Well, well… happy September my loves. We are approaching spring here and spring in Salvador is essentially summer, so that means lots of sun and HEAT. We’ve had some toasty days in the past week, but thankfully there is almost always a nice breeze.

I read an article on Thursday about functional illiteracy in Brazil and it said that only 26% of the population can read and write without difficulty. I found that to be completely incredible. It is partially because many children drop out of school to work with only enough knowledge of letters to be able to decode street signs, but Luciana also told me that even those who stay in school can pass up to 8^th grade without being able to read or write because there is no standardized test until then and teachers “advance” the students despite their incompetence. I asked if it is mandatory for children to go to school here and I learned that though it is officially mandatory, the law is enforced by only specific (generally middle-upper class) employers who require their employees to show proof of school attendance and immunizations for their children before they can be hired. This is of little consequence for the mom who sells bananas on the street and sends her children to sell candy on the buses instead of going to school.

I also learned that it is mandatory to vote in Brazil and that this is strictly enforced. If you don’t vote in elections you can’t get your driver’s license, passport, or other official documents. I personally think that mandatory voting is a terrible idea. What ends up happening is that politicians come in and do something nice for the poor, who then feel indebted and out of gratitude vote for him. Granting favors does not make you a good politician. My Portuguese teacher told us that she thinks that after a politician has been caught committing a crime he should be forbidden to run for any public position. That way they will think twice before jeopardizing their career by scamming the public.

Friday CIEE had a post-orientation activity in which we all went to a yoga house for a relaxation session and small group talks about how we are doing dealing with culture shock, our family situations, and starting classes. We waited outside in the rain for half an hour before the van came to pick us up in Garcia, so that ticked a few people off who had woken up early after late Thursday night in Rio Vermelho. One of the group talks was led by an American psychologist living here in Salvador. He was a strange little character. He advised us as an anthropological experiment to try kissing Brazilians here, even if we have significant others at home. (Don’t worry Chase, I’m not convinced.)

When I got back home Bethany and I decided to go to Barra to talk to a travel agent about plane prices to travel around a bit during our holidays. We browsed around for a while and then went to a hotel to book a reservation for her boyfriend who is coming in October. When I got home I sat to chat with Conchita and we watched the end of a telenovela and the news at 8. One of the stories was about the drought in the Sertão. I saw pictures of the water that they have to drink there because of lack of another option and I was completely blown away. It started my little brain ticking about all the work that could be done here in Brazil. I think it would be a fabulous place to work because there is plenty of fundamental work to be done and Brazil also has wonderful places to escape to during the holidays.

Saturday morning I went for a run in Campo Grande and in the afternoon I went over to Bethany’s for a study date. I didn’t end up leaving until 12 hours later. We ended up talking much more than studying, watched 2 episodes of The Office, listened to half of the Wicked sound track, met up with Michelle, got some food, watched Tropical Paradise, visited with Erin and Kate (a girl from the summer program studying in São Paulo), and chatted with her host mom, Ana Rita, until 1:30 AM. Opps…

This morning I’ve done a mild amount of studying, but for the most part I’ve been visiting with Consuelo and her baby Diogo. He is 1-year old, but he knows that he’s the baby and he can get away with almost anything. The cute little rascal! Watching him walk around made me realize how behind the babies at CAASAH are in their development.

Tá gente, I’d better get to studying because I’ve got plenty of readings to do. Beijos! Don’t forget to send me an e-mail and let me know what you are up to!

Tuesday night capoeira wasn’t so great. It was taught by the master whose style I don’t particularly care for because he uses lots of maneuvering on the ground and adores moves that involve supporting your weight with your head (which I don’t feel properly trained to do and I’m mildly-severely concerned that I’ll snap my neck and become a vegetable). He also made us all take turns playing an instrument and since I have no instrumental training I played a little percussion instrument that basically looks like a small and a big coconut on a stick with circle openings on the top that you strike with a stick to create a dung-DUNG-dung sound. Then to top off the class he pulled me out and made me fight with him, whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiich… didn’t go that well. Uff! Right when I thought I was catching on! Some days I genuinely love going to capoeira, then others I feel so incompetent… but I figure that I can afford to humiliate myself in front of people who live on the other side of the world. I can only get better, right?

Yesterday I officially registered for classes which means that I can’t switch around anymore. We still haven’t heard about whether my anemia class will be funded, but we are going to start preparing anyway. Yesterday we started discussing different types of nematodes and amoebas that can cause anemia. Our teacher told us that last semester at a birthday party the class saw a boy get sick and throw up some worms- a few even came out his nose. Infection normally occurs from contact with infected human feces or water/vegetables/fruits that have been infected. Good times, eh?

