Goodbye Rio

Sadly, my time in Brazil has come to an end. I'm back in the US, and though it's not in the foreseeable future, I'm sure I'll return to Rio again at some point. I had an absolutely amazing semester, and Rio's pretty much my favorite place on Earth.

A few things that struck me upon returning to small-town American life:

*My room here is so incredibly quiet. In Rio I could always hear traffic rushing by outside my window or sounds from nearby apartments, but here, there is often no sound at all. It's deafening, and it took quite awhile for my ears to stop ringing because of it.
*I have hot water in sinks! I've become so accustomed to only having cold water (even when there's a supposedly-hot-water knob) that at times it's hard to remember to actually USE the hot water that's now readily available.
*Because everything is air conditioned here, there's a drastic difference between indoor and outdoor temperatures. Some places in Brazil are air conditioned, but for the most part, I could wear the same outfit both indoors and outdoors without being uncomfortable. Not so in the United States. I keep forgetting my jacket.
*I can leave food or opened wrappers out without ants invading the area within ten minutes. It's wonderful to be so bug-free!
*I'd forgotten how soft clothes can be when washed with softener and dried in a dryer instead of on a clothesline. Everything's so incredibly comfy now!
*Then there's the whole idea that I can have a dirty article of clothing clean and ready to wear within only a couple hours. It blew my mind at first. Clothes in Brazil took a day to dry at best, and often even longer when it was especially humid. That meant I always had to be planning ahead with what I wanted to wear, but now I'm free to procrastinate to the last two-hour time block (the amount of time it takes to wash and dry something) all I want.
*American coins now seem so foreign to me. They're different shapes and weights from Brazilian coins, and dimes especially seem so small, light, and thin that I can hardly believe they're real.
*Styles here for girls my age now seem so casual. In Brazil I wore a skirt or dress probably at least five days a week and didn't stand out at all. Here, most girls I see are in athletic shorts and t-shirts, and skirts are all but nonexistent. I went a semester hardly seeing any girls in t-shirts, and now I can hardly find one who's not.
*Everything around here is just so open and green. Rural Wisconsin is certainly a far cry from the high rises of Rio's Zona Sul.
*I can get to everything so quickly here! In Rio, having to ride a bus for an hour or more to get somewhere was not at all uncommon. That didn't bother me, but being in a place where I can cross from one side of town to the other in only ten minutes certainly amazes me. I could hardly cross a single neighborhood in Rio in that amount of time.

It's been interesting being able to look at the US from a sort of "foreign" point of view. Being out of the country for so long has definitely made me see everyday things in a new light.

I already miss Rio and my Brazilian life. I know I'll be back eventually!

Salvador

I wanted to take one last trip before returning to the US, so I decided to go to Salvador. The city is the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia, and is in the region known as the Northeast. The culture there is very different from that of the Southeast, where Rio is, so I thought it would be interesting to see something new.

It seemed to me like Salvador was an extreme version of Rio in several ways. Whereas in Rio, the tap water is drinkable though not delicious, the water in Salvador is unsafe to drink. Salvador is the first place in South America I've visited where that's been the case. It's a bit of a headache trying to deal with, since even the ice in fountain drinks at restaurants is unsafe. I always had to make sure to order cans of soda instead.

The population of Salvador is much darker than that of Rio. They have a strong Afro-Brazilian tradition there, and whereas I would describe most of the people in Rio as "golden," most people in Salvador would definitely be described as Afro-Brazilian. I felt so conspicuous there with my light skin and hair. In Rio there are enough light-skinned people that on a good day, I think I can blend in fairly well. In Salvador, I had no chance - there, being light-skinned almost automatically marks a person as being a tourist. Like Rio, Salvador is a dangerous city, and I really didn't like automatically being marked as a target simply because of my skin color. I never had any problems there, but I was always slightly apprehensive nevertheless.

Salvador seems to be a more run-down city than Rio. The northeast region as a whole has a reputation as one of Brazil's most impoverished areas. In fact, a large number of the residents in Rio's favelas are originally from the Northeast, having come to Rio in search of better opportunities. Though the city of Salvador is certainly far better off than less-urbanized areas, traces of that poverty are visible throughout the city. I was staying in Barra, one of the nicer areas of Salvador, but even so, the sidewalk on my street was so crumbled in some places that it would've been better to have had no sidewalk at all. I thought the favelas in Rio were prominent, but the favelas in Salvador are even more visible. The ones in Rio are either on hillsides or in the Zona Norte, in places that people from the Zona Sul would rarely pass on buses. In Salvador, on the other hand, the favelas seem to be smack in the middle of the city, requiring people to drive right alongside or through them.

On the other hand, I think Salvador has better beaches than Rio. I almost feel traitorous in saying so, seeing as how Rio's beaches are world reknowned for their beauty, but I think it's true. In Rio, the beaches tend to be fairly lengthy. This means that, if you try to take a picture of it, you mostly get a bunch of sand and water, with perhaps a cool rock or two off in the distance. Doesn't make for the most amazing photo ops. In Salvador, many of the beaches are smaller. Salvador is located on a peninsula with the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and All Saints Bay on the other. The coast is rather scalloped, which produces a lot of smaller, semi-circle beaches. Additionally, there are often cool things located on the points separating beaches, including forts, a lighthouse, and a statue of Christ. That makes for much prettier photos.

