of what I understood was individual words which I could then put together to extract the bigger picture, but in retrospect I think a lot was totally lost. I definitely don't understand everything I hear now, but listening to the accent, rhythm, and inflections over and over has definitely gotten me closer to my goal of fluency. Thanks to hours and hours of eavesdropping, language classes, and just good ol'-fashioned conversing, I actually get the difference between when someone is asking me a question and when they are making a statement. Consequently, I don't spend as much time smiling and nodding my head with a spaced-out look on my face, which is always good I guess, although I tend to do this when people speak to me in my native tongue, too.

But while the structural components of Portuguese are all well and good, I have found that the most fun part of this fabulous language is its slang. Props, Brazil, your colloquialisms are mad cool. Almost every day I hear new words and phrases that I love, and I find that my use of the Portuguese language is largely centered around trying to steer conversations in a direction that will allow me to fit them in. Here I have included a short list of some of my favorite words and expressions:
-Que chic! (pronounced "shee-ky")- How chic! I like using this one to describe things that one wouldn't traditionally think of as chic. For example:
"Look! I walked into a pole and now my toe is bleeding and purple!"
"Ooooh, que chic!"
-Chata - stubborn/annoying. Seems like this would be an insult, no? Maybe, but apparently chata is also a common term of loving teasing and endearment. I wish I had found that out before I spent weeks slowly building up a fiery grudge against one of my language teachers who told me I was annoying (or so I thought) every time I got up to go to the bathroom during class. Which was a lot.
-Estupidamente - stupid(ly). Used as an adjective, not an adverb, to mean "really/extremely/hella." Example:
"Quero uma cerveza, por favor, estupidamente gelada!" (A beer please, STUPID cold!)
-Okay, so this one is more of a pattern than an individual word or expression, but here goes: Brazilians have made a habit of increasing the number of syllables in a bunch of English words to make them sound, in my opinion, way more adorable. Here are a few: picky-nicky, lappy-toppy, backy-packy, flippy-floppy... the list goes on.

I hope you have found as much entertainment in these words as I have, although I would imagine that you would have to hear grown adults very seriously warning you to avoid carrying around your lappy-toppy in your backy-packy for yourself to feel the full comic effect.

Desastre com a Polícia Federal

I'd like to begin this post by asking you to think back to a time not so very long away when I declared my love for "Brazilian time," which is often not much like any defined system of time at all and is generally based around the following ideas and sentiments:
-It doesn't matter when something gets done as long as it gets done.
-Even if it doesn't get done, that doesn't really matter much either.
-(One hour later...) I tried my best to be on time, isn't that good enough?
-Don't rush me
-But I'm enjoying the scenery...
-But I LIKE walking really, really, really slowly!
As I mentioned before, there are aspects of this philosophy that I appreciate and identify with a great deal. However, as I found out today, it can also be somewhat frustrating, especially for someone not accustomed to a culture so largely based on leisure.

Any foreigner staying in Brazil for more than 30 days is legally required to register with the Federal Police Department. Registering is a very serious and important affair, and failure to do so results in costly fines for each day the foreigner fails to register after the 30 day deadline. Every foreign exchange student in my program was given strict instructions to treat the officials at the Police Department with respect and not to engage in any funny business, because, after all, these are the people who ultimately decide whether or not we get to stay in the country. Judging from the rigidity of these rules, it would seem that this would be a bureaucracy well accustomed to efficiency, would it not? Well...

Our group of twelve left at 7 a.m. from our school this morning expecting to wait in line for an hour or so before getting our papers promptly stamped and collected so that we could be back to PUC in time to catch the second half of our language-intensive classes. As it turned out, we arrived at the Federal Police Department, located in Rio's GIG airport, took our numbers, and sat down for an ample 8 hours. What the officers were actually doing with the 40 minutes they spent on each applicant when the actual process took less than 10 was something of a mystery to me until my number was finally called and I walked into my little booth only to be ignored for about 15 minutes while my interviewer chatted with his friends, called his significant other to ask her to bring him a hamburger, chatted some more when she came to deliver the burger, then asked her to please get him some fries from the airport food court, and finally got down to business, if you can call it that. After answering some questions about my reasons for coming to Brazil and signing a few documents, I thought we were through, but then he started discussing the difficulties of Portuguese language acquisition and I kind of went braindead for a few minutes.

