As some of you know, I applied for a web design position at Hartshorn Health Services on campus.  I first sent them an email a few weeks ago, then sent in my resume, then last Friday I did an interview via Skype.  After waiting all weekend, I receieved an email today saying that I got the job!

Anyway, I’ll be working a full 40 hour week during the summer.  I keep telling myself that it will be worth it when I actually have some money saved come fall.

Speaking of web design, I also had the opportunity to very briefly speak with Jeffrey Zeldman on facebook chat today.  Whoa.

A common sight walking through Liberdade. There were hardly any signs in Portuguese.

On Saturday Alisha, Carol and I took a bus to Liberdade (Liberty), the Asian neighborhood of Sao Paulo.  ’Taking a bus’ would actually be understating it, as we first went to Itu and then came back to Salto when we found out that Lai Wei had come to Salto and had already taken an earlier bus to the city.  When we arrived in Barra Funda Terminal, we found Lai Wei was patiently waiting for us there, even though he had already taken the train to Liberdade.  From the terminal we took the metro to Se, transferred once, and emerged wide-eyed on the other side of the world.

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[NOTE: This is a photo heavy post, which means that it may take an obscenely long time to load on slow connections.]

I realize it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated my blog, so once again I’m going to compile the last few months into a single giant post.

Click on any of the images to see a larger version.

For Easter I decided to go to take a bus to Itu to see the Judas festival. Every year on Easter there is an enormous street festival where a (fake) Judas is literally hung from a pole and exploded.

Unfortunately there was no better vantage point to get a better photo of the explosions

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The last week has been more or less uneventful since my host mother is travelling (I believe she’s visiting her parents). Without her, we don’t cook meals (although I’ve discovered a new continent of delivery–everything from yakisoba to esfihas) and there is NOTHING to say. When I leave the house, I tell my host father “I’m goin’ out…” to which he predictably responds “mm-hmm.” The only thing missing is a rocking chair and a corn cob pipe.

I have been using my time constructively though, mostly reading and studying web programming. I can almost code in javascript now. I’ve also been walking around town a lot, finding new areas that I haven’t been to before. I always forget to carry my camera, so I haven’t taken many photos in a while.

I went to hang out with Alisha last night and we ended up at her house. It turns out that her host father is an avid SCUBA diver and has a friend who owns a dive school near here. He even has all his own equipment and said that he’d let me go for a dive in his pool some time. We’re going to talk to his friend in Itu who owns the dive school, and I’m going to take the course to get certified. Hopefully, my dad and I can go on a dive trip when he comes to visit in June…

If you’ve ever read On the Road by Kerouac, then you’ll recognize my allusion to one of the characters.  In the story there is a character who always moves to new places looking for inspiration for his poetry, but ends up getting bored at every turn when he realizes that the novelty of his new environment can’t last forever.  In despair, he declares “Damn these Denver Doldrums!”, the same line he had written in Dakar before.  The point I’m trying to make is that the novelty of a new place can’t last forever, and that’s where I’m at right now.

I’m not miserable, but it seems like there is more and more ‘down time’ now where there’s not a whole lot to do.  I have started to take the dog for a walk every day, which is actually pretty nice.  We go to the park by the waterfall and I can let her off of the leash there without problems, although I’m always a little nervous that she’s going to jump on someone or try to get away, even though she never does.

Walking all the time has been really good for me; I’ve lost over 10 kilos (22 lbs).  I’m going to start going to the gym as well when I get back from Blumenau next week.  Hopefully I can drop another five or ten kilos by the time I go home.

I went back to Sao Paulo with Alisha on Wednesday.  Enio and Alisha and I walked all all around Avenida 25 de Marco, which is more commonly referred to as just 25, pronounced “veenchy-sinko”.  No one ever says that they’re going to Avenida 25 de Marco, they say just that they are going to 25.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much happening in one place in my life, even though we were there on what was considered a very light day.  On top of the normal traffic and the stores there are people selling things on tarps and cardboard boxes on the street.  The most interesting thing to watch was when the police drove down the street.  Just like any Brazilian crime film, someone yelled “Policia!” and within seconds everyone was gone.  All of the street vendors disappeared.

Later, in a nearby area known for selling electronics, we came across dozens of guys selling pirated games and software.  I bought a copy of Photoshop CS4 for only R$8, about $3 and some change.  I saw copies of Sonar 7, SQL 2008, Visual Studio, Vegas Pro 2008, 3ds Max, and thousands of dollars worth of other assorted disks.  All for $3.

Day 1: Salto to Sao Paulo

I don’t think I finished packing my bags until the morning before.  I had lunch with family and then mae and Giu and I all went to the bus stop together.  I told them I was nervous about the trip, that I was afraid I would hate being on a bus for a month, but they told me that I shouldn’t worry, that it was going to be a lot of fun.  The bus trip went well–there were no problems at all and I was completely on time.  When I got to Barrafunda terminal in Sao Paulo, there was a girl from Belo waiting for me.  About an hour later, another exchange student from New York state arrived, and we discovered that both of our birthdays were January 12th.

We took a taxi to the hotel from the terminal and immediately met up with a few other exchangers there.  Among them was Max, Kristi, Greta, Wei, Lise, Doris, Sorin, Francois, Claire and Kristina.  We all went to a little cafe across the street from the hotel to buy snacks.  When we got back to the hotel, almost everyone went to one room to talk and play cards.  By the end of the night we were all good friends and that group comprised the core of the rest of the trip.