The water in Salvador is warmer than in Rio, too. I generally don't like to swim in the ocean, and in Rio tend to stay on the sand. In Salvador, however, it was so hot and sunny and the water looked so inviting, that I just couldn't resist. The beach I went to, Porto da Barra, had only gentle waves. I swam out to where it was over my head, and even there the water was so clear I could see all the way to the bottom. The water was the absolutely perfect temperature, and it took quite awhile before I was able to convince myself to go back on the sand. If I wanted to go on a beach vacation, I'd choose Salvador over Rio in an instant.

a sweeping view of Salvador, with its lighthouse on the point

a closer shot of the lighthouse

another beach shot

Rio has a statue of Christ on a mountain, Salvador has a statue of Christ on a hill

The other notable thing about Salvador is its Old City, called Pelourinho. Salvador was the first capital of Brazil, and many of the buildings there were built in the 1600s and 1700s. The UN has made it a World Heritage Site. It's very picturesque, but the people at our hostel told us it was too dangerous to go there with a camera, so I went on a guided tour in order to be able to take pictures.

the Lacerda Elevator, which connects Pelourinho with the coast, far below

Words

In dealing both with the visitors from LASA and then my parents' visit the following week, I realized how much my friends and I use Portuguese words, even when we're talking in English. Some words, usually nouns, are just easier not to translate, and since everyone knows what they mean anyway, there's really no reason to do so. A rather over-emphasized version would sound something like this: "Yesterday as I was heading to the rodoviária (1), the taxi driver took the shorter route around the lagoa (2), and I got to see some people doing capoeira (3) in a park. We passed a place selling pão de queijo (4) and pão francês (5), but it wasn't busy because it was Saturday and most people were eating feijoada (6) instead." Nobody living in Rio would have any difficulty understanding any of those words, but they go untranslated for at least three different reasons. Bus station (1) and lagoon (2) are such commonly-used words in Rio (there's a big lagoon in the middle of the city) that it's actually the English translations that sound foreign to my ear. Nobody calls them by those names. Cheese bread (4) and French bread (5) need to go by their Portuguese names because the English versions of those foods are entirely different from the Brazilian versions. The final category remains untranslated because there are no easy English translations for these elements of Brazilian culture. (3) is a Brazilian martial art (detailed in the entry on Casa Rosa) and (6) is a typical Brazilian dish made with rice, beans, meat, kale, and an orange. Trying to translate them into English is too complicated in everyday conversation. All of those words, among others, have been incorporated into my English vocabulary, and because of that hardly even seem like Portuguese to me anymore. From time to time one of those words would get thrown in when I was talking to one of my American visitors, and it always took me slightly by surprise when someone would stop me and ask for clarification.

Another thing I noticed was how sometimes I accidentally slip into Portuguese now when speaking English. My friends and I go back and forth between English and Portuguese all the time. It's not at all uncommon for someone to ask something in one language and have the other person reply in the other, or to switch back and forth multiple times within a single conversation. With us it's almost always a combination of some sort. That, however, does not work so well when the person I'm talking to doesn't speak Portuguese. Obviously I have a much easier time separting out Portuguese from English than I do keeping Portuguese and Spanish straight, but sometimes the most insignificant words seem to slip through my filter. "Because" is one of my most common slip-ups, as well as things I say almost without thinking, like "okay." I guess it's kind of cool to think that they've gotten so entrenched in my consciousness that they come out when I'm not even expecting them, but I still find it a little strange.

I also think it's interesting to look at the region-specific vocabulary I've picked up here, words I wouldn't necessarily have expected to learn. One can tell a decent amount about a culture by the words that are emphasized, and I'm sure I've learned a very different set of vocabulary here than I would've learned in, say, Norway. Unfortunately, a lot of the surprising words I've learned here have to do with Rio's crime and violence. In addition to the word for "bandit" that I've mentioned in the past, it doesn't take long in Rio for a person to learn the words for drug trafficking, cocaine, gun, assault, "to rob," thief, shootout, kidnapping, lost bullet (the ones from shootouts that end up killing innocent people), something that translates roughly as "smooth criminal," and the name of the most notorious drug gang. Others have to do with Rio's poverty, like the words for slums, street children, and giving alms. In my Portuguese class we even learned the word for the illegal contraption people set up in poor communities to siphon off electricity from power lines.

Not all the unexpected words I've learned reference such serious things, though. I've also picked up some soccer vocabulary, like the words for goal, ball, and soccer cleat, as well as the names of Rio's soccer teams. Last summer when I was here we even did a whole lesson on soccer terms that have been incorporated into everyday speech. I also have certainly learned my fair share of beach words, like the ones for wave, shore, sand, sunscreen, and ice-cold coconut (a delicious form of beachside refreshment). And to think, if I were in Norway, I'd probably be learning the words for snowshoeing and long underwear instead!