I gave a presentation today in my Spanish class and I think that I mostly spoke in Spanish. My main issue is pronouncing words like ‘de’ correctly, that is, with a soft ‘d’ like they do in Spanish and not the ‘g’ sound that is used in Portuguese. When I got home I read through a few articles in Spanish and my pronunciation is coming back. Just hearing Spanish spoken does wonders to help me differentiate the two in my mind. I also bought a Portuguese- Spanish dictionary that I think will force me to go from English to Portuguese to Spanish when I want to look up a word so that I am reminded of the Portuguese word as well.

Yesterday morning I tried out a Spanish class at 9:00AM. The most advanced class I could find was level VI for secretaries. In Brazil once you pick your discipline you are divided into turmas or groups of students in your major. For the most part all the students in your turma follow the same schedule and you don’t have the option of taking random classes in other disciplines. Thus, since Spanish in and of itself isn’t a very functional major, they have applied Spanish only for secretary work (i.e. ordering office supplies from an Argentinean company). It will serve my purpose because all I really want is to hear Spanish spoken so that I can work to differentiate it with Portuguese in my mind.

I went straight to CAASAH after Class and Race. Katie and I invited Ana to go with us because she doesn’t speak much Portuguese and wants to find a place where she can work with babies. We brought colored string with us to make bracelets, though it turned out that the kids mostly just wrapped themselves in string and few bracelets got made. I’ve got some more of the kids names down now:

-Michael is a plump, lethargic little baby. He’ll give me a smile when I coo over him and pretend that his bear is giving him kisses, but he doesn’t beg to be picked up or cry for attention. I went home with mementos of his spit-up down the front of my shirt.

-Lariça is the little girl I mentioned last week that is about 1.5ish and is learning to stand up/walk. She’ll shamelessly compete for attention if I’m holding another baby but she’s the prettiest little thing. You just can’t hold it against her.

-Clara is 6 months old and reminds me of a little smurf. Her ears kind of stick out and she has a wide forehead and a tiny little nose and mouth. She likes to be held and I’m pretty sure that her diaper leaked on me because I smelled pee on me for the rest of the afternoon.

-Juliete is 12 years old and likes to hang out with the babies. When she saw my bag of thread she took me by the hand to one of the tables so that she could make her bracelet. At which point an even older girl named Michelle took over and started to distribute the spools to her friends which meant that no one wanted to share colors or cooperate to actually make the bracelets. Michelle referred to me as “Americana” and insisted that I played cat’s cradle with her over and over and over again.

I also befriended a group of boys that asked me to bring my soccer ball with me next week and gave me a new hairdo. When they finished climbing on me I had snot and spit to add to the assortment of bodily fluids pasted to my skin and clothes and all my curls had been combed to frizz by their little fingers.

When I got home, I took a nice long shower and spent the rest of the evening studying/chatting with Conchita. Today she has a few medical exams to check on her breast cancer and osteoporosis, so keep your fingers crossed for good results.

Speaking of breast cancer, this morning in my Social Services and Health class I accidentally asked a question about papayan cancer (câncer da mamão), instead of breast cancer (cancer da mama). Good times…

Well I’m pleased to report that the second half of my week went much smoother. Thursday was routine, except that my Portuguese class went to see a documentary on Mestre Bimba and capoeira. Mestre Bimba was the man responsible for modifying Angolan capoeira into what it is today. He turned it into a discipline and helped pull many poor youths out of the life of crime. I went to capoeira that night and I was encouraged that the exercises that we did are becoming easier for me. When I got back from capoeira Conchita told me that my art/sculpture teacher had called and that scheduled out lesson for 7AM. Droga! That meant that for the third time this week I woke up at 5:15 so that I could get ready and walk to class. After class I stopped by a few shops to look at beads because I want to make bracelets with the children at CAASAH and bought some more glue sticks (I tend to go through glue sticks like fiend).

When I got back I studied a bit until lunch, then Bethany and I went to CIEE to look over classes again. I want to try a Spanish class because the other day I tried to write an e-mail to Dina (my contact for the Mission Honduras) and I wrote it without many problems, but I struggled with pronunciation when I tried reading it out-loud. I found Spanish VI that meets Mondays and Thursdays and Bethany showed me where the campus is where it meets. She decided to try a ceramics class and I showed her where that campus was, then we walked to Dulces Sonho and sat and chatted while Bethany ate a slice of chocolate cake.