Day 2: Sao Paulo to Brasilia

We woke up at about 6:45 to eat breakfast and get on the bus.  A few other people met us there at the hotel and we got on the bus.  The drive to Brasilia was probably the best of the trip–there were only about 15 of us, so we all had 2 seats to ourselves and it was easy to be in any conversation.  The countryside in Sao Paulo is also one of the most beautiful in the world, so we had a good ride all the way there.

We finally arrived in Brasilia at night time, and met up with the second group of exchangers.  Among them was Will who lives in Florida but used to live in Colorado and visits there every year.  We talked about skiing and snowboarding for a while, and then ordered a pizza at the hotel.

My roommates that night were Francois and a Mexican that I won’t name because he was so drunk he could hardly stand up.  The whole night he kept asking ‘you’re from Vegas, right?’, and every time he said it I would laugh and say ‘no man, I’m from Colorado.  Still from Colorado.’  Before we all went to bed, he asked me if I knew where to find crack, to which I told him to go to sleep.  I think I woke up around 4 in the morning, because I saw him half on the floor and half on the bed listening to his iPod and smoking a cigarette, still partially wrapped in the bed sheets.

Day 3: Brasilia

We took a city tour of Brasilia, which is the capital of the country.  Being entirely planned out and built in the sixties, there really wasn’t much in terms of fascinating history or old buildings.  There were quite a few buildings that were meant to look ‘futuristic’ in the sixties, which by today’s standards looks quite dated.

We went to a large catholic church in a bizarre dome-ish building that had winged saints hanging from the ceiling like Christmas decorations.  We went to the national congress building–the interior of which more closely resembled a cave because of it’s dark, non-direct lighting.  There we were able to mail post cards for free and there were little comic books about corruption that they handed out to everyone.  I still haven’t read it, but I can only imagine that it’s hilarious.

Next we went to a church-temple-stupa-synagogue-mosque-peace bubble of all faiths, which could only be described as bizarre.  There was a big spiral in the middle where everyone walked around to the center, and then back out to the outer rings.  I have never in my life walked so far in such a small room–it was only the size of a small gymnasium, if not smaller.  We probably spent 25 minutes walking around in circles, waiting for everyone to finish.  Next, we went to the portrait room, which had drawings of famous people throughout history.  There was a drawing of the pope next to Gandhi, and one of Martin Luther adjacent Karl Marx.  We enjoyed the irony.

After that we went to the presidents house, which is almost to insignificant to mention.  We stood in front of the moat for five minutes and looked at a relatively normal house, save for guards walking on the roof.

I don’t recall what we did for the rest of that day, so it must not have been very exciting.  I believe we all went to dinner at a pizzaria and then went to the supermarket to buy some snacks for the road.

Day 4: Brasilia to Lencois

The trip to Lencois was really nice as well–we passed through all different types of terrain–dessert areas into grasslands and then into mountains when we got to Lencois.  I took some of the best photos of the trip on this day.  We saw a tour bus that was completely burnt out, deserted houses and gas stations, women dressed all in red doing their laundry in a ditch and one of the most incredible sunsets I’ve ever witnessed.

We didn’t get to Lencois until very late, and once there we had to take a different bus as our colossal tour bus wouldn’t fit through the narrow streets and steep dirt roads.  We stayed in a pousada, which is more or less the Brazilian version of a KOA, but with nicer houses in stead of cabins.  Here I roomed with Chung Chih-Ti, Chung Wei and Sorin.

Day 5: Lencois

We all took a hike to a river a few miles from the hotel.  There was a small ‘convenience store’ along the trail, which means a stick hut selling coconuts, bottled water, beer and Coca-Cola.  I stopped to buy a coconut, which the seller hacked open with a machete.

The river was incredible–there was a large rock waterfall, and a deep swimming hole (about 7m) with water that was blood red.  I tried opening my eyes one meter below the surface and there was nothing but total darkness.  No light at all, unless you looked straight towards the sun.

There at the river we bought kebabs and toasted cheese for lunch, which cost R$2 each, or about 80 cents.

After that everyone walked back to the city, and we all went into town to explore the shops.  The city of Lencois looks completely European, with old stone buildings and plaster construction.  We wandered around a bit before going back to the hotel.

Day 6: Lencois

I woke up late to go to breakfast, so I had to eat quickly before leaving for the city.  We all walked around for a bit before walking up a trail in the hills near the city.  We visited a series of caves with really interesting rocks and sands, and I took a bunch of cool photos there.

Walking down, we all stopped at a spot in the river to swim, but I stayed out to watch listen to the man playing the capoeira bow instrument thing that I never learned the name of.  It looks kind of like a bow strung with wire, and has a hollow gourd attached to the bottom to resonate the sound.  The player can move the gourd towards or away from their belly to change the sound.  In stead of plucking the string, it’s hit with a small stick that his held in the same hand as a small shaker filled with seeds to create a rhythm.  There is no tune to it, just a twangy tone that is usually accompanied by drums.  The player also sings while using this instrument.  The songs are always simple tunes with a one or two word refrain that the whole audience chants.  The lyrics are in many ways closer to slam poetry than any kind of traditional songwriting style.

That night we all went to an open air market in the city to buy souvenirs and explore more.  Claire and I went to some art shops in the upper part of the city, and then we met everyone to eat acai close to the market.  We also found an outdoors store that sold food really cheaply.

Day 7: Lencois

We all went to a more remote area to swim in the river again.  This place had some higher cliffs to jump off, although “higher” in this context is only about 4 meters.  There were also monkeys running around here eating cornbread that the nearby restaurant put out.  The water here was the same color of blood red, but we spent quite a bit more time here than in the other river.

