Week six and seven

It is a combined weekly post because these two weeks have blended together.

It is cold an rainy today in Brazil as I am writing this. The high today is a bone chilling 65 degrees. I am sitting here in long pants and my OP fleece, with socks and Birkenstock. I worry that I am losing my mountain resistance to cold. I am also unsure what to write about today, unsure what to talk about from the past week and a half. I rode a language roller coaster again this week. I had my first real experience of saudade (a Portuguese word for a mixture of nostalgia and homesickness) ever in my life. The protests in Brazil are all over the news. I am behind on my internship homework. I am going to start teaching lessons and leading activities, which is both scary and exhilarating. I think that I have finally come down from the Honey moon phase of this adventure. life here is finally real, and that is amazing, and terrifying, and sad and perfect, and confusing, and exactly where I want to be.

 A few weeks back my parents collected several letters form my close family, and sent them to me. Because we both have very little experience with foreign post and Brazilian mail I advised them to send it Care of Outward Bound Brazil. My address in the City is also very complicated for someone who is used to simple rural addresses. the letters arrived successfully. However, the Outward Bound headquarters are located about two hours outside of the city. It took about another week and a half for the letters to finally get to me. When I read the letter I had my first experience with saudade in a long time.

I am going to preference this by saying that I am not one to get homesick. My parents say that I was ready to leave the nest by about age 12. I am no stranger to leaving home for extended periods of time, and as I have gotten older my intervals between home have continued to increase, and my time spent home has shortened. I like to think of myself as a wandering spirit, and prodigal son of sorts. I am self identified as fiercely independent.

The letters were filled with pride and excitement at my adventure, overflowing with love. I had read the letters at the end of a particularly stressful day and that was enough to push me over the edge. That is not to say that I cried or broke down but I had a realization of a different kind. I became deeply aware of how much I am loved, and how valuable that is. I wanted to be able to return that love. Sometimes I think I can be callus with my independent streak, like I am responding to this outpouring of affection by leaving. That was part of my epiphany, and the main reason that I felt homesick, I wanted to return all the support I had been given. It was a really powerful experience for me and one that will not be soon forgotten.

on a separate note the eternal roller coaster ride that is my Portuguese was particularity wild this week. Most of this week was spent doing presentations to the parents of the kids potentially going on this coming trip. during one of these presentations the room was packed full and since I was not giving the presentation, I sat out with another instructor and talked to some of the other kids in the school. One guy was particularly interested, we talked for a while about the program and differences between Brazil and the USA. The topic of conversation was totally normal for me but was different was that the conversation was smooth. The conversation flowed, I was able to give answers that were easily understood, and I easily understood his comments. I was really happy with myself, a solid improvement from my first week and even my first expedition. Later that week I was a part of a big meeting on Azimute as a program, and I was quickly humbled from my previous high.

We went to a rich part of the city. I immediately felt out of place. the streets were lined with fancy apartments and towering office buildings. the people walking on the street were clearly different form the people I interact with and encounter on a regular basis. they were all in fancy cloths, pastel colored button down shirts. all the gates had guards and electric wiring at the top. they walked with a pride that I only see on people who are ignorantly affluent, and affluently ignorant. I by contrast, was wearing the same pair of shorts I had been wearing for the last three days, with a ratty shirt, smelling a little of B.O. and wild hair ( it was particularly humid that day and my hair was feeling fiercely independent). We walked into as office building to go meet with the rest of the group. we had to stop at a reception desk, because the entrance to the stairs and elevators were guarded by gates and door men. We had to get guest passes to be allowed into the building. We needed to show some identification to get the pass. I had however like a good old ignorant american forgotten my copy of my passport. I normally carry a copy of it in my pack at all times however today it was not with me. I felt the heat of some serious judging looks (deservedly so).

However, eventually we got our passes and went upstairs. We met the rest of our crew in the offices of RedBull. I would have been excited but in reality I felt dirty and out of place. Everything in the office was clean and modern and chic, and fancy. it had the vibe of the ignorantly affluent, of the exclusionary. Thankfully we left the RedBull offices and went to a cafe down town.