I decided to go out and samba Friday night. There is a tiny bar in Rio Vermelho that everyone in the program loves to go to and I met up with a small group around 10:00PM. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. I was literally dancing against the wall and we stayed until 1 at which point the bar was intolerably hot and crowded. We spent a good portion of the time outside the bar on the sidewalk so that we could catch the breeze.

Saturday I slept in until 9:30 then meet Bethany to go to the beach at 10:30. I went for a run for about an hour and found a great stretch of beach with a running path, a skate board park, pull-up bars, etc. When I got back I went swimming a bit then ate some açaí at the shop across the street. By 2 I decided to walk back and stop by the grocery store. I studied a bit last night, but by 9:30 I was falling asleep with my book open and decided to call it an early night.

Today has been pretty calm. I studied and worked on letters this morning. Bethany came over and we sat and talked for a few hours and I went to mass at 6:30. I got a reply back from my e-mail to one of professors from the Institute of Collective Health and we are going to try to meet later this week.

Mom, in response to your question about the shortage of funding for my Health and Education Class: Prevention of Anemia, basically we need funding because we will be traveling to a poor community in the Interior to take blood samples and do surveys. We need money primarily for transportation and for food because we will spend one full Saturday a month there. The department grants the money but low on funds because of the strike.

YAAAAAAWN! O, gente! It’s been a bit of an off-week so far, but that also means that I’ve had my fair share of mistakes to learn from. I woke up Monday feeling stuffy with a sore throat so I just went for a short run and studied a bit before my 11:00 class. After lunch I went to meet with Katie to go to CAASAH (the home for children and adults with HIV/AIDS). Katie was about 15 minutes late because she was coming from a class beforehand, but while I waited for her I watched the buses going by to see which stop we needed to wait at. The name of the bus we needed was Ribeira, but the trick is that there are 4 different lines. (We needed Ribeira/Luis Tarquinio). When in doubt, I always ask the guy who sells coconut water and he told us to wait in front of the theater. After about 10 minutes we see a Ribeira go by but it doesn’t stop when we flag it down. We moved to the stop at the corner because the buses all stop there because it’s an intersection. We wait another 15-20 minutes, so by the time the next Ribeira passes it is already 4:10 and we were supposed to arrive at CAASAH by 4:00. We saw on the side of the bus that it passes through Luis Tarquinio though the name of the route was something else that I can’t remember now (maybe Ribeira Liberdade). Katie got on the bus and asked the money changer if the bus passed the street that CAASAH is on but the lady seemed to put a mental block as soon as she saw that Katie was a blond with pale skin and furrowed her eyebrows before she even asked the question. We didn’t get any clues from her but we stayed on the bus and kept our eyes peeled for landmarks that we recognized…

…and an HOUR later we concluded that we are definitely NOT in the right place and we should probably figure out how to get back. It’s funny how traveling with other people changes your behavior. If it had been me alone I would have been asking questions the second that I suspected something was amiss, but since we were together we both assumed that the other person had everything under control and we reacted alot slower than I think we ordinarily would have. We asked the money changer again and she advised us where to get off and which bus to take back home. (It was already dark and too late to try to go to CAASAH.) When I got home I asked Conchita where we should have caught the bus and it turns out that for the first time the Coconut man led me astray. I was utterly distraught by this realization because I had put so much faith in the Coconut guys.

Tuesday morning started at 5:15AM and I caught the bus at 6:30AM without a problem. My stop is the last one so normally everyone gets off the bus at the end of the line and you can’t miss it. Unfortunately I caught the bus at a different stop and my stop was not the last one and I sat reading an article and missed my stop, returned all the way to Campo Grande, and had to catch another bus. (The buses change routes so I couldn’t stay on the one I was on.) I ended up being 20 minutes late to class but I befriended the money changer on the bus and talked to him while we sat in traffic.

After class I went to talk to Isabel, the professor who can supposedly help me get into contact with Dr. Barreto for my research. I went to the Social Services office and talked to the secretary but it turns out that she only comes in on Mondays now. Until next week…

I went to CIEE to talk to Flavia and apologize for not showing up to volunteer at CAASAH. We rescheduled for today at 3:00PM and I ran a few more errands before my Portuguese class. I decided to go to UFBA early to see if I could catch Dr. Barreto before his class in the Pharmacy school. When I was there last week I saw that he teaches an Epidemiology class on Tuesdays from 3-4 and I thought that at last I might tag him down. Great idea but it turns out the class isn’t at 3:00PM its at 13:00 AND it isn’t at the Ondina UFBA campus its at the Institute for Collective Health. Fabulous. I spent the extra hour before my Portuguese class trying to read in the library but its already turning so hot here that with the heat and my exhaustion it took me the entire hour to get through the 6 page article for my Social Services class.