After swimming we drove for a bit and then took a hike up onto one of the plateaus.  The view from the top was incredible–I had a friend of mine take my picture while I held the Colorado flag.

Day 8: Lencois to Salvador

The bus ride to Salvador had nice scenery, but was pretty long at about 12 hours.  We finally arrived at night, and went to a giant buffet that had nearly every kind of food.  Our hotel there was probably one of the worst of the trip, although it was still relatively nice.  All the rooms smelled like mold and the beds were uncomfortable.  Other than that though, it was nice.  We all played uno and truco in the lobby, and some people actually lifted weights in the exercise room.  A couple of people were caught drinking on the second night there, but no one was sent home.

Day 9: Salvador

Day eight was arguably one of the best days of the trip.  We all went to the Mercado Moderno to buy souvenirs where they were the cheapest, and then we went up into the elevator that connects the lower part of the city to the upper.  It really is incredible to see an elevator being used as one of the principle forms of transportation in a city.  The view was incredible, and I took some really good photos there.

Once we were all in the upper part of the city we walked to a famous church that I forget the name of.  The entire interior of the main cathedral was covered in gold save for the elaborate granite floor and the pews.

After the church we all went to have lunch near the center of the city.  While we were eating, a guy selling necklaces and earrings and other things like that came up to our table and started bother us to buy his junk.  After ten minutes of this, I told him that ‘no one here wants your trash,’ and of course right at that moment Charlene offers to buy something, citing her impressive haggling skills (non-existent).  I never forgave her for this.

After we left the lunch table, I saw a film crew interviewing people in the square, so I walked over to see what was going on.  Sure enough, the man with the microphone motioned to me to come over, and he asked me if I spoke Portuguese.  I responded ‘yeah, more or less,’ and then he pointed the camera in my direction and asked me what I thought ‘Olodum’ meant.  I had no fucking clue, so I tried my best to pull an answer out of thin air.  I told him that I thought it had something to do with drums, and when he asked me why, I just told him that ‘Olodum’ sounds like someone hitting a hand drum.  I even emphatically pretended to play my invisible drum while saying the word ‘Olodum’ over and over again and almost jumping into the air.  I figured that if I was going to answer questions on camera in a language that I only have a precursory grasp of, I might as well go big.  I think the sunglasses I was wearing at the moment made things even better–large white Elvis sunglasses with a black edge and faded lenses.  I later gave them to Claire, quite frankly because I had no idea how to get them back from her after she took them.

Later as we were walking down a small side street we saw someone selling paintings of influential black people through history.  There was Bob Marley and all of the related proponents of the African Zionist movement.  There was Nelson Mandela and MLK.  And in the middle of it all, the largest painting was of Barack Obama standing in front of the White House.  That was the first time in my life I was truly proud to be an American and understood why.

Day 10: Salvador and the Remote Island

We all got onto a small boat that took us an hour and a half off coast to a small, nearly deserted island with an incredible beach.  We stayed there the whole day to swim and play soccer on the beach.

I think this was also the day that everyone discovered the magic mud.  It was just ordinary sedimentary mud from the beach, but apparently it would become a solid if kept in motion and packed.  Like a group of five year olds, we probably spent a good hour playing with the magic mud–we were all completely captivated by it’s properties for some reason.

That night we all went to the Olodum show in the upper part of the city.  Though it’s apparently a long running show in Salvador, the venue was almost completely hidden.  We had to go down a side street only about 3 meters wide to get to the entrance, which was a hallway leading behind some buildings.  Once there though, the crowd was enormous.  I think that about a quarter of the people there were foreigners as well, because we not only encountered another group of Rotary exchange students traveling in the Northeast, but some people actually happened to run into close friends of theirs from their home countries.  Payton ran into one of his best friends from Alaska who just happened to be traveling in Brazil at the moment, and a German named Nick happened to run into his own cousin from Germany who’s also an exchanger.

The show was incredible, with about 30 Brazilian/African percussionists playing at the same time with a DJ to accompany.  They were all dressed in ridiculous 90s era outfits with fluorescent colors and gigantic white sunglasses.  There was even an array of monitors constantly displaying a mix of Obama propaganda and African imagery.

Day 11: Salvador to Recife

A day on the bus, nothing worth mentioning.

Day 12: Recife

On Day 12 we all took a city tour of Recife, which was one of the more interesting of the trip.  We walked around the center of the city for a bit stopping to see a few famous landmarks and buildings.  I won’t even pretend like I was paying attention to the tour guide, so I will invent the history of each landmark that I can remember.  The first thing we were shown was a style of dance that is apparently native to Recife.  This style of dance involves using colorful miniature umbrellas with lots of tassels and bells and cotton balls hanging at the end of colorful strings.  The dance itself has several steps–getting really close to the ground and then jumping up and clicking your heels a lot, and at intervals the addition of several other artistic flourishes that can only be described by words such as ‘fancy’ or ‘dainty’ seemed prudent as well.  I can only imagine that the multicolored umbrella usage and dance originated in what must be the oldest gay pride festival in Brazil, presumably founded by a group of Portuguese Galician speakers in the latter half of the 16th century.  The fact that the traditional male costume for this dance is entirely pink with a floral pattern of some kind only adds to this theory.

After witnessing this dance, we all walked a little further to a large hole in the ground of some manner.  I was not paying enough attention to the tour to even have an idea of why this might be here, so I’m going to assume it was some recent street work gone awry, most likely because the Brazilian labor force typically does not like to take ‘work breaks’ of longer than 15 minutes in between rest breaks, coffee breaks, lunch breaks, afternoon breaks and cigarette breaks.

