As the semester is winding down to an extremely bittersweet close, I think I would like to reflect on some of the randoms of life in Brazil that I had forgotten to include in previous entries and a look back at some of the challenges I thought I was going to have but that turned out to be exceedingly simple…
Deus `e fiel bumperstickers:
This means, “God is faith” by the way for those of you who didn’t pick it up. We all know for the most part that Brazil is an EXTREMELY religious country, mostly catholic but this is rapidly being replaced by evangelisists, which usually would make me run far far far far away, but then I realized the tackiness of it all. I mean those bumper stickers are EVERYWHERE, on the backs of public busses, every car, house, restaurant, kombi, moto, stop sign…seriously. Everywhere. And it’s not just bumper stickers, people paint the saying on sidewalks in front of their houses, on the top of their guarana stands, and they tattoo it on the small of their back to show off when they go clubbing until 5am. These people aren’t really all that conservative, they love to show off how much they love God and they’ll even show up at church at 8am on a Sunday after being out until 7 but they don’t personally push their religion on you. At first I was little apprehensive when I found out my family was Catholic and went to church every Saturday evening. I mean I know I said I would go to church with them out of respect, but in my mind I knew there was only so much I could take. Turns out my sister and oldest brother aren’t all that keen on church either; the first Saturday my host mom took my little brother and host father to church she gave me the option of going but said that the rest of the family wasn’t going so it was up to me. I politely passed on the option of going and she never asked me again. However, she has a little shrine to Jesus in the corner of the living room and every morning there is a pastor…minister…priest? someone on TV singing about God and Jesus and all their glory. I tune it out. She tells me how beautiful her church is when we pass it, and it is. I respect her and her religion and am SO thankful she doesn’t force me to participate. Occasionally I run into the extremely devout and have accidentally laughed at the question of me being an evangelisist…and by occasionally I mean once…and then realized the person asking was actually a priest. OPA.
Out and About
This does not refer to a little Saturday afternoon shopping or a quick pop in to the pub for a beer, no this refers to Brazilians NEED to show as much skin as possible at pretty much all times of the day. Now I know you’re thinking, well but it’s super QUENTE e UMIDO all the time and I will give you that, being outside for more than 10 minutes and I look like a table from one of those Pledge commercials but sometimes it’s just unnecessary and very difficult to take people seriously when (especially men) are standing there talking to you with their giant bellies out for the world to see. Okay, yes I know I’m clearly an awful person and sometimes it does work to my advantage and I get a beautiful man with a 9-pack passing by but usually that’s not the case. This goes for women too, I’ve seen them on busses in bikinis. And let me clarify, while I do think it’s an oddity of society here I’m trying not to hate too much. I just think it’s hilarious because most people in the U.S. would react exactly as I am, possibly more so. Just as a semi-related side note, they call some of their bikinis here dental floss…I’m not kidding.
Speakers on cars
It is socially acceptable here to take gigantic speakers, put them on top of your car, turn the volume up to 100, and play the most OBNOXIOUS music you will ever have the great pleasure of hearing. There are two types of this particularly delightful music: techno brega → think the chipmunks’ meets all those really annoying pop songs you hate to listen to and then translate it into Portuguese and BOOM you have brega. For some reason, people like it here; after hearing it played every Sunday from 8am to 11pm at the bar by my house, I have a slightly different opinion. But even brega can be tolerable in small doses compared to this really awful music (that doesn’t have a name) where men think it’s necessary to explain what the music is about in really loud voices that makes it impossible to hear the actual music. When I asked someone what the point of this music was it was explained to me sarcastically as: “well they obviously have to explain what the girl is singing about…claro.”
Every woman here wears heels 24/7
I thought it was the weirdest thing when I got off the plane in Brazil for the first time and all the women were dressed up and wearing heels…for travel. I still don’t understand why they do this, but it’s definitely a common cultural thing. So I foolishly thought that maybe this was just a travel and special occasion thing but no everyday, all day the majority of Brazilians wear heels. Meanwhile, my birks were starting to wear down after literally wearing them everyday of this program because they looked better with all my outfits than my flip-flops, sneakers, wet water hiking shoe type things, or hiking boots; while in the field these were fine and no one cared but it was difficult going out and avoiding being stared at for not having shoes that I couldn’t walk in if I tried. But once people found out I was American/a bunch of us found this awesome reggae bar where everyone there might as well be American it was totally fine. For awhile there though, I was struggling a little.