I had a long debate with myself on the way home about whether or not I wanted to go to capoeira and in the end I opted out because of my cold and my bruised heel from falling Saturday. I took some time to unwind and listen to music, then finished up my paper for Class and Race that was due today.

This morning I scoped out the bus stop we should have waited at for Ribeira and went to class. Afterwards Katie and I ate a quick lunch with a big group of students from the program and went straight to CAASAH. We caught the bus next to CIEE and we were able to see exactly where the stop is by Campo Grande when it passed by. When we got to CAASAH we met with Sandra and filled out some forms. Afterwards she introduced us to one of the coordinators and set us loose to play with the children. Oh goodness! During the interview/form signing with Sandra two of the girls came up to us and asked in English “My is your name?” One of the girls, Michelle, gave us each a kiss and told us “ben-vindo” or welcome. There was hardly a minute that I was there without someone in my arms or on my back. I got to see the babies today and they were infinitely precious. Two are itsy bitsy infants, two are a between 6-9 months old, and one is about 1-1.5. The 4 youngest ones were sleeping but I spend about half an hour with the 1-1.5 year old letting her craw around and practice standing. I spent quite a bit of time with another girl who wouldn’t tell me her age (I’d guess 5ish) whose name I couldn’t understand. She spoke very little but she clung to me from the moment she saw me. (It amazed me how I went in there nervous that I had nothing to offer and it turned out that all I needed were two arms to hold them, enough energy for a few piggy back rides, and kisses.) Her skin was covered in scars and she still wears diapers. Her belly-button is abnormally large, though I don’t know why that would be. We stayed for about an hour and half then headed back because I had at 5:30 class. We had no trouble on the return trip and arrived at Campo Grande at 4:00. I used the spare time to try to find the Institute of Collective Health which took be about an hour of running in circles. It’s hard to ask people on the streets because the locations move so often and there are several departments with similar names. I found Dr. Barreto’s office and talked to his secretary who told me that he would be traveling until August 31^st. Perhaps that is why he hasn’t responded to my e-mail. Let’s hope that I hear something soon.

I went straight from my quest to find Dr. Barreto to my Anemia class. When I got there I found out that there are some issues because of the strike at UFBA and we may not get the funding that we need to go to the community where we will be working. We discussed our options and ended class early today. They are trying to recruit students from other departments so that they can pool funds. Keep your fingers crossed.

I was short 40 cents for the bus ride home so I had to find a bank to get some cash from the ATM. That was a little bit sketchy because it was already dark outside and the campus was deserted, but mission successful!

Beijos!

Hello! Can you believe that the semester is already 1/3 of the way gone? Only 4 more months to go to the date and I’ll be on my way back home!

Saturday morning I went with Bethany to Pelourinho to help her look for a gift for her boyfriend’s birthday. We went to the top floor in one of the stores to look at artwork and even though I heeded the owner’s warning to hold on to the rail, I slipped and fell down a few steps. No permanent damage done, although my heel is bruised and I pulled a muscle in my left arm where I was holding onto the rail. (I swear I’m not that big of klutz. The conditions were extremely adverse b/c I was swearing slick, loose sandals and the stairs were super slippery and steep.)

I studied a bit in the afternoon then I went over to Bethany’s to watch a Brazilian film (Meu tio matou um cara- My Uncle Killed a Guy) and the soap opera Paraíso tropical- Tropical paradise. The film was cute and Sonia if you’re reading this I thought about you in the scene where the boy eats the banana with cinnamon. Watching the soap opera was amusing as well because the producers are so blatantly promoting their pet social cause. In the episode we watched one of the characters calls in to donate to Criança Esperança and in another idyllic scene a white, rich couple adopts a black boy.

Sunday morning I went to mass at 7 then spent the rest of the morning trying to write an essay for Classe e Raça, my culture class. This Sunday it was Conchita’s turn to host the family gathering so by 1 the entire house was buzzing and I was lured out of studying by Conchita’s adorable baby nephew and her niece’s new puppy. Although the TV was on, conversation was much more the center of attention this time and I’ve never seen a group of people so enjoy each others’ company.

Luciana, puppy, and cousin (left) and Conchita with her nephew and her niece's puppy (below). Update coming soon!