Next we visited a former prison that had been converted into a market with a shop in each cell.  I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that being incarcerated there would not have been so bad at all.  In the center of it all was a large rotunda with an overlooking iron balcony of beautiful colonial blacksmithing work.  The cells didn’t seen cramped at all; in fact, there was more than enough room in each cell for the stores.  The only thing I bought there was a book of MPB song lyrics from an old scholarly looking guy selling books about music, the arts, history and architecture.  The whole time he kept trying to sell me a book about cathedral architecture in the city.  I would have bought it if it didn’t cost R$60, which was way more than I wanted to pay but the going price for a book like that here in Brazil.

After that we took our bus to a museum a bit outside of town.  I don’t even remember the artist, just that every single painting and statue was a penis.  It was almost laughable, as if the entire thing was one big involved joke that spanned over several decades.  The museum itself, though, was beautiful.  There were large gardens and ponds, and a group of black swans lived there on the grounds.

After the museum we went back into town to visit the old part of the city on the hill.  Unfortunately my camera died so I didn’t get a single photo from this part of the tour.

That night we went to a street festival in town with another group of drummers playing.  This one was much more intense than Olodum.  There were around 50-70 drummers all playing in unison.  Their rhythm sounded more like a tribal war chant than lively street music, and it was unstopping the entire time we were there.  The people that were most engrossed in the music and festivities seemed to be the ones most aware of the true nature of the festival–this was in all ways a party for Dionysus.

Day 13: Recife to Natal

(At this point, my memory of what happened in the middle of the trip is somewhat spotty, and I don’t really feel like detailing every single thing anymore, so I’m just going to write about the really fun stuff).

Indescribable

Jericocara: This was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.  Jericoacoara (Jeri for short) is a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere in the north.  I forget which state exactly.  It was originally a fishing village, but now is purely a tourist town.  It almost seems like sometime in it’s history someone simply forgot to build roads and gates and hundreds of ugly cinder block houses like the rest of Brazil.  The streets are all sand–there’s not even a paved road going into town.  To get there we had to get into another, smaller bus that was capable of driving along the beach, since our hotel on wheels couldn’t make it.  The town itself is situated on the “beach” which is different concept entirely because the difference between high tide and low tide is about one kilometer.  Once you reach the edge of the water itself, you have to walk an additional half kilometer until it’s anything resembling deep enough to swim in.  By the time you reach water that is at chest level, the town is just a sight in the distance.  Because of this, the beach seems absolutely ENORMOUS in all respects.  It seems unearthly.  I and several other people snuck out of the hotel one night to go skinny dipping at that beach, but of course other people found out and within half an hour at least half of the people on the trip were there running along the beach naked as the day they were born.  Because the tide was low, we had to run almost a full kilometer from where we left our clothes in a pile until we reached the water to actually go skinny dipping proper.  When we decided to go back was when we realized that it was going to be a challenge to find the pile of clothes on the unlit beach.  Luckily, I had left my ipod radio blaring the Violent Femmes at full volume.  Had there been enough light to see, I can imagine it would have been a sight watching everyone look for their own underwear and shirts in the pile.

One of the days there we took a short hike to another beach that wasn’t accessible by cars.  I can only say that this is the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen, and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited in the world.  It can’t be described by words.

Itacare: I think this might have been the northernmost place we visited.  Here or Jeri, I can’t remember.  This was a hippie town that had tons of cool shops that sold tie dye and Buddhas and incense.  Almost everything here was written in Portuguese first and Hebrew second.  I lost Sarah’s soccer ball here, and I still feel bad about that.  I lost my wallet here, and it didn’t turn up until I had cancelled my credit card.  It was here that we went to another really beautiful beach that wasn’t accessible by car.

Arraial d’Ajuda/Porto Seguro:  This town was fun, although extremely touristy.  This was another place that had a lot of signs in Hebrew.  The most eventful thing that happened here was when I got a tattoo.  Every single person on the trip (minus the guides) was in on the secret, and everyone stopped in at least once while I was getting it.  It took two hours and felt like a hot knife being pressed into my side, but I got a damn cool tattoo.  It was an original drawing by Ralph Steadman that I had Claire redraw and change somewhat.

Here we met another group that was doing the same trip as us but was a few days ahead.  We went to a party with them at their hotel.

Rio de Janeiro: This too, was one of the most incredible places I’ve ever been.  The city looked as though it had grown like the jungle, naturally filling in the spaces between the giant volcanic towers and climbing up the cliffs wherever possible.  The view from the Surgarloaf and the Christ Redeemer was incredible, and we met tourists and travellers from every part of the world there.  We visited a famous cafe there in the city that was enormous, and had the price to match.  I ordered a cup of coffee and a roll, and I paid over 10 reais.  Someone ordered a milkshake that cost 20 Reais.  I can swear that it was the best thing I have ever tasted.

Somewhere along our tour I found a newsstand on the street that sold old used books.  I bought a copy of Homer’s Odyssey with the kind of ornate gold leaf jackets that you don’t see on books anymore for 10 reais.

The last day was the hardest of the whole trip, it was the day that everyone went home.  I was in the group that had to take the bus to SP, so I had to leave first.  We all at breakfast early and said goodbye, some people were crying.  About 20 of us went on the bus, and then half of those people got off in Taubate.  By the time we got to the city there were seven of us, and we all waited in the airport for a time.  Some people left, and then Andrew, Anabel, Sarah and I took a van to the bus station.  Andrew got off at Tiete, and then Sarah, Anabel and I went to Barrafunda Terminal.  I had to leave first, and I got on the bus.  For the first time in a month, I was alone.  The ride back to Salto was uneventful, but it was raining the whole way.  The trip was over, and I can´t wait to go back.