After I was through, the line started moving a little more quickly, and everyone's mood began to improve, wanting to believe that after four hours of waiting we would soon be free, but then the calling number remained at 976 for about two hours and as our stomachs growled and our minds turned to mush we really began to lose it. In retrospect, I definitely got to know everyone in our group a lot better as we sunk slowly to insanity together and plotted ways to steal the bananas that sat so alluringly on the front desk, but at the time we were too frustrated to fully appreciate the bonding time. Despite this irritation, I'm glad that I can look back on our the situation with humor; if nothing else, it was an interesting glimpse of bureaucracy done the Brazilian way.

Uma ilha no sol

So I've been in Brazil for less than two weeks and I've already gone on my first weekend getaway. I know it seems more than a little indulgent to go on vacation when I'm living in Rio de Janeiro, but hey, it's not easy living in paradise, right? After our first week of classes my friends and I decided to plan a day trip to Ilha de Paquetá, a small island about an hour's boat ride from Rio. The tickets were less than five reais (about 3 dollars), the weather was fine, and our schedules were empty, and so our adventure began.

Ilha de Paquetá is unlike any place I've ever been before. As much as I love Rio, I can definitely see why so many cariocas choose to visit the city's many surrounding islands on weekends, holidays, and Carnavál; if you think Rio is laid-back, as I once did, the informality and leisure of Ilha de Paquetá will just about blow your mind. The ilha has no cars, so everyone either walks, bikes, or rides horses, a refreshing change of pace from the sadistic, dog-eat-dog/dog-eat-pedestrian culture of motor transportation in Rio de Janeiro. I got a sense of the island's lack of crime when I noticed that the hundreds of abandoned bikes strewn all over the town were all unlocked. To put this observation in perspective, consider, if you will, the fact that a 3-inch thick metal U-lock couldn't save my bike from being stolen in Davis. In front of a Mormon church.

After walking around the island admiring the architecture and natural beauty for an hour or so, we stopped at a small (and I mean small) café for some lunch. I decided on a salgadinho (empanada-like pastries that I have become simultaneously addicted to and determined not to eat for the sake of my health) with bananas and cheese, which may sound a little strange, but hey, so do most other brilliant, life-changing inventions. We began talking to the café's owner, and before we knew it we had gotten suckered into walking down the street to her home to meet her son, who, she explained, was very attractive and needed a nice girlfriend. We walked upstairs and met not only her son but the entire family, which consisted of about fifteen people of all ages whose relationships to each other were completely ambiguous and whom, after the obligatory double-cheek kisses had been completed, offered us the barbequed meat of equally ambiguous animals and invited us to stay with them whenever we wanted. Hours of eating, drinking, samba and forro lessons, and the best Portuguese practice I've gotten so far went by and as the night came upon us we were invited to spend the night with our new friends.

Soon after, we left the house for a samba "club" that turned out to be more like a little community center, with what must have been the majority of the island's population congregated in an outside courtyard practicing samba to live music in preparation for Carnavál. Never in my life have I been more aware of my lack of ability to shake my groove thang; here were 4-year-old girls, 70-year-old men, people in wheel chairs (well, maybe not in wheel chairs) who could move like nobody's business. An hour or so later, our hosts took us to a discoteca down the street where we danced the night away to "baile-funky" and hyper remixes of songs that were popular in the U.S. circa 2001.

