Contact info

This is the address of where I am living:

Conchita Larangeiras
Av Filemon Andrade n.97 ed. Serra do Garcia
ap. 1202 B- Garcia
Cep: 40.100-060
Tel: 3328-2402 home/ 8132-7240 daughter


Mailing address:

Amy Finch
C/o Jeferson Bacelar
CEAO- Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais
Praça Inocêncio Galvão, 42 (Largo 2 de Julho)
CEP: 40.060-055
Salvador- Bahia- Brazil

12:30 PM

I apologize for the abrupt endings to each log. I write for as long as I can, but when I have to go, I have to go. I found out that luckily I do have Internet access at my house. I will have to be careful not to abuse it b/c it is certainly a rarity to have and Conchita’s daughters need to use it also. There is an Internet café close by that will cost R$4/hr to use my own laptop and R$2/hr to use their computers. I want to try to use the café and the university as much as possible so that I don’t become a burden on the family. One difficulty is that the sun starts setting around 5 and that is only 3 TX time. If I want to talk to anyone at home on skype I’d need to wait until after 7 PM Bahia time and it is much too dark then. Yesterday I had my first chance to use the Internet and I apologize if I haven’t answered your e-mails because I haven’t had an opportunity to read most of them.

Yesterday I checked out of the hotel and moved into my home stay around 8:30 AM. I’ve posted the pictures of my room and various parts of the house. I met her daughter Luciana at lunch time and thankfully she eats much like I do. She told me that she is excited to have a companion to eat whole wheat bread and vegetables with. For lunch we had fish, chicken, rice, a vegetable mix in a milk sauce, lettuce leafs, slices of tomatoes, and lime to sprinkle on top. It was light and very enjoyable. For dessert we had guarana as you can see in the picture. They sliced it thinly and ate it with milk cream. Everything was delicious and I am so relieved to know that there will be Amy-friendly food here.

My house has an empregada, or a house maid, named Berna. Almost all empregadas are black women- an accurate reflection of the racial constraints and prejudices that persist in Brazil. The director of the study abroad program told us that 70% of these empregadas don’t have work cards, so they have no security if they get sick. Berna does the cooking and helps Conchita with things around the house. When I came in last night she was cutting Conchita’s toenails and left the house around 6:30 PM. I think she starts in the morning around 8:15-8:30 and she stays all day. She eats with us at lunch and my family treats her very warmly, although I have heard that sometimes the empregadas are treated very poorly.

After lunch yesterday I went to the Faculdade de Letras for my written Portuguese placement exam. I took a bus with a few other students that live near me. The bus fare is R$1.80 and comes every 10-15 minutes. I had trouble finding my way out of the university and back to the bus stop, but with the help of some other students I made it back fine and did a little exploring of the neighborhood near where I live. There is a park called Parque Grande close by with a huge bronze statue in the center. I learned today in my Modern Brazilian Culture class that the statue is in commemoration of the independence day of Brazil which was July 2^nd, 1895. Part of the statue depicts an Indian that is driving a lance into a dragon (the dragon represents Portugal).

I got back to the house around 6 PM and tried to find an Internet café. Unfortuately the one that Conchita directed me to was busy and didn’t have wireless for laptops, so I decided to come back to the house and take some time to write yesterday’s journals and read through some of the program material. Conchita left around 7 and showed me that there was vegetable soup on the stove that I could have with some bread or left-overs from lunch. Her daughters came home close to 8 and I sat and talked to them for a while. They asked me about a reality TV program that they have here that is based on a show in the US. The objective is to select a business associate for a business and the host is the judge of the various tasks they have to perform. I’ve never heard of it so if anyone knows the name of the US program, they wanted to know. I watched it with them last night after I got online to post my blogs and talk to whoever I could.

This morning for breakfast I had fruit and bread. I was surprised when Conchita pulled out peanut butter and asked if I wanted it for the bread. She said her sister gets it at a special market. I had the first of my cultural classes this morning and we talked about the history of July 2^nd because we are going to the parade Monday, which is a national holiday. Right now I am back at the house for lunch and I’m leaving at 1:30 for my interview for the oral portion of the placement exam. We have the weekend free and I’m still unsure of what I want to do.

6:00PM

My oral interview went fine. They just asked me a few questions and asked me to read a short article about gossiping being good for your health and discuss it. Afterwards I went to Centro Barro which is a shopping area along the beach. As you all know, the beaches are absolutely gorgeous here. There is a lighthouse on the shore here that is the oldest lighthouse in South America and I also saw a statue of Jesus up on a hill overlooking the ocean where couples go to make-out. I bought cell phone credit that I can use to make local cards after I buy a chip made by the same provider. Oh! And I tried several new foods today. At lunch Berna cooked an assortment of tubers and veggies. I tried a batata dulce which is a type of potato that is sweet, another tuber that is potato like but with a more grainy texture, a fruit called pina that is super sweet (you cut it open and scoop out like kernel-shaped sections of white/clear fruit with black slender seeds in the center), and a pasty, gooey dish that is made out of some type of grain powder that is typical of the northeast. I was also served spinach greens, cooked carrots, and cabbage at lunch. Woot for gooooood eating!