In 17 days I will be exactly half done, which makes me about 45% done at this point.  I can’t believe how fast this has all gone.

Christmas came early this year–I received a few things in the mail from my parents.  Got an awesome Chrome messenger bag and a few other things, as well as some small gifts for my family.

We’re on summer break right now, which means very little to do until mid February.  My sister and I have been watching Lost for a few days now, from the very beginning.

I have another major trip coming up in January, just one day after my 19th birthday.  I’ll be spending an entire month on a bus traveling the northeast.  Beaches and cities and sand dunes, oh my.

I’m going to try my best to keep a journal during the trip, so I can write about it when I’m done.  Not much going on, I’ve just kinda been sitting around reading.  All of my classes and clubs ended, so there’s no more academy, no more conservatory, no more school and no more rotary.  I’ve been studying a lot of design and typography priniciples to keep me busy.

I just checked, and my flickr account has officially passed the 10,000 views mark.  As of last night, I’m standing at 10,072 views total, over the course of just over one year!  Next goal, 100,000.

After about two years of talking about it and meaning to get around to it, I finally built my art website.  It’s a simple showcase of all my creative endeavors, and features two other incredibly talented artists as well–Nick Hower and Alex Scott.  There isn’t much there now in terms of content, but it’s just a matter of time before it gets a litte more filled out.

Check back frequently, and if you like our work, be sure to share it with others!

www.theindustrial.org

I’ve been working a lot on creating some designs in photoshop and just honing my artistic skill in general. These are some of the best results of my efforts.

7 hours in photoshop

Experimenting with letter forms.

I created this for the "Power to the Poster" project at www.powertotheposter.org

Thanks for looking!

I haven’t updated in forever.  There are a few reasons for this, only one of which is lazyness.  The other is that since I changed families, I’ve been busier communicating with people.  That’s right, I have a family that I can talk to now.

One major thing that I really LOVE about this family is that we actually have breakfast together, every single morning.  There’s a huge pot of fresh coffee, warm milk, hot rolls and fruit to eat, every day of the week.  It actually makes getting out of bed in the morning significantly easier.  In my first house, if I was lucky than no one else would be up.  If I was unlucky my host mother would be up chain smoking, and she’d be upset at me for having to wake up.  The difference is tangible.

The transition was…interesting, to say the least.  I won’t go into the details, except to say that things really didn’t work out in my first home.  I love living here though, and that’s all that matters.  There are two kids, a 17 year old girl and a 25 year old boy with a degree in computer science.  At this point, I’m only speakingPortuguese in the home, which has helped me tremendously.  I had a major breakthrough with that today, which I’ll talk more about later.

The last few weeks haven’t been super eventful, other than the family and a few little things here and there.  School is almost over for the year, we’re about to go on summer break in about two weeks.  Christmas is coming up, which is just plain weird in hot weather.

A week or so ago (I think it was one week ago today) I went to the football club with my host father.  That was really interesting.  Apparently in Brazil it’s really common for adults to play sports.  It was kinda cool watching a bunch of old Rotarians that are significantly more active than myself play soccer for two hours.

I’ve recently started taking sax and piano lessons, which is a lot of fun.  It’s a huge help for my portuguese, because neither of the teachers know any English.  I’m totally rocking at Mary had a Little Lamb now too.  Music in Brazil is different, they identify the notes differently.  It’s kind of interesting to learn a new instrument in a second language.

School is boring as hell right now, but that’s because they’re all getting ready to take the college entrance tests and finals.  Every class is review and all my friends do is study.  I haven’t been out with friends in at least three weeks.  That’s all going to be over soon though, and summer break will start.

I’ve finally started to read in Portuguese!  Though this isn’t the major breakthrough I mentioned earlier.  I’m about two chapters into Harry Potter, and I understand almost everything.  I have to look words up, but considering I didn’t speak this language at all four months ago, I’m not worried about that.

The breakthrogh I mentioned earlier happened today.  I was walking to my piano lesson, just absentmindedly thinking about something, when it occurred to me that I was absentmindedly thinking about something in Portuguese.  I am actually able to think in Portuguese now.  Hell Yeah.

Not a whole lot else going on.  I’ll try to keep everyone updated.  In the meantime, enjoy a few photos of my new  house:

Yeah, it’s been a while since I posted last.  I completely lost the every day routine of posting because I had a pretty uneventful week where nothing much happened, and I just never picked it up again until now.  But I’m going to write THE post now, to fill everyone in on my last few weeks.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks, and a LOT is going to happen in the next week, so I’m going to put everything in a very orderly ordered list, starting just after the last post.