Mental Gymnastics

A couple of weeks ago PUC hosted a big Latin American Studies conference that drew participants from across the Americas and Europe. I volunteered as a monitor for the event, and spent my time answering people's questions. There was no single lingua franca for the event. The organization is American, so the materials were printed in English, and while the Americans were bilingual in Spanish and/or Portuguese (primarily Spanish), native Spanish and Portuguese speakers often did not speak English. There isn't a huge amount of exchange between Brazil and the rest of South America, so even though they're neighbors, many Spanish-speakers do not speak Portuguese and vice versa. When papers were presented, sometimes a poll would be taken of the people in the room to find out which language the most people spoke, in which the panel would then be conducted. It was a wonderful trilingual conglomeration of a wide variety of people.

Even though the conference was hosted in Brazil, Portuguese seemed to be the language spoken by the fewest number of people. That meant that, more often than not, the questions people asked me were in Spanish. It was a great opportunity to get in some practice. While I was in Argentina and Uruguay, I was a little shy about speaking Spanish because I knew I'd make mistakes. Here, though, I didn't care. These visitors were in "my" country (since as a volunteer I was theoretically Brazilian), but they weren't speaking "my" language, so I was more than happy to try to help them in their own language without worrying about how terrible they found my Spanish. It was certainly a case of mental gymnastics: I never knew in what language a question would be asked (occasionally they'd be asked in English, as well). That meant my brain had to constantly be switching among languages, which, as I've mentioned before, is no small feat. Especially in the beginning, most of what came out of my mouth was a mixture of two. Whenever I tried to speak Spanish, I got Portañol, but then sometimes when I was talking to Brazilians, I'd accidentally throw in Spanish. Once I even started answering an English question in English and ended in Portuguese. Though most people could understand the Portañol well enough, by the end I think I managed to answer questions in at least 95% Spanish, about which I was pretty excited.

It was fun being able to acquaint people with PUC, and all of a sudden my imperfect Portuguese started looking not so bad. As I watched the visitors struggle with simple tasks like ordering food, I was reminded of how hard things had been when I first arrived, and how much easier they seem now. I was so caught up in the Portuguese and Spanish of the event that occasionally I almost forgot I spoke English. Once I was in the school store and an American woman was trying to ask the cashier for ibuprofen. She wasn't getting anywhere, but for a little while I just watched, waiting for my turn to check out. Then I remembered, "Oh wait - I speak English!" "I don't think they carry that here...you'd be better off at a drugstore." For the first time, my flawed Portuguese was a valuable and useful skill instead of just a hindrance. It was nice to be the one able to offer help here for once, instead of always being the one to ask for it.

Going to School with Monkeys

I saw monkeys on the way to school the other day. They were playing tag on the power lines just outside the campus, and they were completely adorable. At first I thought they were squirrels, but then I remembered that Brazil doesn’t have squirrels, and upon closer inspection I realized to my delight that they were indeed little monkeys. I’d heard that monkeys lived in the trees that surround campus (PUC abuts one of the two national forests within the city of Rio de Janeiro), but I’d never seen them firsthand. I so wished I’d had my camera with me.

In addition to being squirrel-free, PUC differs from OU’s campus in a variety of other ways. In Oklahoma, there’s seemingly limitless space, and the campus has expanded accordingly. To walk diagonally from the National Weather Center at the far southeastern edge of campus to the Catlett music building at the far northwestern edge would easily take more than an hour and a half. Even in the section of campus where most of the academic buildings are, it’s often hard to go from class to class in the allotted ten minutes. PUC, on the other hand, could probably be crossed in its entirety in under fifteen minutes. Since they’re caught between mountains and Gávea, there’s really no room for them to expand outward, so instead they build up. The majority of classes are held in just two huge buildings, and all of mine are held in just one. Instead of racing across a sprawling campus, I simply go up or down a couple floors.

I like that PUC is so compact. PUC has somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 students, but it feels much more intimate than OU, which has only a few thousand more students. It is not at all uncommon for me to go a day at OU seeing hardly anyone I recognize on campus outside of classes. At PUC, on the other hand, where I know far fewer people, I always seem to be running into people I know. One popular hangout that has emerged is the outside Wi-Fi area. Since I have no internet at home, I spend a great deal of time there, and it seems that others do, as well. There’s almost always one of my friends around. In fact, I ended up making friends with a Brazilian guy simply because we always seemed to be there at the same time. Sometimes a whole group of my friends will gather just to hang out for awhile, killing time between classes, or just pausing for awhile to catch up with people. In that regard, there seems to be a better sense of informal community for me here than at OU.

the wireless area

On the other hand, I miss the overall sense of a college community. Brazilian students typically live at home, so PUC has no dorms and, at least as far as I can tell, no group that organizes campus-wide events to draw students together. There are no school sports teams, and PUC does not have a mascot. I’m not even sure that there are official school colors. I come from a school where football is everything (heck, I even planned to study abroad in the spring so I wouldn’t miss football season), and I miss the sense of community generated when the entire student body comes together under the name of the Sooners. In the United States, being a College Kid is a full-time occupation. For at least the first year, most kids eat, sleep, and breathe the “college experience,” and they develop an immense feeling of pride for their school. They are a Sooner, or a Badger, or whatever their school mascot might be, and that becomes a defining element of their identity throughout their college years, and often far beyond.