Being a vegetarian in Brazil…
Was surprisingly easy. I mean people thought I was strange but there are so many fruits and vegetables here and they’re CHEAP. I probably ate way more bread, rice, and doces than I should have but whatever that’s why they invented exercise. I did get sick a few times here but I don’t think it’s from accidentally eating meat, just bad water, which by the end my stomach could kind of take…kind of. I learned to live off agua de coco and guarana smoothies (which I really don’t know how I’m going to survive without them now, let me explain: it’s basically like a pb and banana shake only 10X better. Instead of peanut butter they use brazil nuts, condor eggs [yes real condor eggs shells and all], avocado, guarana extract [the stuff they put in red bull…which I know is gross but they don’t add any extra caffeine like they do in red bull], sugar, leche em po [powdered milk], bananas, and probably some other stuff that just makes it taste AMAZING [I’m realizing that this probably all sounds disgusting to Americans but I promise it’s good…really.]) Even going to the rural homestays wasn’t too bad, the first one I ate a lot of pasta and beans and rice and the second one my host mom made me the most delicious eggs com veduras (green leafy veggies) EVER. I probably didn’t always have the most balanced diet but I’m headed home now (will probably be home by the time this is posted) and therefore can fix it easily (I will definitely be adding more avocado to my diet though).
Getting robbed
Now I’m gonna knock on wood here because I’m technically still in Brazil as I’m typing this…but I’m in the Sao Paulo airport with a bunch of rich Brazilians going to New York on holiday so I’m not THAT worried, but so far as I know I survived my entire trip in Brazil without getting robbed. Part of this is because I kinda do look hella Brazilian but really it’s just because everyone here put the fear of God in me. I was not to walk alone anywhere at night past 6pm (which I kind of did once…opa, but it was fine), taking busses past 8pm was out of the question (okay kinda broke this one too), walking around ver-o-peso (think HUGE farmers market everyday) after dark was also highly discouraged (oops) but I only ran once with my ipod….okay maybe it is because I look hella Brazilian. But ANYWAY I think I was one of maybe 3 or 4 people out of 23 students who didn’t get something stolen…however I managed to lose 7 pairs of good underwear due to a huge storm, on a boat; left an umbrella at a bar; donated my smelly but still functional towel to the MST (the landless peoples movement); lost/broke 3 pairs of sunglasses; had some andiroba seeds confiscated from her check bag at the airport…and I mean there are probably things I can’t even remember right now that I’ve lost. The point is, I might be good at avoiding having things getting stolen but I can’t keep track of all my material possessions if my life depended on it (that’s a problem).
The serious stuff
Now all kidding aside, this trip to Brazil has definitely changed me a lot, something I have realized especially during the 10 hour flight from Sao Paulo to NYC where I was sitting next to an extremely wealthy woman in her mid to late 30s from the South of Brazil (essentially where the majority of wealth in the country is concentrated). And she was nice enough, extremely glamorous and on her way to nyc for 5 days just because. She knew 5 different languages and had essentially travelled everywhere on the planet minus Asia, she had a PhD and worked as a clinical nutritionist, definitely someone who had her life together. However, when I told her about how I had just spent 4 months in Amazonia, her first comment was how crazy I was because everyone there is poor and there aren’t any modern conveniences (WRONG) but her second comment was about how she guessed it was good because I was the future, she then went on to talk about how difficult her life was because she didn’t know where to find all the things in nyc that she wanted to buy before she got back… I couldn’t handle it. I smiled and made polite conversation for as long as I could but she kept sneaking in things about how un-modern Amazonia was and I seriously wanted to scream. How can you not know about what’s going on in your OWN COUNTRY?! But then I thought…wow there are so many things I have no idea about in the US. I’m so concerned with international problems that I get completely blindsided by all the issues going on in my home turf. I complain when the internet is being slow, when my phone isn’t working, when my computer is broken for some reason, I have way more clothes than I can keep track of (read previous paragraph) and there are people in West VA who are dying of cancer because of mountain-top removal mining. I hear about these things and I do care but I’ve never taken the opportunity to actually fully check them out. I worry about the little things that don’t actually really matter because it’s easy and I worry about the issues of worldly importance because it seems like the right thing to do and it’s so incredibly publicized that it’s hard not to, but I don’t see the things in-between. This blog entry is probably going to be continued later because A: I board soonish and B and I still haven’t processed all that I want to say
Sooo
TCHAU
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