1. I went to a barbecue at the Terasaka’s house, where Alisha is living.  I can’t remember most of the people who were there, a lot of them were friends of Barbara, Alisha’s older sister.  We had WAY too much meat on  a stick from myriad animals, and we all got bellyaches from Smirnoff Ice.  Some of us went swimming but we couldn’t convice Alisha to go in the pool, so we threw her in.  Good fun.
2. I’ve been helping a couple of English schools out, talking to their classes and things like that.  I met a lady from Wizard a few weeks ago at Krep’s Cafe (where I’m writing this) and I’m going to try to go visit with one of her classes one monday if I can convince my parents to let me miss school for that.  I’ve also started working with the son of one of the Rotarians, who owns his own English school for businesses.  I went and talked to one of his students last night, and then afterwards we went back to his place to watch a futebol match and eat pizza.  The Brazilian Dream, at long last.
3. Someone pointed out a few weeks ago that a lot of what I’ve been writing has been pretty negative, which I guess is true to a point.  I want it to be known though that I AM having an incredible time, and the possibilities just keep growing each week.  I don’t know if that was really reflected here on the blog though, because a lot of times I just like to write about the funny little things that happen in my day to day life, like having trouble with the federal police (just think DMV, but a bit worse).
4. I finally got around to reading that Thoreau book I bought.  I even annotated important parts, because I’ll probably have to read it in Freshman English next year.
5. I’ve only been eating one meal a day during the week, and mostly vegetables, as well as going to the gym about three times a week and walking around town a lot.  I’m going to try to start going more often, at least five times a week.  all be damned if I don’t get RIPPED into shape while I’m here…
6. A few weeks ago we all went to SP for a samba concert.  The show wasn’t anything spectacular, I guess I’m just not that into Samba, but the whole night was a lot of fun anyway.  The concert was apparently held as an anniversay celebration for a company that Paulo is a partner in, I think the name was Grupo Brasil.  After the show Paulo and Virgina and I went to a famous restaurant/bar that a friend of their’s owns.  I really liked that place, I don’t know why.  Maybe it was because it was full of indie/hipster kids (twenty-somethings), and it was a little like being home in the Alley Cat again.  We stayed there until maybe 2 in the morning, Paulo drank cerveja and I had cuba libres.
7. I’ve been pretty torn over where I want to live when I get home.  I was thinking about moving to NYC, but now that the economic crisis has really started to take shape, I don’t think that I want to live in one of the most expensive places in the country.  I don’t really like west coast too much, at least not enough to move there.  So I’ll probably end up staying in CO either Denver or Collins.  I want to live in Denver, but there isn’t really a school there for what I want to do (no way I could afford or get into DU).  Fort Collins has the better school, but it’s not as interesting a place to live.  I guess I can decide that when I get home.  Right now, I’m leaning towards CSU…
8. I went to vist a University in Sorocaba a few weeks ago, and that was actually a lot of fun.  It was just me and my history professor driving there, so we spent what might have been one of the longest hours of my life saying absolutely nothing and listening to the Bee-Gees.  I sat through one of his classes, which was really interesting.  I don’t know what exactly the class was, but I could understand some of their text–it was an essay by Machiavelli that I read a couple of years ago.  After that I went and talked to an international relations class, which was also pretty interesting.  One of them spent a year in Mississippi, another in England, and another had taught themselves English.  We discussed a few serious topics like the economy and the war, but after that our conversation turned towards food and the price of things in Brasil.  It turns out that Outback Steakhouse is a really chic place to dine here.
9. I was a little homesick for a few days, only because I was getting bored and I didn’t have much to do.  I’m definitely past that now, I’m really enjoying myself here.  One of the things that helped me was to write a list of everything that I missed at home and then to think about why it was that I really missed it.
10. I FINALLY got out and went to a really fun party.  It was someone’s birthday, and about 40 people were there.
11. I went to a theme park called Hopi Hari with Alisha and the other exchange students.  It would have been fun if we’d gotten to ride anything.  But it was nice to see the other students again.
12. School is getting a lot better, I can understand a lot more, and I’m almost done with Atlas Shrugged.
13. Last week I went to a bar in Itu called Na Praya, wich means “on the beach”.  It was a pretty cool place, but a little expenisve.  I think I spent around R$70, wich is about $30.
14. I started playing around with making Panoramics in photoshop, and I got some pretty good results, like the one above.  I’m going to try to make a few more of those.
15. Later today I will be going to a beach in the south with school.  We’re taking a bus, and we’re going to stay for a week, I think.  I’m really excited, but everyone says that it’s cold down there.  I think I can deal.  I’m definitely going to take a lot of photos and post a lot of them when I get back.

Atlas Shrugged is the single greates novel I have ever read, and Ayn Rand is the greatest novelist who ever lived. Despite the fact that her philosphy goes contrary to established schools of thought, almost to the point of nihlism, and fails to consider environmental implications of personal actions, her stories are incredible, written solely for gods.  That is all.

I went to São Paulo again yesterday, and man, it was even more incredible than the first time.  I kind of feel more at home in SP than I do in Salto, I guess because cities are more universal, they all become the same.

We went to SP to visit MASP (Museo de Artes de São Paulo), and visit we did.  We must have spent a good 4 hours in the relatively small museum of 3 floors, but I could easily spend a whole day there if I went in the right mindset.  Some of the modern Brasilian art is absolutely incredible–very morbid, very chaotic, very emotional.  There was an exhibit of modern art from around the world, and that could not have presented a better juxtaposition of the phenomenal and the meaningless.  I saw a canvas  painted entirely yellow, stretched over a bucket.  There was a sign on the wall next to it that said something like “the art occurs in the action of the thought.”  Kind of reminded me of the saying that anything is art if you can eloqently justify it as such.

Afterwards we went to the Livraria Cultura, which by this point is one of my favorite places to be.  I bought a few books in English and a cup of coffee, all without problem (which is a small miracle–buying anything in SP was nearly impossible for me last time.

Today, some of the people in my class went to visit Unicamp university, which is supposedly one of the best universities in the world.  I decided to stay home since it doesn’t really effect me, so I spent the mornig swimming in the pool and reading Civil Disobedience by Thoreau.

Just a quick note, today is the one month anniversary of me arriving in this strange land of Brasil.