In Brazil, on the other hand, it seems that a college affiliation makes up only a very small part of a student’s identity. They come and go on campus, attending classes, perhaps stopping to get a bite to eat or use the internet, but then they leave and go back to the rest of their lives. The “classic college experience” exists in a very different form here. I don’t get the sense that people cultivate a fierce pride in their particular school, or that there is any sort of significant rivalry between schools. In the US I am automatically obligated to “hate” anyone I meet from Oklahoma State or Texas, OU’s two biggest rivals, but I’ve never come across anything like that here, even though there are many universities just within the city of Rio itself. Perhaps the lack of sports teams helps reduce rivalries.

In a way, the city futebol teams step in to fill this role. I’d be willing to bet that for most Carioca college kids, their allegiance to their futebol team is far stronger than their allegiance to their university. Instead of seeing people proudly sporting PUC apparel, there are always students around wearing Flamengo, Fluminense, Botafogo, or Vasco da Gama jerseys. These teams weave together entirely different webs of loyalty, ones that connect not only students from different universities, but also people from all across the age range and socio-economic spectrum, and in the end they generate just as much support, if not more, as the most popular US university sports teams.

In the same way that college affiliation doesn’t seem to be particularly important here, class years don’t appear to hold as much significance in Brazil, either. Older students play jokes (“trotes”) on freshmen at the beginning of the school year, which consist of everything from painting their faces and clothes, to making them dress up in costumes and beg for money (for beer for the older students) at intersections, to things more sinister. However, after this initial hazing dies down, the lines dividing class years apparently fade as well. In the US there is the unfortunate tendency of upperclassmen and grad students to look disdainfully upon younger students simply because they’re younger, but I’ve never seen that here. My group of friends has included everyone from first-semester freshmen up through grad students, and nobody takes any notice whatsoever.

a trote: first-year med students from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro begging for change on a street in Leblon

some of the food kiosks on the way into PUC - the vendors are so nice - the chocolate croissant seller recognizes me and calls me "dear," the pizza salgado seller calls girls "princess," the coconut water guy sings to himself, and the soda guy wished me a happy stay in his country

along one of the main walkways

the open area under one of the two huge buildings

the open area under the huge building where my classes are held

the hallway

one of my classrooms

Hopes for the Future

“Someday you’re going to go to college. You’ll study law. We’ll put you in a class of informâtica [something I assume is like information technology], and you’re going to learn English, and Spanish, and French…”

That was the gist of a conversation that went on behind me recently while I was on a bus. A father was talking to his young son, who couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. It made me smile (and not just because I was excited that I could actually UNDERSTAND the conversation). In a city plagued by violence and poverty, it was so nice to hear words of hope for a change. They weren’t the words of an overbearing father already piling responsibilities on a son hardly old enough to read. Instead, they were simply the words of a loving father determined to do everything possible to see that his son would succeed in life. The way the words were woven together and the tone of the father’s voice made it almost seem like a fairy tale, except that in this case, the little boy really was going to have the opportunity to live happily ever after.

Like many things in Brazil, educational opportunities vary greatly between the rich and the poor. There is universal access to free education through government-sponsored schools, but unfortunately, those schools generally aren’t very good. Some are so overcrowded that the students have to be divided into three sections – those that attend school in the morning, those that go in the afternoon, and those that go at night. Drop-out rates are too high among poor students, especially since many from the favelas want nothing more than to grow up to be “bandidos” like their role models, and of course they don’t need school for that. Several years ago President Lula created a program called the Bolsa Família (Family Scholarship), which gives money to poor families under the condition that their children remain in school. Attendance rates have risen because of it, but there is still room for improvement. Even those students who make it all the way to graduation are often met with a nasty surprise should they try to apply to colleges. To get into a university in Brazil, applicants must pass that school’s Vestibular, which is somewhat like the ACT or SAT, except that every school has a different one. Just like public primary and secondary schools, public universities are also free, but unlike the lower levels of education, Brazilian public universities are the best of the best. They are, therefore, extremely hard to get into, and most public high schoolers haven’t been sufficiently prepared to be able to pass the Vestibulars of those schools. Private universities are easier to get into, but unless they are lucky enough to receive a scholarship, poor students are unable to afford the high costs of tuition. Education is one of the only ways someone poor in Brazil can improve their conditions, especially since almost all good jobs in Brazil require university degrees, even more so than in the United States. Unfortunately, the way the Brazilian system of education is set up makes good education extremely hard to attain for the poor sector of society.

The rich (including the middle class), on the other hand, have a much better chance. As demonstrated by the father on the bus, they value education highly, and most people who can afford it send their children to private school. Education is definitely a big investment, one that can start as early as kindergarten or pre-school. The usual criticism is that the ones who can afford private universities get into the free public ones, and the ones who can’t afford the private ones are left with those as their only option. This is true. However, to be fair, the students who get into the free public universities have often already been paying private school tuition for more than a decade, which must amount to a very sizable chunk of money. In a way, they’ve been paying for their “free” public university education all along.

In addition to regular private school, many students study foreign languages at private language schools. My twelve-year-old host brother, for example, is already studying French in regular school and English at a language school. Language schools are absolutely everywhere in Rio – it often seems as though I can’t walk five blocks without passing one. English is the most commonly-taught language, but French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Chinese are also often available. I think it’s really cool the way it’s so easy to learn a language here. In the US, there aren’t many options available for people to learn foreign languages in a classroom setting after college.