As for the culture shock, I think that I’m doing pretty well. I understand about 70% of what I hear in Portuguese and though I know that my accent isn’t perfect, everyone seems to understand me. I haven’t had much of an appetite but I think that is natural when you are in a new environment, especially if you have to ask permission to eat. I asked Conchita if there is a place where I can run and she gave me a few suggestions of where her nieces run when they are here. I know at least how to get to Parque Grande so I can run a little there tomorrow and hopefully get a group together to join me exploring later. I’m also thinking about buying a bike because the bus fare is the equivalent of $2 to go both ways and that can add up pretty quickly over a semester, especially if I need to go several places in a given day.

I don’t feel unsafe, but I am definitely very cautious everywhere that I go. I only bring with me as much money as I know that I’ll need and I carry it in my front pocket with maybe a little in my bag. A lot of women walk with their backpacks in front or with their purse across their chest so that it can’t be taken. All the women dress very well here and are very comfortable and confident with their bodies. One of the girls in the program told me that her host mom left the door open to the bathroom and talked to her completely naked while sitting on the toilet. Another told me that her mom walked in and handed her the phone while she was in the shower. My family seems to respect my privacy and I haven’t seen any nudity yet but apparently it can happen.

As for the streets, there are lots of stray dogs around and cats near the university. The girls I went shopping with today told me that they’ve seen squirrel/monkey creatures in the trees but I haven’t seen any yet. You can of course find your typical street vendors and friends are constantly greeting in the street. When I walk with other girls in the program we attract a lot of attention for being white. In Brazil instead of gringo, they say alemão which means German. Apparently at some point there was a lot of German immigration and they started calling all white foreigners Germans.

If anyone wants to know about anything specific, just let me know. When everything you see and do is new, it can be difficult to filter through what might be interesting to others. I miss you all very much. Até amanhã.

In continuation with what I was writing yesterday, I must admit that it was pretty intimidating to be surrounded by Brazilians speaking Portuguese in a New York airport. There were announcements translated into English but the Brazilian flight crew spoke to me in Portuguese (maybe that means that I’ll pass okay for a Brazilian?). I slept some on the plane, but I woke up and checked the time every 45 minutes to an hour. The flight from New York City to São Paulo was 9 hours and 10 minutes crossing 4,767 miles. We arrived around 9:00 AM local time (São Paulo and Salvador are 2 hours ahead of central time), giving me 2 hours to get my bags, go through customs, recheck them, and navigate my way to the gate. Luckily, after a little investigating, I found my bags. They actually beat me to Brazil on a flight the day before. (Although curiously, I think it is against Delta policy to let a bag leave the country on a flight that the owner isn’t on.) Customs was a breeze and I was able to check my bags and get to the gate without a problem. The flight to Salvador didn’t leave until noon, but with all the delays I have experienced on this trip, it didn’t faze me much. I finally arrived to the Salvador airport at 2:30 PM, but my bags weren’t there. I filed a report with Delta and left the baggage department with the CIEE contact information. My taxi to the hotel cost me $43 USD plus a 10% tip of R$8, which surprised me a lot. (The currency in Brazil is in reais and you pay for the taxi before you go anywhere.) It may have so expensive because I used the airport taxi service but I reasoned that I’d rather pay more and know that the taxi is safe than to risk getting into a taxi without knowing. When I got to the hotel I checked in and put my carry-on luggage in my room. I saw the schedule of my roommate sitting on the bed and caught back up with the group. They were in the middle of an orientation session which I caught the majority of and one of the staff from CIEE (Carol) gave me a copy of the schedule, a program guide, and a letter from my host family. After dinner at the hotel (which was my first solid meal since these crazy travels began), we met with our host parents. (Dinner by the way was buffet style with lots of fruit, bread, rice, vegetables dishes, sliced cold cuts, and fish. I tried mashed spinach, mostly unrecognizable fruit, mixed veggie rice, and ham. The seasoning on everything was very different than anything that I am used to… very tropical and flavorable.) I am living with a woman whose name is Conchita. She lives with two daughters, one is 30 and the other is 25, in an apartment in a region of Salvador called Garcia. It is close to the beach and the university and many other students in the program live close by. Conchita was a teacher but now she is retired and does artisan work. Her daughters work all day, the oldest one as a systems analyst and the younger one in psychology. She has another daughter who is married but is usually around the house (or so I am told though I haven’t met her yet.) The married daughter and her son each have 2 children. Her son is moving with his family from Panama to Peru soon.