I thought that the meeting was incredibly powerful and valuable. The meeting was a kind of mission audit of the program. we examined where the project has been, where we see it going and what we want it to do, as well as the difficulties, and triumphs we had experienced with it. The process was really interesting for me but only in a nerdy scholarly way. I will save all of you who aren't studying group dynamics and debriefing techniques the boredom of my interest. However, the conversation was about complex ideas and I felt a little overwhelmed.  I was able to contribute to the conversation and understood a fair deal but I still felt less than capable. my responses were often broken and stuttered, and I wasn't able to gather all the finer details of the conversation. I was frustrated and humbled and I have increased my practice, and vocab drills.

The protests here are big news. They are happening all over the country in all the major cities. They originally started over the insane prices of public transportation and the recent rate increase. it is now 3.20 per trip. which is really expensive, especially for the people who need public transportation the most. it cost 6.40 a day just for the person to go to work, and that is if they don't have to change buses or trains. On top of the ridiculous prices the system is plagued by over crowding and delays. I have recently had the pleasure of experiencing the train system during rush times and it is unreal. Every single car is packed to bursting point. People rush and push to get on the trains it is a mini stampead every time a car door opens. I thankfully have the luxury of not having to rush to my job but for other people, their only for of transportation is stressful crowded and expensive. The protests have quickly evolved into anger over the general culture of corruption in government in Brazil. As well as, frustration over lack of general public infrastructure and care while the country is spending tons of money on new stadiums. Brazil will be hosting the world cup in 2014 and the summer Olympics in 2016. The country has these massive building projects when many feel they should be spending the money on public needs. I can really sympathize with the frustrations of the protesters. Though the protests have been mostly nonviolent, there has been news of harsh police responses with riot gear and tear gas, and news of vandalism form the protesters. In general the protests remind me of the Occupy wall street protest a few years ago. I have not been participating in the protests for obvious reasons.

I am behind on my internship homework which is frustrating. I emailed my professor and she told me not to worry which has lifted a lot of stress from my shoulders. My main issue is that I have to do the homework in English and after spending hours writing papers in English it takes a few hours to switch back into Portuguese.

The end of this month I will be going on my second trip. this time to the mountains. I will also be going on this trip in a semi instructor role. the past trip I was mostly just a shadow instructor. I am extremely excited. I will even be teaching some of the lessons. I WILL BE TEACHING BACKPACKING IN PORTUGUESE TO BRAZILIAN YOUTH. I will not be doing the major stuff like the evening circles or navigation but I will be doing simpler hard skill lessons like, stoves, and pooping, and packing a pack and leave no trace. I am so excited it will be the biggest test of my language abilities yet. I have been spending time with my dictionary and Google translate making notes for my lessons. I still struggle with masculine and feminine endings. However I am still beyond excited at this opportunity and I want to do an amazing job.

All this, is finally starting to feel natural for me. I have left the honeymoon phase and that is exactly where I want to be. This is where the real development starts to happen. I can see clearly where I am lacking, and where I have opportunities to improve. I am ready to tackle the challenges set in front of me with a focused energy, that before was a little diluted by the surrealness of what I was doing. I am excited and energized and focused, hopefully this will be a productive combination. I have a hard time believing that at the end of this month I will have reached the halfway point of this amazing adventure. Sometimes I feel like I just got off the plane. 

week five

Do one thing everyday that scares you. This idea has been a part of my inner life mantra for three to four years now. Somedays it is more relevant than others. This week it was relevant for 4 out of the seven days. We started talking to schools this week, and we expanded to two new locations (new to me atleast).

On Tuesday we returned to Amaral, the school that the majority of our programs we run at the past month. We went late around 6:00 or 7:00 to talk to the teenagers there about our program and build some hype. We walked around to each classroom and did a small 5 to 10 talk about who we were and what our program was about. I almost got up the nerve to talk to one of the classes in portuguese, but I backed out shortly before. One of the classes we walked past was the english class. I got really excited, I was gonna first talk to the class totally in english and then in portuguese, but much to my disappointment, the english class was not meeting during the time we were there. 