An Invitation to Thieves

I lost my cell phone in Shopping Leblon the other day; it must have slipped out of my bag at some point. Some kind soul was considerate enough to turn it in at the customer service desk instead of just keeping it (cell phone theft is big in Rio). Luckily, I had “Casa” (Home) listed as one of the numbers in my phonebook, so someone from the mall called my host mother to say that they’d found the phone. I was able to pick it up the following day without a problem. Wonderfully convenient, right? Well, not exactly.

Apparently I should never have had “Casa” listed in my phone at all. I put it in months ago, without thinking twice about it. I never expected to actually call the number, but put it in just to be safe in case my keys got stolen or lost and I found myself locked out of the apartment at some point. Plus, if I were to come across a lost cell phone on the street, the first three numbers I’d look for to help locate the owner would be “Home,” “Mom,” and “Dad,” and if someone were to find me unconscious and bleeding in a street somewhere, I’d definitely want them to call “Home” right away. Not so in Brazil.

My host mother informed me immediately that I should never have put “Casa” in my phonebook. When I apologized and said that it was common practice in the United States, she told me in Brazil people can’t do that because of kidnappers. She said she got scared when she answered the phone and heard someone had found my phone, and that she wouldn’t give out her name, believing the caller to be of malicious intent. It makes me sad to think I live in a place where a good Samaritan can be thus vilified automatically, simply because people here live with the fear of being robbed (or kidnapped, in this case) constantly in the back of their minds. It was easier for my host mother to imagine a kidnapper on the other end of the line rather than just a person trying to do a good deed.

The host mother of a friend of mine went through a similar sort of panic. My friend got robbed, and within her lost belongings was something with her home address on it. When her host mother found out, she became extremely afraid that the thief would then come and rob their apartment. As far as I know, that never actually happened, but the threat was definitely very real in the mind of her host mother.

As you can see, in Rio one cannot carry any sort of information that is tied to a home or family. An American driver’s license, the most basic of ID cards that almost everyone over sixteen carries, lists the person’s home address prominently on the card. Nobody bats an eye. If anything, for us it is a measure of security, the assurance that if something goes wrong, loved ones can be easily located. In Brazil, it is an invitation to thieves, a careless way of making one’s family, the most cherished of institutions, vulnerable to danger. Everyone in Brazil is required by law to carry identification at all times, but the nationally-issued Brazilian ID card omits this piece of information.

Português

It may sound strange, but the thing that improves my Portuguese the most is just hanging out with friends. It’s the only time I get to practice talking for extended stretches of time. I don’t really have to speak much during the day, so if I don’t do anything with friends on a particular day, it’s possible the only Portuguese I’ll use will be to buy food. My classes are lecture-based, so I don’t usually have to talk in them unless I’m called on in Portuguese to give an answer to a grammar exercise. I suppose on some level being in class helps my listening comprehension, but I could understand almost everything my professors said (save for the odd vocabulary word here and there) from the very beginning, so I don’t really feel like I’ve improved much in that regard. I am starting to master the art of listening with only one ear, though, and that’s kind of fun.

What I find to be much more beneficial, though, is the informal conversation that goes on when I’m out with my friends. In general, I think it’s a little harder to understand informal conversation than it is to understand my class lectures. In part I think that is because in my lectures, I always have a sort of base vocabulary to go off. In literature, my mind pulls up its literature vocabulary. In sociology, the sociology vocabulary. I have a frame of reference and can predict roughly where the lectures will go, so I always know what kinds of words to expect. In informal conversation, on the other hand, anything goes. Being able to converse easily in a non-academic setting require a far wider range of vocabulary, and the ability to recognize all those unexpected words instantaneously.

The absolute hardest thing for me when trying to understand Portuguese is when someone asks me a question out of the blue that I’m not expecting. In an ongoing conversation, I can predict what’s coming and if I don’t understand a word, I can use context clues and often figure it out with no problem. In an isolated question, there are no context clues. Even if I know every word in the question on its own, if the words are strung together and said quickly when I’m not paying close attention, there’s a good chance I won’t understand the question the first time it’s asked. When I’m just talking with my friends it’s not a big deal, but I find unanticipated questions slightly stressful when dealing with food vendors.

I know the routine questions. If I order a Coca-Cola, I’ll be asked whether I want a regular or diet one. If I order a salgado, I’ll be asked whether I want to eat there or have it to go. Occasionally I’ll be asked if I want it heated up. If I order juice, I’ll sometimes be asked if I want it with sugar. If I don’t pay with exact change, I’ll usually be asked if I have it (for some reason Brazilian cashiers really don’t like making change). All of these questions I’ve grown very accustomed to, know to anticipate, and can answer without a problem. If, however, I were to be asked if I wanted honey to go with my muffin or sauce to go on my sandwich, I’d probably be lost. I do my best to get away with just a smile and a nod when I don’t understand, but things can get messy when a specific answer is required of me. In the best of situations, I understand the question the second time it is asked. In the worst of situations, the cashier and I are left blinking at each other in an awkward communicational impasse. I feel so helpless when that happens, but I try to get out of it by smiling a lot and just picking an option, even if I don’t understand what I’m picking. I once ended up with the odd combination of salmon ravioli in a chicken sauce when that happened. The cashier must’ve thought I was crazy, but it was surprisingly good.