I can't really describe in words how taken aback I was by the hospitality of this family. I don't think I've ever felt so welcomed and by anyone I've known for a matter of hours. Even after two of my friends got lost on the ilha and had the entire family worried for their safety, we were still treated with appreciation and respect, which, as far as I can tell, Americans (especially young American women) don't always enjoy in Brazil. In the morning, our hosts took us to their café for coffee and breakfast and gave us the phone numbers of numerous family members (none was written as large or as bold as ABNER, their oldest and apparently most eligible son). I love Rio and am so appreciative of the fact that I get to live here, but Ilha da Paquetá was a refreshing glimpse of the Brazil that lies beyond the big cities.

Tudo Beleza

Oi! Yesterday marked my first day of language intensive classes at Pooky, but so far it seems that the most intensive thing about them is our classroom's air conditioning. Don't get me wrong, the class is already moving plenty fast and will continue to do so for five hours a day, five days a week, but the fan is serious overkill. "I'm a penguin," our teacher explains in Portuguese. On the bright side, this may mean I will actually get some use out of the sweaters and pants I brought.

As if I haven't raved enough about my host already, I have some more Dora updates. Namely that I love her. Our concert adventure the other day was a great success; it was really funny and interesting seeing her totally in her element with all of her fellow free concert-loving older lady and gentleman friends at the performance, which turned out to be at a museum in the Centro area of Rio. During the more lively pieces, Dora danced spiritedly in her chair and on the bus home after the concert she told me some hot gossip about the other concert-goers. Later that day, when I returned from the beach tired and sunburnt, Dora noted that I looked sad and gave me a big bowl of chocolate coconut ice cream. Que legal (how cool)!

One of my favorite aspects of carioca culture is the system and interpretation of time. This morning, my alarm failed me and I woke up at 45 minutes after my class began. I was kind of expecting to have my head bitten off when I finally arrived at school more than an hour late, but the teacher just kind of shrugged and suggested I try and go to sleep a little earlier tonight. As someone who has a history of struggling with punctuality, I found this reaction refreshing. I'm currently phoneless and watchless, which means that I am almost never thinking about what time it is. Since I am never thinking about what time it is, the hours of my day seem to slip by much faster than they did when I used to check my cell phone for texts and missed calls every ten minutes. And I love it! I'm avoiding getting a phone for as long as possible, but the peer pressure is slowly mounting and I am beginning to realize that I can't expect people to wait for me at specific street corners at specific times to meet up forever.

Another little thing that tickles me about Brazilians is their use of the phrase "tudo beleza?" It's a way of saying "how are you?" that really means "is everything beautiful?" The typical response is simply an affirmation: "sim, tudo beleza." Isn't that nice? I've been using it a lot lately and it makes my innards smile every time.

Pooky Pooky Poo

So I'm officially a resident of Rio! Does this make me a carioca? Definitely not yet - I can't tell you how many people have enthusiastically approached me on the beach to practice their English (is it my pastiness? style of dress? give-away American walk? who knows?) - but I'm getting there. Dora, my host, is the Brazilian granny of my dreams. Upon my arrival at her Leblon apartment, she took me on a little tour of the neighborhood and walked me to PUC-Rio, or "Pooky" as it is so affectionately called around these parts, so that I would be able to figure out how to get there the next morning. It's only about a 15-minute walk, maybe 20 if I'm feelin' extra leisurely and indulgent, and I only have to cross the street 4 times, which is good because venturing off the sidewalk in Rio has quickly become one of my greatest fears. I can't emphasize how lucky I am to being living in this location - I'm literally probably the closest or second-closest to campus of anyone in my program. Most EAP students are living in Copacabana, which requires a 20-minute bus ride, or neighborhoods that are even further. Dora's apartment is two block from the beach, which may serve to distract me from my studies in the future, but for now I'm definitely not complaining. As far as I can tell, Leblon is also the safest neighborhood in all of Rio. There are a few streets that seem a little touristy, but for the most part, it's pretty residential but very populated even after midnight.