The school system here is really interesting. From what I can gather school is no longer mandatory after age 15 which also happens to be the age that kids can start working. Because poverty is a major issue here in Brazil almost all the kids that can work start work as soon as they are able. This is partly to help support their family and partly to fill their own material teenage desires. In many ways they are exactly like teens in America, material status symbols are some of the most important things on their lists (iPhones, Nikes, Video games, trendy cloths). However, to get back on topic, The schools have extended hours so that the kids can go to school. Teens mostly work during the day and then go to school at night. 

Wednesday we went to the other side of the city and into my first Favela. It took three different long rides on the subway to get to the other side of the city. When we finally arrived at the neighborhood I was amazed at how different it was from my neighborhood in Butantan. Butantan feels like a hip sort of artists district. rundown but not scary rundown. this new area was like something out of a market street in singapore. The streets were lined with street vendors with food carts and counterfeits. the air smelled unreal a mixture of sweet corn, and greasy grilled meat, and rain, and oil and a little bit of sewer. We walked for a few minutes and then went over a huge bridge over the rail way and then bam we were in a favela, my first favela. This was an unreal moment for me. I was a little uncomfortable though I never let that show. all my previous context for a favela was through media depictions of it. A place of extreme and constant violence, and gut wrenching poverty. I was trying to experience the favela without my previous bias but it was difficult. However, we made our way to the school without any problems. at the school before we did our presentation I had some time to reflect on the experience. Being at the school and seeing the kids who live their lives helped me to humanize the favela. It was a place where poverty is a real problem. People are smashed up next to each other, and at times it feels like there isn't room to breath. It is not a totally happy place, but it is a place that is human. The people want to improve their lives, they are good people. 

I feel less afraid of favelas now. I am still weary of them. I stand out in the favelas with my long blonde hair and blue eyes and stuttering portuguese (I stutter my portuguese when I am nervous). they can clearly tell that I am not from there. I have no intention of ever entering a favela alone, but I do have a different opinion of them. 

Thursday was uneventful, I did homework and then skyped with my parent for two hours. 

Friday, I had another crash course in poor parts of the city. First we went to our third school, which is also located on the outskirts of a favela. The favelas in Sao Paulo are different from other favelas in Brazil. The favelas in other cities are easy to see they have distinct geographical designations. In Sao Paulo it is different the favelas sort of sneak up on you. we were driving down a big street filled with big expensive houses we took two or three turns and then, bam, we were driving through a favela. the meeting at the school went well. and after that we went to the center of the city to buy some dry goods for the expedition at the end of the month. 

we went to a market industrial center near the center of the city. the streets were lined with really old looking apartments with antique facades, and beneath them were trucks loaded with sacks of food. SACKS OF FOOD like trucks loaded with ten pound bags of rice, and kernel corn,and onions, and god knows what else. It was a bulk whole food persons dream, I was in love. we went to this little hole in the wall store and bought most of our food. they had logs of cheese tied in twine hanging from the ceiling, and wheels of parmesan that weighed 20 kilos. the had rice in 5 kilo sacs (which is a lot of rice, I kilo is a meal for 12 people), and sacs of dried beans, and fruit and nuts of every flavor. they had boxes the size of milk crates filled with every kind of spice. Employees were walking into the store with hand truck loaded with brown sacs of food. The store smelled like a mixture of bleach, and a farmers market. we filled 5 shopping cart with food. and then loaded the food into boxes and onto a massive hand truck to carry it all to our car. We got back to the house late and after unloading the food  I promptly went to bed. 

Saturday was the most amazing day of my adventure so far. late Saturday afternoon I went to a boy scout fundraiser/german Brazilian heritage festival. The Festival was fun, with lots of good greasy german and brazilian food. Brazil is also currently hosting the federation cup games and I got to watch Brazil whoop Japans butt with a 3 to nothing game. I met several cool people including what I can only assume is the only other person living in Brazil with blond hair and blue eyes. 

