one month later

All right, how about a update?

School's been going really well. I like my classes and I think I'm kind of slowly making friends in a couple. The language barrier on top of my natural shyness is kind of a pain. Brandon and I got invited to a party last night, so we're making progress. We went for like a half hour and then left because I'm whiny and was tired and it was like 2am. Whine whine whine.

Things that are different about Brazil
a list
1. Food. Brazilians use actual food when they make meals. It's really rare to find pre-packaged stuff. For example, most people just stick fruit in a blender to make fruit. I haven't seen a single can of frozen concentrate. The entire country is overflowing with fresh fruit. They also put salt on goddamn everything. Like salad. On one hand I'm always surprised by how well people eat here, and on the other hand I feel like I'm in a big extended Wisconsin when I watch street vendors deep-fry cheese and plaster it in salt.

2. Course content. I'm really impressed by art courses here. There's a lot of theory and art history. There are a lot of courses on bizarre things (American B movies!), and there's an entire major of combined theatre/performance art.

3. The courses themselves. Generally the PUC students are really bright and able to have pretty impressive conversations on theory. In my Art and Technology course, we've spent the last three classes discussing exactly what technology is. In classes at UWM, sometimes a teacher will trot out the good old “What is art?” and then we have to sit around awkwardly while everyone tries to think of something to say and no one talks for 15 minutes. It seems that people care a lot more here, and are willing to think and say potentially strange things instead of just sitting on them and wasting class time.
However, there's always a group of people in the back talking. Not whispering, just talking in normal voices. They also use their cell phones, mess around on the internet, or wander out into the hall to say hi to friends. I am so confused. The professors don't usually say anything unless they get so loud that the rest of the class, sitting at the front, can't hear. It's still really distracting.

4. Beer. I can actually drink it.

5. Personal contact. I'm going to tell a story about class now, but it's important that you understand the particular class. It's in the Artes do Corpo thing I mentioned above, the combination theatre/performance art program. People in Artes do Corpo are clearly bizarre. I am also generally bizarre, so I don't mind. The particular class is called “The Fragmented Body.” It's for seniors. Every class we do a physical activity and then talk about everyone's senior projects. Eventually I'm told we'll talk about the reading assignments, but I guess I'm content to wait. The physical activities are usually completely bizarre but relatively harmless. Yesterday was still realtively harmless, I guess, but it took bizarre to a new level. The class sat on either side of a long tube of fabric. One person would get inside the tube of fabric and crawl all the way to the other end. While they crawled, there rest of the class would do things like lay under the tube to create obstacles, lay on the person while they tried to crawl, bite them through the fabric, and make bizarre animal noises. I kind of gingerly poked people in the legs. This isn't an entirely normal level of contact, but it's an exception, not the rule, to feel uncomfortable participating.
Brazilians do that cheek kiss thing to say hello. It took me a while to get used to that. I came in expecting it, but it was still pretty weird. Paulo and Claus keep making fun of me because (they're assholes. hi guys!) I'm really awkward about touching people or people touching me. I've been thinking about it a lot. I don't think it'd ever be normal to kiss people hello in the US, but there is a certain level of comfort you get to with family, really close friends, and significant others/people you're trying to hit on. That last part is especially problematic because everyone touches so freely here you can get really confused if you're equating touch with interest. I have an awful time reading body language in the States, so you can imagine here I'm even worse. I asked Paulo and Claus how you know if someone's hitting on you, and they said oh, it's easy, they touch you more often. Oh really.

6. Art. I saw a couple gigantic canvases, like 4'x4' squares, going for $300 reais. That's $150. What.

7. More food. Everyone is incessantly trying to feed me. Everyone. All the time. My host mom, Paulo, Claus, random people working in bakeries, Brandon when he wants to be irritating. Everyone. Everyone.

8. Books. They are expensive! I haven't found one for under $30 reais yet.

That's the end of that for now. I will now post pictures.

Here are some buildings Brandon and I walked by when we were exploring a couple weeks ago. During Carnaval, I think? Maybe? Anyway we went to a really cool art/cultural center and couldn't take pictures inside.
Greek Orthodox church, I think Brandon said:

Giant decrepit (or maybe in construction?) building!


Here's two shots of the Cinemateca, which is where we kept going to see the wacky French films. And Cassey Jones! I want to go back and get better shots.
Blurry, I'm sorry.

Brandon looking artistic:


This is a church on the way to the Cinemateca.





These are some street performers on Avenida Paulista one Sunday:


This is a hole in the sidwalk that looks like Minnesota:


This is Paulo, Brandon, and Claus, walking for an eternity while Paulo tried to figure out how to get to a neat art store he wanted me to see. It was closed when we got there.


Two weekends ago or something Brandon, Sarah (another girl from CIEE) and I went to Brandon's host mom's sister's house in the mountains. Here is the house:

What is going on here?

This is my sweet revenge. Sarah took a million pictures of me sleeping. She also put hamsters on me.



This is me and the roses that Fred sent for Valentine's day. <3 src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/Phyresis/Brazil/roses3.jpg">


Last night Paulo took Brandon and me to a restaurant called Tamake and Roll, an all you can eat sushi place. We went for sushi but also to see the sitar concert. We met up with two of Paulo's drawing students there. The sitar player was insane. He supposedly speaks 7 languages and has lived all over the place. Including Illinois. What.
PICTURES!

Brandon, Paulo's arm:


Brandon attacking Paulo:


Paulo likes sticking his arms in my shots. This is Luis, one of Paulo's students. Luis looks exactly like a pirate.


See?


Paulo's other student and Luis's brother, Ricardo. Ricardo is only 15 and he's like a foot taller than me. That needs to stop.


Sitar guy setting up.


Paulo stole my camera.


This is me getting my first glance at the sitar. It's seriously the coolest looking instrument ever. Luis kept saying it looked like something out of a sci-fi novel, and it really does.


We ate all of this, after two tamake and like eighteen hundred beers:


Sitar guy!


Sitar guy again!


And...again!


Now that you have a good idea what he looks like, I want you to pretend that he is in almost complete dark and also rotated 90 degrees to the left. Have you done it? Ok, now you can maybe sort of kind of see what's going on in this movie except you really, really can't. You can hear him, though!

He was seriously awesome. Later in the night he started really rocking out while he played. He played a mix of rock and roll and traditional Brazilian songs. At one point he started playing something everyone knew and started giggling at, and Paulo explained it was a sort of Brazilian Freebird. Fair enough!

I hope that's enough for now. I'll try to keep on top of things in the future.