Smiling and nodding can get a person very far in a foreign culture. Copying body language can, as well. There’s a Brazilian girl that sometimes talks to me in my literature class, and occasionally she’ll lean over and whisper something to me while the professor is talking. My ability to understand quickly-whispered Portuguese is just about zero, but if she’s smiling, I’ll just smile back and act like I understand. Along the same lines, sometimes when I’m in a big group of friends and not participating directly in the conversation, I lose track of what’s being said. However, I just copy the expressions of the other people in the group, and usually everyone is none the wiser. Of course, I sometimes feel silly after laughing at a joke with everyone and then having someone turn and ask me, “Did you understand?” “Uh, no, but I thought I’d laugh anyway so I looked like I had a clue…” Luckily I don’t get caught too often, and it’s far easier to just pretend I understand than to drag the conversation down by making people go back and explain whatever it was that I didn’t catch.

However, more often than not I’m able to follow the conversation just fine, and, when I’m feeling daring, sometimes I’ll even jump in myself. My spoken Portuguese is definitely the worst of out my reading, writing, speaking, and listening abilities. Because I am a perfectionist, that gives me a very good reason to keep my mouth shut. If I can’t say it correctly, I’d rather not say anything at all. Unfortunately, the only way for me to improve my speaking ability is to do just that – speak. When I’m writing I have time to look over my work and make sure everything agrees (verb tenses, gender, whether something is singular or plural), but when I’m speaking, things get jumbled. Portuguese is a lot more complicated than English, and even a little harder than Spanish, in terms of agreement. The hardest thing for me has been learning to just let go of my mistakes and keep talking. I always want to go back and correct everything I’ve said (I tend to realize I’ve made a mistake immediately AFTER I’ve said something), but if I were to do that, I’d end up talking myself in a circle and never get anywhere. So I let it go and move on.

As if making sure things agree weren’t hard enough, there’s also the matter of vocabulary. Let me tell you, a language consists of an awful lot of words. I’ve learned to be very creative in order to make up for my vocabulary deficiencies. Give me a sentence and I’ll find two or three other ways to express that same idea. I have to, since often I can’t translate my original English ideas into my less-than-stellar Portuguese. Synonyms are my best friends. Yesterday I was trying to explain to a friend how something was expanding, but I didn’t know the word for expand. I thought about it for a moment and then decided that the word “grow” would work just as well. I’ve also gotten good at descriptions. While I was staying at the hostel in São Paulo, I wanted to buy a lock for my locker, so I went to the nearest supermarket in search of one. However, I couldn’t remember the word for lock, so instead I got to involve the sales assistants in a fun little game of Brazilian Catch Phrase. “Hi, I don’t know the word for it, but I’m looking for something is used with a key to secure things.” They looked at me a little strangely, but nevertheless directed me to the locks section. Embarrassment and shyness have no place in the mindset of a person in a foreign country. I make a fool out of myself on a regular basis just to get by. That’s another time smiling comes in handy – if I smile and laugh at myself, usually I can get the Brazilian on the other side of the conversation to laugh with me, thereby making me feel slightly less foolish.

A National Passion

Soccer - or futebol (foo-chee-bol) - is Brazil's national passion. Rio is no exception. Futebol is huge here. There are several teams that are based in Rio, and they play both each other and teams from other places. The most famous of those teams are Flamengo and Fluminense, but there are at least two other big teams, as well. Everybody cheers for a team here - the question is not whether or not you like futebol, it's what team in particular you support. I am a flamenguista, someone who cheers for Flamengo. I chose them because their name sounds like "flamingo" (though that isn't the Portuguese word for it) and I like their team colors, red and black. They're similar to my university's colors. As you can see, I'm a very devoted fan. That's not entirely on purpose; if I had access to TV, I wouldn't mind watching their games, but since I don't, there isn't much I can do.

Even though I don't have TV access, I can still tell when it's game day. Lots of people wear team jerseys, and every once in awhile there will be someone walking down a sidewalk waving a huge team flag. Since apartments are so open here, I can hear whenever anything important happens during the game because people in the surrounding apartments cheer. Recently Flamengo won an important game, and it seemed like the whole neighborhood was cheering. I think it's really cool the way watching a game becomes something of a community event. Instead of being shut away and isolated in an airtight apartment or house, Gávea residents can rejoice with everyone around them without ever stepping out their door.

Fittingly, Rio's futebol stadium, Maracanã, is a Carioca pride and joy. It's the biggest futebol stadium in South America, and nobody's about to let you forget it. There are signs throughout the city that feature a picture of Maracanã and the phrase "Maraca [I have no idea where the last syllable went] - how beautiful it is." As far as stadiums go, I guess I would agree that it is indeed aesthetically pleasing. It's a perfect circle, so it looks cool from the air. It is to be the site of the 2014 World Cup, and preparations are already being made.

A visit to Maracanã is on the Must Do List for every visitor in Rio, but until last week I'd never made it there for a game. However, some of my friends were going and invited me along, so I jumped at the opportunity. The game was between Fluminense, one of the super-popular Rio teams, and Corinthians, a team from São Paulo for which Ronaldo (one of Brazil's most famous futebol players) plays.