But the real story of Saturday was that I got to the festival via MOTORCYCLE. I did not drive the motorcycle I only rode but it was thrilling. Motorcyclists in Sao Paulo are really aggressive drivers. They drive in between the lanes and parked cars weaving in and out of traffic. Traffic in Brazil is super aggressive to begin with, I think that the bikes are even more aggressive, and I think they are safer because of it. people watch out for the bikes they give them a wide birth. 

The Festival was a good distance aways from my house so we had to take the highway to get there. I was unaware of this until we got on the entrance ramp for the highway. I saw the person driving the motorcycle pull down his visor and quickly make the sign of the cross across his chest, before we entered the highway, and all I could think was "damn right, you just made the sign of the crucifix, and at least if we crash I won't feel much". We made it to the party without a problem and I entered the party so hopped up on adrenaline that I could barely remember my name or stand straight.  The trip back was equally successful and also at night which made everything ten times cooler. Somewhere along the ride to and from the festival I realized that I have the ultimate summer experience trump card. And more importantly people couldn't even hate me for it because my trip is all about self improvement, and helping those less fortunate. I realized that I win at summer.

I had several important realization this week. However the most important epiphany was that I am forever ruined for coffee. Coffee is a birthright in brazil. Everywhere we go we are offered coffee. At every meeting at every school the directors have had coffee sitting in a thermes with little cups. I ate coffee beans right off a tree during my canoe trip. Coffee is available at any time of the day. Brazilians like their coffee hot, strong and sweet. they don't dress it up with cream or sugar or water it down. The generic coffee you can buy in the store would make your local hipster, hippie, hemp wearing coffee shop weep tears of blood and envy. It is the kind of coffee that will wake you up and move your bowels after the first sip.

I am a self proclaimed tea snob, but I will be purchasing several bricks of coffee to take back home with me, some will be gifts for close friends and family and the rest will be jealously guarded like Smog the dragon guard his glittery things or golem guards the ring. 

Week four: the first month

Hide and Seek is a beautiful, metaphorical exercise in the decline of creativity and attention span in millennial youth. That is just a taste of what you get when you mix recreation studies and philosophy. I am considering turning it into a thesis. This week was really slow. It was the post expedition week. It was spent debriefing, mailing letters from solo reflection and cleaning gear. I know that sounds like a ton of work but in reality it was not. mostly just letting the washing machine do all the work while I watched youtube and did internship homework. However, I must give props to the washing machine, this week. it is definitely the unsung hero of the trip the amount of pee it has washed out of the loaned cloths is surprising. Especially since the participants were ages 15 and up.

The days of this week really just blurred together. Nothing exciting happened until the weekend (another possible thesis paper). Saturday we took a late start, meaning we slept past breakfast and almost past lunch. Then took the subway to Paulista Avenue. Paulista Avenue is like wall street in New York. It is where all the super commerce happens it is the business center of the city. The street is massive, extending for several miles or in the metric system hundreds of kilometers. My roommate showed me around the city. We visited the  public square under the museum of Brazil where every sunday they have a massive artist market. It was saturday so the square mostly consisted of pigeons, the local hoodlums, ne'er do wells, and homeless, but it was still really cool to see.

Then we went to the city park. much like Central Park in New York this was a park filled with what used to be Sao Paulo before it paved over everything. this was pretty cool. I especially liked it because some of the trees had name cards. This was great so I could now identify and butcher the names of trees that were once totally foreign to me. I took a ton of pictures. we walked around the park for a while. on one particular section of the loop we were walking I saw close to six or seven gay couples cuddling making out and generally PDAing on benches. At first I was shocked and a little surprised. when I got back to my computer I did a little research. As of May of 2013 Brazil legalized marriage among same sex couples. About 8% of the population of Sao Paulo are self identified along the LGBT spectrum. Also the Sao Paulo pride parade would happen on that very same avenue that Sunday. I was a little thrown back. I had expected Brazil to be far more conservative, I was honestly a little embarrassed to be from the USA where LGBT rights are still an issue.