For the last five days I’ve been having trouble with the network here, which, honestly, is a real bitch.  I hate not having internet access on my laptop.  Finally got that back up today.

I went to a carnival over the weekend with some friends, that was a real trip.  It was absolutely packed, there were easily three or four thousand people there in that relatively small space.  There was a side area where one could purchase emapadas and beer, but only if you exchanged your money for tickets.  Exactly as happened in the classic Ron White skit, I went up to buy a beer and was refused because I had to buy the “coupons.”  Buying those, of course, took a ten minute wait in line and then another ten minute wait for the beer once I had them.

We waited around for a while, and I chatted with a guy who had a shirt emblazoned with a giant pot leaf who had just gotten back from a semester at Cambridge University.  Really.

We had all planned on doing some of the really fun rides, like the elevator that takes you up and drops you 10 stories, or the pendulum that dumps all your pocket change out onto the ground.  The lines ended up being longer than our patience, however, so we moved on to the kiddie rides with non-existent waits.  One of them was a weird yellow caterpillar with the most demented expression that state law permits caterpillars to have.  We all piled into the contraption towards the back, and as it went in slow, steady circles we put our hands in the air and defiantly screamed as if our lives depended on it.

One girl in our group was only 15, but she kept begging beer and cigarettes from people as the night went on.  Too young.

Later in the evening, after I had made a scene trying to samba dance in the middle of a crowd, we found some kind of half-broken, barely legal roller coaster ride that didn’t use any kind of seat belt.  The man operating was missing a flip-flop and his shirt was only held closed by a single button.  He had a beer gut resembling a yoga ball and a face like Charles Bukowski.  He was just as drunk as Bukowski, too.

I didn’t really do much on Sunday–we all went to a birthday party in Atibaia, but I couldn’t really speak with anyone.

Monday we all had the day off from school, but I spent most of the day sick.  Some friends invited me to go to the country club in the afternoon, and I went with them.  They kept showing me around to places as if I’d never been there, and I kept explaining that I know my way around.  This guy showed up later in the evening who had lived in the States, in Texas, I think.  He kept talking about how much he loved Minnesota and how he loved working at the Hilton hotels.  He handed me his card with a picture of a microphone on it, as if I wanted to call him to shoot the breeze or discuss stock quotes.  Such is the way of people, though, I suppose.

I’ve spent the last few days just kind of wandering the streets of Salto, exploring and taking photos.  I’ve been trying to focus on capturing people going about their lives, unaware of my presence and the presence of a camera, which can be a difficult task at times (it’s a little awkward when some can clearly see you taking a picture of them).

Every day after lunch I take a walk to Krep’s Cafe and order a latte and a bottle of water, I read for a while, and then I explore.  I’m trying to keep to basically the same loop with variations so that I don’t get lost but I can learn the area really well.  Occasionally someone will try to speak to me, but I always apologize and explain that I don’t speak portuguese, that I’m an exchange student, and that I’m learning the language.

Anyway, among other things school has been good to me–I’m starting to be able to keep up with the class when we have discussions–but it’s also starting to become a routine.  Not so novel anymore, just day to day stuff.

At home I am able to communicate with V more and more successfully.  We talk about school, about crime, politics and government in Brasil, about relatives, about food, about my day and about anything else that normal people discuss, I suppose.

V and I watched ‘House’ on TV tonight, which of course is no big deal in and of itself, but we watched it with English audio and Portugues subtitles.  We were both able to understand everything, to question the same parts and to laugh at the same time.  It was really a nice way for us to connect.

I have a busy weekend coming up with a wedding, a birthday, a meeting, and two festas.  Festa seems to have about the same meaning as party, except that it can describe anything from the county fair to a causual get-together.  I don’t really know for sure if I have time to accomplish all this, but dammit if I’m not going to try.

I have no school on segunda-feira (monday) for some holiday, and on Thursday V and I are going to MASP, the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, which I am actually incredibly excited for.

So I’ve been reading.  A lot.  I started with Steadman and Heinlein, worked my way up into Ayn Rand, Camus, Kerouac and Hesse,  and will soon delve nose first into Dostoevski and Tolstoy, the hardest of hardcore reading.  Naturally, with literature comes coffee, but it’s impossible to get coffee without a cafe.  That’s where Krep’s comes in.

Took me three days of walking all around Salto to find it, but in the end my own home grown intuition prevaild and I managed to track it down.  Had a good cup of coffee and some literature.

So you probably noticed that the site was down over the weekend.  That was because of an error with the web host on my part, but it was resolved easily with a few emails to support.

Anyway, over the weekend I took a trip to Piracicaba for the intercambista group.  We went over the rules a few more times, played futebol, ate way too much food and generally had a good time.

Yesterday was Guillerme’s (my host brother who lives in a different city) birthday–21 I believe.  To celebrate, Paulo, Virginia and I all drove to Pirocicaba to have dinner with him and his girlfriend.  After driving for nealry an hour and witnessing exactly once the unspeakable act of a man asking for directions, we arrive in front of an enormous compound with 14 foot wall and the kind of gate that exists only to hold the philistine hordes at bay, lest they lay eyes upon any of the fantastic opulence within.  There was even a red carpet stretching the length of the block in front of the building, albeit a filthy and cigarette covered one.

Keep in mind that until this point, I am completely unaware of what this whole thing is.  We stand out front for a few minutes, move the car a few feet for posterity, and then enter the gated temple of décor.  Once inside, we are immediately faced by more than enough swanky shit to fill an entire useless interior design magazine.  I can’t even count the number of recessed lights, murals, overpriced chairs and ponds in that place–it would be like trying to count the rocks on a mountain.