The stands at Maracanã are divided into three sections: a section for each team where the most loyal fans stand, and then a neutral section where anyone can stand. During really important games, a person isn't allowed into the rival team's section if he or she is wearing the opposing team's jersey. Though Brazilian fans are fairly well-behaved compared to world standards, that measure is in place to prevent possible confrontations. My friends and I stood in the neutral section, with Fluminense and Corinthians fans standing side by side around us.

I liked the energy and excitement of the game. I once watched part of a soccer game at my high school, but I found it boring because nobody was cheering. That was definitely not the case at Maracanã. The fans were enthusiastically engrossed in the game, swimming in a sea of red and green (Fluminense) or black and white (Corinthians). In addition to normal jerseys, for some reason winter hats in team colors seemed to be very popular, and I even saw a couple women in green pants or leggings. That's dedication.

The entire game was played to the steady rhythm of drums. From what I could tell, the drums were being played in the Corinthians fan section. There's nothing that announces a group is on the warpath quite like the sound of a drum. College football games are of course accompanied by a marching band, complete with a drumline, but I liked the rawness of the exposed percussion. It added a fierce, electric charge to the air and kept the energy level high.

Flags and banners were popular demonstrations of support, as well. Throughout the game I could see Fluminense fans waving large flags in the stands, and at one point, two Corinthians fans walked along the pathway near the field carrying two huge banners. A huge flag was also unfurled across an entire section of Corinthians fans. Corinthians may have been from six hours away, but they definitely were not lacking for support in Rio.

I took this photo leaving Rio last summer, and discovered Maracanã is visible near the top

Maracanã

Maracanã, with the huge Corinthians flag

almost the entire group

enthusiastic Fluminense fans

On the Farm

PUC organized a day trip for the international kids last Saturday, to a hotel that's located on a huge farm in Barra do Piraí, which is in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro state. It had lots of varied activities to keep us occupied, from hiking and horseback riding to ziplining and lounging by the pool. It was a really fun day - the perfect chance to just relax and get to know all the exchange kids a little better.

the hotel

Soon after we got there, all of us went on a hike throughout the land surrounding the hotel. It's a very mountainous area, so there were lots of excellent photo ops. The more I travel around this area, the more I realize just how mountainous it is. I had no idea Brazil had so many mountains, but there have been mountains in almost every place I've visited.

made it to the top of the climb!

in an area full of cool-looking rocks

Just as we were all dying for a drink of water, a man from the hotel appeared, leading a donkey that brought us drinking water and life jackets. Excellent timing. And why life jackets? Because we were about to cross a small lake on the most rickety "boat" ever constructed. We made it to the other side, but only barely. Of course, when we were in the middle all the guys decided it was the perfect opportunity for a water fight, which meant that everyone was soaked by the time we made it to solid ground. Nothing like being soaked in nasty lake water. Boys will be obnoxious boys, no matter what country they're from.

I think everyone was relieved to be on solid ground again!

Back at the hotel area, there was a leisure area set up with a pool, obstacle course suspended over water, and a zipline. I thought the zipline looked fun, so I decided to try it. I wasn't convinced the safety measures were quite on par with US ones, but I figured the worst that would happen to me would be that the line would snap in the middle of the lake, and I'd fall in the water - no big deal. Wrong. At the far end of the zipline, the line dipped low over the water, and the zipliner was supposed to be slowed by the water to coast to a stop near the landing area. For whatever unknown reason, the water didn't slow me down nearly enough, and I crashed almost full-speed into the wooden landing area. Ow. I seem to have a real knack for getting injured here in Brazil. As soon as they helped me out of the water, all the attendents clustered around me - "You're hurt! You're hurt! Oh no!" I wasn't in that much pain, so it really freaked me out that they were so worried. The nurse whisked me away to patch me up, as I realized that I had a big scratch across my back and another long scratch down my arm (which later developed some wonderfully colorful bruises). I was bleeding, and I all I could think of was my high school friend who, after getting pushed into a stream and cutting his knee, got horrifically sick from the bacteria in the water, and had to have IVs and everything. I didn't expect this lake water to be any better, especially since there were lots of farm animals around, which further degraded its purity. Though the nurse was very nice and attentive, all I received in the way of first aid was ice for my back and some antibiotic spray on my scratches - not exactly reassuring. I turned out to be perfectly fine, but I'm pretty sure this would never fly in the United States. The hotel would be too afraid of lawsuits. The landing area would have to be far more safe - or at the very least come equipped with padded cushions covering the hard, wooden areas! Yay for substandard Brazilian safety measures... Ah well, it was fun before I landed, at least!

right before I crashed...

lunching with friends from Portugal, the US, and Sweden

with another Portuguese friend, wearing almost-twin kangas

Kangas are about the closest approximation to any sort of national, unique cultural dress that exists in Brazil. As is fitting, kangas are worn on the beach (or by the pool). They actually serve a double purpose. Kangas are made of very lightweight material (I can see through mine if I hold it over my eyes), and they are used as the Brazilian version of a beach towel. They dry quickly, so in addition to be used as a towel, they make for a convenient beach cover-up (one crosses the kanga over oneself as though wrapping up in a towel, and then ties two ends around one's neck to make it into a sort of dress). I quite like the style - it's comfortable and lightweight. Plus, I love all the bright colors that kangas come in!