We also visited the Olympic museum. that was really cool getting to see the history of the summer games. Many a picture was taken, and an information sign read. However, the most exciting news was that Rio will be hosting the 2016 summer olympic games. I finally had an excuse to take my family to Brazil we would go to the olympic games (hint hint). My mom had been not so subtly telling me that it was her expectation that I would be taking the family back to Brazil in the future. It was good to finally have that whole issue figured out.

Later that night we took the subway to a friend of my roommate's house for a little get together. They live in a really cool neighborhood. The area originally was almost exclusively industrial, filled with warehouses and factories, and had long since been run down. Now it is being redeveloped into a residential neighborhood. Tons of super nice apartments and condos are being built in the area. Their house (because I'm not sure if it was a condo or apartment but it was a house in the sky), was really nice. they lived on the tenth floor and had a balcony that had a charcoal grill built into the wall. Their house was really nice by both Brazilian and American standards. We ate a ridiculous amount of cheese and meat, drank some beer. I tried to explain to them about the beer culture in the Southern Appalachians and failed. I listened to them talk about Brazilian football (soccer) and I tried to explain American football. I answered the standard why are you here questions, and mostly just took it all in. Sunday was one of my many moments of awe inspiring clarity. Where I realize just how amazing what I am doing is, and just how profound of an adventure I have, and most importantly i was already a third of the way through this adventure.

I sort of expected to have already formed some bits of life changing wisdom when I hit the one month milestone. However, I don't really have much aside from that gem about hide and seek. However, I have officially raised my language level from limited to functional. I realized that I am now one of those people who speaks another language. Not just in the, I had four years of spanish in high school since, but in the I communicate with people in a language that is not my native tongue, profound stomach dropping kind of sense. Thankfully I have a regular conjugation, gender, pronunciation, or vocabulary fuck up to keep my ego in check. now I can officially tell other people that I speak portuguese without that feeling just a little bit like lying in the back of my mind. I would still say I am far from fluent, but, each day I get better.

This week was a great time for me to stop and do some reflection on this grand adventure I am undertaking. I feel truly and profoundly blessed, by whatever celestial thing you choose to name. I am doing something that not many americans or Brazilians will ever get to do in their lives. I get to live in another country, not just be a tourist in it but truly live in Brazil and see the quiet details that get run over on a tourbus. I get to work in environments that most people will only ever see through a magic TV box with some british voice from the sky narrating. I get to work with kids who are living lives of intense poverty, and give them an experience that most people in America and Brazil will never get to experience.

And when I come back to School I will have the ultimate summer experience trump card. My life is booming, crashing, thunder.

Week Three

I lost my head lamp. If anyone is in the Paraibuna lake region on a small nameless island a few kilometers past the boat launch of the local resort, and happen to come across a L.L. Bean headlamp, buried in the fallen, third generation eucalyptus leaves, please send it back to me. I miss it dearly.

This past week (actually nine days), I spent working my first trip with Outward Bound Brazil. It was a flat water canoeing trip at the magic lake of magic mentioned in a previous post. For those of you who may not know, it is winter here in Brazil. Winter in brazil is very similar to winter in the Appalachian mountains. mostly a grey, bleak, lifeless, cold, landscape that is best placed in the words of old dead poets. It is a time of sad december smiles filled with a longing for the sun and the return of the feeling of soft grass on callused feet, and warm sun on resting backs. For those of you who don't believe me I have pictures to show as proof.

Like I said it is bleak here. The temperatures are brutal with the low dipping into the 50s at night and the highs soaring to a sweltering 75 or 80 during the day.The rain is constant, I find myself longing for sunshine. The figs and rambutan have not yet ripened and the guava and cashew trees have yet to produce fruit, only flowers. I fear that the lack of beauty in this place may lead me to an early grave.