“Jesus Christ, where are we?”  I say to Paulo.

“What did you say?”

“I said, where are we?  Are we even still in Brasil?”

“Of course…this is an exhebition…for…”

“Design,” I finish the sentence.

“Yes! A design exhibition.”

We walk through the compound of myriad building decorated in different fashions, a $10,000 chandelier here, a Lexus there.  As we approach the restaurant, I can see the characteristic brushed metal artwork, chrome lamps, stained birch and gaudy mirrors that exist in all interiors based on the aesthetics movement.  I really can describe the place in once sentence–so completely serious and overdone that it’s ridiculous.  I had to laugh.

We had a good bottle of wine before our meal, and I ordered pasta with Picanha.  What arrives on my plate is, and I say this with the utmost seriousness, absolutely hilarious.  Each piece of pasta is a different primary color, and they are all shaped and decorated like houses arranged in a neighborhood.  Half of the plate was covered in a green sauce of some kind, it really didn’t have a taste.

As if the meal wasn’t surreal enough, Guillerme, and mind you this was his birthday, spent the entire meal with the most serious thousand yard stare I’ve ever seen.  When the waiter, a kid that appeared to be about the same age as me, brought the wine I witnessed one of the most ridiculous series of gestures that I have ever seen someone under the age of 25 perform–Guillerme first instructs the waiter on the proper way to uncork the bottle, then carefully smells the cork, taking all subtle nuances of the aroma.  He pours a glass, swirls it for nearly 45 seconds while everyone at the table tries to keep a straight face, again sniffs the aroma of the wine, takes a sip, and immediately changes his expression to that of someone who has just discovered a Picasso at a garage sale, nodding for the waiter to pour for everyone else.

After desert we all wished Guillerme a happy birthday and went on our way, getting home around 2 am. Overall the evening was great–completely surreal in every way.

Learning a foreign language has always been something that I’ve felt is very important in life, as well as just plain cool.  When I was a child, I believed I held the ability to speak multiple languages in the same regard as touch-typing, motorcycle ownership, and international espionage.  As I grew older, I saw the more practical side of language learning in world economics and politics.

In Brasil, the number one reason to learn a foreign language (and by ‘a foreign language’, I mean English) is for the alluring promise of becoming American, or at least having American tendencies.  In this city alone I count five or six English schools, all of which specialize in the American variety, and all of which offer exchange programs exclusively to the US of A.  In this country, learning English is a close relative to becoming American, and the people live for it.

That being said, I do wish I was taught a few extra things:

1. dealing with fucking useless bureaucracy
2. explaining to people that you’re American, not deaf and stupid

Life in Brazil is one ongoing, albeit amusing, fight against the most abominable bureaucracy imaginable.  I have been trying for weeks to register with the federal police as a foreigner, and so far it has taken three 3 visits to the police (a 45 minute drive), a trip to the photographer, a trip to the bank, and a trip to some other bureaucrat’s nest that I don’t understand.  This sweltering, lifeless place cannot possibly be described in English, for there exists no language to fully and accurately represent such a place except Brazilian (the difference from Portuguese being the ability to describe such a place).  I still haven’t been able to register with the federal police–but I will emerge victorious.

Actual Image of a Bureaucrat

Actual Image of a Brazilian Bureaucrat’s Nest

It’s been over two weeks since my last post, and a lot has happened in the interim.  I’ve started to go to school, made some friends, gone to armazem, and traveled around a bit.  I’ve been to Rotary twice, watched a Rotarian drink a full litro of scotch.  I went to the Zoo and decided which animals would be good to eat.  I got too little sleep.

(more…)

I am tired. Really tired.  Went to the mall in Itu earlier and we stopped in every single store in the mall.  Or it seemed that way.  V has so many friends that going to the store takes forever, we keep running into people she knows.  Even the cheezeball italian.

I have been in Brasil for 3 days, but honestly I slept about half of that from jet lag.

I was immediately taken to the apartment, and I use the word ‘apartment’ lightly, it’s more like a palace in the sky, complete with servants, satellite Tv, and a bar.

There are two housekeepers–they do the laundry, cook lunch, do the dishes, make the beds, clean the floors, the bathrooms, and as far as I can tell anything else that one is likely to find in a house.

My room is incredible (ly pink, but I can’t complain).  I have a stunning view of the whole city from where I sit now, a walk in closet, a desk with computer–everything I need.  There’s also a TV, but fuck it, I don’t need a television in my room.

Paulo and Virginia Krucken, my host parents, are incredibly welcoming and friendly–they treat me like a son already.  Paulo and I can communicate faily easily, but it’s almost impossible to communicate with Virginia.  It’s getting easier, but as Paulo loves to say, “we have time.”

As I write this I am sitting on the balcony overlooking the city below.  It’s beautiful.  More and more, this place is starting to feel like home.

Things I have done so far:

• Eaten at a Brasilian restaurant
• slept 20 hours straight
• eaten rum laced ice cream
• learned to hate the PA cars
• tried Brasilan beer
• learned about the history of our city, Salto.
• met their older sons Guillermo and Mario

Things I wish I had:

• [redacted]
• [redacted]
• [redacted]

I also met Weber and Felipe, the YEO’s.  I swear I think they were paired out for the sake of irony.  Weber is a slight man of about 5′8” and Felipe is about 6′3” and 450lbs.  I mentioned that I’m from Loveland, and the first thing he said was “Ohh, ‘fuckingland’.”