The Bullets Move Closer

There was a shootout in Alto Leblon, a section of Leblon that borders Gávea, last week. It was a clash between a drug gang and the police again, and it was by the favela that's around there. In Portuguese, the name for the people who get into clashes with the police is "bandido," or "bandit" in English. I like it. It's simpler to call them bandits than drug lords or gang members. Nobody died this time, and only one person was wounded.

Last Sunday I heard something that sounded like gunshots in the distance and went on intermittently for quite awhile. It wasn't the same time as the Alto Leblon shootout, and I don't know for sure that it was gunshots. It could have been firecrackers or something - my untrained ear certainly can't tell the difference. Even so, it's interesting to live in a place where the possibility of gunfire is nothing extraordinary. At home, if I heard such a sound, I would of course dismiss it as nothing more than bored kids shooting off firecrackers. I've heard that the "bandits" also shoot off gunshots when large shipments of drugs arrive, so in some places it's possible to hear gunfire even when there isn't a shootout occurring.

Don't worry, though - I'm still not concerned. The area around my house and PUC has been completely tranquil. Even in the extremely unlikely event of a conflict, I think it would difficult for a stray bullet to enter my bedroom. My room faces another building that's only a few feet away and there's not really much open space around, so a stray bullet would have to richochet quite a lot to come anywhere near my room. News of shootouts is sensational, but it's sensational from a distance - I'm still out of range of the trouble.

Home Sweet Home

As I've said before, I live in the neighborhood of Gávea, which is where PUC is located. I was originally a little disappointed not to be living in Leblon again (where I lived last summer), but I've become rather fond of Gávea. Besides, I live as close to Leblon as possible without actually being in it - the avenue I live on is divided by a pedestrian area in the middle; my side of the avenue is in Gávea, the other side is in Leblon.

Gávea is definitely rougher around the edges than Leblon is. It's less touristic, so I suppose there's no reason for the glitz of Leblon. I remember walking through Gávea a couple times last summer and always being afraid of getting robbed, since at first glance the neighborhood looks a little sketchy to naïve American eyes. As it turns out, though, I feel just as safe in Gávea as I did in Leblon. The typical profile of a thief in Rio is a poor, darker-skinned (sounds bad, but it's true - there's a pretty direct relationship between skin color and class in Brazil) adolescent or early-twenties male (after that they literally die off in gang-motivated murders - an oft-quoted statistic is the fact that for males, Rio has a mortality rate equal to that of war zones) in well-worn clothing who is often slightly dirt-covered. These favela and street kids are easy to pick out, especially against the usual well-dressed, lighter-skinned crowd of the Zona Sul, and they're rare around Gávea.

That's the good part about Rio's absurd amount of robberies - at least it's easy to define who to watch out for. Granted, there are always exceptions, but it's nice to have a general idea. In Argentina and Uruguay I was always the slightest bit uneasy since thieves there blend in more. Apparently in Buenos Aires one tactic is for thieves to dress up as businessmen and then rob the unsuspecting people around them. I'd take Rio's easily-identifiable thieves any day. Of course, it's also necessary to note that there are many honest, law-abiding citizens who also fit that profile. In fact, most people who live in favelas are completely honest and simply live there for the cheaper housing. The illegal actions of a few have given a bad reputation to the term "favela" in general, both internationally and within Brazil and even Rio itself, which is really unfortunate.

So anyway, Gávea is safer than I expected. I love that I'm only a ten minute walk from PUC - I'm saving a ton on bus fares! I most appreciate this when I'm walking home at night. The traffic in my area is horrible during rush hour, and at times I can walk almost two blocks during a red light, without the traffic moving at all. I'm nearly home while everyone else is still stuck in their motionless cars.

As it turns out, I'm also wonderfully near two popular PUC hangouts. There's a bar called Seu Pires which is right across PUC and several blocks from my house. The bar itself is tiny, but the area around it gets really crowded at night. Students spill out on the street, angering drivers and occasionally causing the police to come by with their sirens on to force students to move back. On Thursday nights, students move from Seu Pires to another bar called Baixo Gávea, which is about a block from my house. There are actually several bars around there, though Baixo Gávea is definitely the most famous. People stay there til long past midnight, but still I feel safe enough to walk that block back to my apartment alone. Definitely on my guard, but alone. I love the convenience of it.

my apartment

what I see walking to school every day!

Rio has tons of cool grafitti along the streets...I think it brings color and life to otherwise drab walls

more cool grafitti

the neighbhorhood playground

Cristo Redentor watching over Gávea

Santos Dumont Plaza, a parklike area about a block from my apartment

there's a reason I call this place paradise...

Seu Pires Bar

a typical Thursday night

looks pretty boring, but this place gets packed with students on Thursdays, since it's the area near Baixo Gávea

the Zona Sul supermarket, just a few hundred meters from my apartment
like many/most stores in Rio, the sides are open and there are no doors to go through

neighborhood gas station - in Brazil, it's illegal to fill up your own car; an attendent has to do it for you

Shopping da Gávea, the neighborhood shopping mall

along the "main street"

along the "main street"

Neighborhood Church #1

Neighborhood Church #2, right across from the Catholic one

along the "main street"

a distant favela (Rocinha, perhaps?) on the hills in the background that's visible from Gávea

natural beauty at its finest