That being said, I think that Leblon's extremely wealthy population might take something from its potential for heterogeneity or character. Walking down the neighborhood's main drag can be kind of a trip - for example, I've noticed that in front of some of the more bourghie boutiques, a red carpet has been laid on the sidewalk. Seriously. Also, everything in Leblon is more expensive than it would be elsewhere, which I'm thinking might actually be kind of a blessing in disguise because it will motivate me to explore the rest of the city.

Anyways, back to Dora. She is great. She is a big fan of chatting about everything under the sun, which so far has varied from being ripped off by the company that makes her evaporated milk to classical music to the best brand of alarm clocks. I usually have relatively little to contribute to these conversations, but I understand almost all of what she says, which is reassuring. A "Brazilian breakfast" of bread, cheese, fruit, and either coffee or hot chocolate is included in my rent, along with a pleasant little bedroom complete with a desk, a bed, two dressers, a luxuriously comfy chair, and a strange little cat figurine that functions as a doorstop. Aside from scolding me once for not flushing the toilet correctly, things have been just peachy between Dora and me. In fact, we're seeing a classical concert together tomorrow morning. Aren't we cute?

During the past few days, we've been having a series of different orientations and tours at Pooky. It's a pretty small campus, especially coming from Davis, and guess what? It's in a forest, A Floresta da Tijuca to be exact, and it's pretty incredible. I hope that going to school here never desensitize me to its beauty, because as of now walking outside feels a little bit like I'm Mowgli from The Jungle Book. In the best way possible.

That's all for now, my possums. Future updates may include: how my date with Dora turns out, the first day of language intensive classes, foods I have tried, of my attempts to learn samba, and methods for removing sand from every corner and crevice of my currently gritty room.

Oi Brasil!

I'm here! My plane landed yesterday morning without incident and so far everything has gone exceptionally smoothly. As soon as I stepped off the plane I had the overwhelming urge to skip through the terminal, so I did for a little while, but then my obese backpack started weighing me down so I stopped. For the most part, I spent the second leg of my trip out cold (thankfully) and flipped through my Portuguese textbook for a quick brush-up. I was feelin' good about my Portuguese and was excited to test out my language skills in the real world (the "rio" world? har har har). That all changed the second I entered the taxi to my hotel. I started a casual conversation with our driver, whose response sounded to me a little bit like "jjjjjj shhh? jshhh shjjj. shhajjjao!" Asking for a repeat helped a little, but my sense of Portuguese knowledge was effectively tainted.

At the hotel, all the UC-EAP students met up and bonded as the hotel put our rooms together for an hour or three. I was more or less jumping out of my skin with desire to go out and explore, so when the time finally came to hit up as praias de Ipanema, I once again found myself skipping embarrassingly. Some initial impressions of Rio from my first two days:

1. Wow. I have never seen so many beautiful people in my entire life. Believe the hype about Brazilian women and men alike - they are seriously works of art. I'm very confused about how their bodies stay so unbelievably perfect, because as far as my first two days have shown me, Brazilian food contains an awful lot of cheese and meat. Almost exclusively. Oh, but it is so good. I guess they must be working out a lot, and that takes a huge amount of dedication in this heat. Someone told me yesterday that Rio has one of the highest (if not THE highest) rates of plastic surgery in the world. Anyways, congratulations, homems e mulheres do Brasil, you guys are officially really hot.

2. Every guidebook of Brazil I've ever read emphatically states that you should not wear or carry anything that even looks expensive, even if it isn't, because this will make you an obvious target of mugging. Well, apparently Ipanema didn't get the message, because I have never seen so many designer labels on so few bodies. Of course, a well-dressed carioca will be less of a target than a conspicuous tourist, and of course, the areas I've observed so far have been the wealthiest and safest parts of Rio, but still, it's interesting to see.