At long last…

It is 10:04 AM on Wednesday morning and I have just landed in São Paulo, Brazil. I am waiting at the gate of my flight to Salvador where I will be staying. For those of you who knew my original travel plans, yes, I should have arrived here yesterday at 6:00 AM. My flight from Houston to Atlanta was delayed from 1:08 PM to about 5:30 PM because of thunder storms stretching across the entire route. Half an hour into the flight the pilot came on and announced that due to a failure in the weather navigation system we would have to make an emergency landing in Birmingham, Alabama, which then changed to Jackson, Mississippi. Unfortunately the Jackson airport is modest at best and only flies to Atlanta and Cincinnati so there were no hopes of flying directly from there to Brazil. The Delta staff told us they were acquiring taxi and hotel vouchers for us and while we waited to receive them and to rebook our flights we should go have a meal with the dinner vouchers. After I ate I had to reenter security to get back to my gate to get the vouchers for the taxi and hotel. I sat in the waiting area of a gate near security to put my shoes back on and one of the flight attendants asked if anyone was on the diverted flight to Atlanta. I told her I was and she ushered me into the plane still in my socks. I was a bit worried about my suitcases at this point because they had been unloaded and put on the baggage belt for those who were staying the night, but I didn’t have much time to protest. I got into Atlanta around 10:30 PM and checked to see if perhaps my flight to São Paulo had been delayed because of the bad weather. No such luck. The line for rebooking stretched on for at least 4-5 hours worth of waiting, so I called home and got the number for my aunt (my mom’s sister) who lives in northern Atlanta. I took a Marta train to Sandy Springs and she picked me up from the Marta station around 1:15 AM. I tried calling in to rebook when I got to the house but I never got through until the next morning when I got up. I rebooked for a 2:30 PM flight to JFK in New York, then a 9:00 PM flight from New York to São Paulo, and finally an 11:00 AM flight from São Paulo to Salvador. Fine and dandy, right? Well, my cousin drove me to the train station at 11:00 AM the next morning and I got to the airport by noon. I had to wait about 45 minutes in line to get my boarding pass, then the Delta agent told me to go to the baggage line to request my bags forwarded. By this time it was 1:15 PM and I asked her if I had time to wait in baggage if my flight was at 2:30 PM and she insisted that I go. The line wasn’t terribly long but it was extremely slow. I left it at 1:50 so that I would have time to get to security. Unfortunately, 40 minutes wasn’t nearly long enough. The line for security looked about 2 hours long by my estimation and my gate was in the furthest terminal. I explained my situation to a lady security guard and she directed me to a man in the security line, but he insisted that there was no way he could help me and I would have to wait in line. I went back to the lady guard and asked her if there was anything she could do and she told me where another security point was with nearly no line. (Why don’t they make this known to everyone and even the lines out?!) The other line was about 20 minutes long, but I didn’t have 20 minutes, so I spoke to a security officer again and got pushed up. It looked like I could just make it, except that I was chosen for a random search. They didn’t have a woman guard available there to search me so I had to wait… When I finally got through I had 6 minutes before departure and generally the planes leave the gate 5 minutes prior. I moved as fast as I could but I had to pass through terminals T, E, D, C, and B to get to A where my gate was. Even on the train this took about 8 minutes. I got to my gate a 2:33 PM, just minutes too late. I had to wait another 45 minutes to rebook my flight and I got on a 3:45 flight to La Guardia airport in NYC where I could take a taxi to JFK to catch my connection. I had 35 minutes to get to the gate for the Atlanta to NYC flight, which should have been plenty of time except the shuttle between terminals was shut down for maintenance and the moving sidewalks weren’t operating. I walked as fast as I could and made it the gate at 3:25. But in keeping with my unlucky streak the flight was delayed until 4:40 PM. I finally got to New York at 6:45 PM and shared a taxi to JFK with a family that I met on the flight. After inching our way through New York traffic we got to the airport at 7:40 PM, though I had been told by the Delta agent that I could make the drive in 20 minutes. I checked the computer and saw that my flight had already been delayed until 9:30, which gave me a little wiggle room. I had to wait in line again for my boarding pass (note to any travelers, DON’T GET PAPER TICKETS- you have to go through a hassle at each connection) which took me to about 8:30 PM. Security was brief, thankfully, though I was searched again. I got to my gate at 8:45 and finally had a chance to call home, wash my face, and brush my teeth. The flight was ultimately delayed until around 11:00 PM, but we boarded at 9:30 PM. From the moment I got to the gate all the staff has been speaking to me in Portuguese.

A brief update from Chase.......Amy made her flight out of Houston but she was delayed about four hours. On the flight to Atlanta, the airplane had a weather radar malfunction and had to make an emergency stop first in Birmingham, but that stop was moved to Jacksonville, Mississippi. After dinner in Jacksonville, she was going through security when someone told her that the flight back to Atlanta was boarding and she needed to run to make the plane. She got on the plane (with no shoes on) and made it to her original destination only to find that she was too late for the flight to Sao Paolo. So, she called her Aunt Linda who lives in Atalanta and stayed the night with her. Today, she flew from Atlanta to JFK airport in NYC to catch a flight to Sao Paolo which will get her into Salvador by 1:00pm local time tomorrow......What a wild trip, but who better to handle the situation than Amy Finch?

Boas-vindas

Welcome all. I am leaving for Brazil in just two weeks! While I am there I will have access to Internet through the university and Internet cafes and I plan to update this blog regularly with news and pictures. If you have Skype, my user name is hischeeseburger (the name comes from a Veggie Tales song). I will be abroad June 25- December 20 and I hope to stay in contact with as many of you as possible. Please feel free to check in here from time to time if you are curious about what I am up to or send me an e-mail to aefinch@sbcglobal.net. I will see everyone again in January!