3. Rio. Is. Beautiful. The taxi ride from the airport to Ipanema was, in a way, like a (much less over-intentionally perfect and much more startling) ride in Disneyland. Completely magical. I love the forests so much. All the green makes me feel weirdly vibrant and happy. Even in the most developed, commercial parts of Rio, vines cover buildings and huge trees with hundreds of hanging leaves in between the streets remind you where you are - the tropics. The heat helps too. The beaches' splendor pretty much goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway - they are incredible. I'm not sure how anyone gets anything done around here when the beaches are calling everyone's name so very loudly.

4. The favelas (slums) are absolutely huge. People had told me that they are like their own cities within themselves, but I really had to see them to believe it. I haven't been to one yet, but there are a bunch of volunteer opportunities to teach in the favelas that sound really fascinating and definitely like a sure way experience the other side of the huge rich-poor dichotomy here. Some other EAP students and I were looking at a map of Rio today and one of the first things we noticed was that the map was completely devoid of favelas, which take up enormous amounts of land and contain millions and millions of people. Pretty messed up, right? The reason, clearly, is that for the vast majority of tourists, the favelas don't actually exist. I realized that until I got here the only information I had really gotten about the favelas was that I should stay away from them. Obviously precautions need to be taken in the favelas, but I don't want to be one of the people who never sees one and pretends they aren't there.

There is definitely a lot more to say (I met my homestay host today and moved into her apartment!) but it's late and I am getting burned out by all this blogging. I'm going to have to build up the typing stamina for sure. All I can say for now is that I'm very happy and having a wonderful time. Até logo!

Tchau Tchau!

So it seems that I am finally actually, truly, seriously on my way to Rio de Janeiro. This post comes to you from Charlotte, North Carolina, where I have a 3-hour layover to be followed by a 10-hour flight to Rio. I’m trying to focus on the “Rio” part of that sentence rather than the “10-hour” part, but hey, I’ve got my fluffy inflatable pink travel pillow, some books, and the promise of hours of entertainment from my favored in-flight activity of writing though bubbles coming out of the models in the SkyMall catalogue, so I’m good. The first leg of my trip has seen me through only one relatively minor bump, and I’m hoping (not necessarily expecting) the same for the remainder. I was really proud of myself for witling my baggage down to a single checked bag, a smaller carry-on suitcase, and my infamous skater-boy backpack, but as I boarded my ridiculously packed plane in San Francisco, a flight attendant took one look at my (admittedly EXTREMELY over-stuffed) little suitcase and said “ooooh no, we’re checking this right now!” As she dragged me by the wrist to the front of the plane, causing me to run my suitcase over about forty disgruntled passengers’ toes, I got the sensation that I had done something very, very bad and that I would be taken to the principle’s office for a phone call with my parents, young lady. Eventually she chilled out a bit and my bag was whisked away to Rio before I realized that I had left all my snacks inside. This has been bumming me out for several hours now, but since that seems to be the most stressful obstacle that has presented itself for the time being, I am considering myself a very lucky girl.

Speaking of being a very lucky girl, just in case you haven’t heard, I’m going to Rio! After I arrive, I will meet everyone from my program at Hotel Vermont in Ipanema, which, as I discovered in pre-departure research/stalking of Rio, charges more than ten times its usual prices during Carnaval. If my currency converting skills are more-or-less correct, that’s almost $1500 for a single room. Woooow. Anyways, after meeting up for an orientation we are taxi-ed off to our host families and begin language-intensive Portuguese classes the following day. My host appears to be an older woman named Dora who lives in Leblon, a wealthy (and safe!) neighborhood in the southern part of Rio that is, if GoogleMaps has served me right, a mere 15-minute walk from PUC-Rio, my school-to-be for the next six months.

Anyways, it’s time to stretch these old legs before I embark on the second half of my voyage. I hope, for the sake of my own sanity and creativity, that SkyMall does not disappoint in its selection of weird and totally unusable merchandise. Tchau, dear reader(s?), I will see you in the city of paradise!

One more thing:
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE