Hello my lovelys...

The story with my laptop is that my charger is burned out and my Dad is having a new one mailed to me. I think it will be another 2-3 weeks before I'm back in business. To buy one here would cost R$420...

So much has happened in the past few weeks. I had a wonderful weekend in Morro de São Paulo the weekend before last. I went with Baird, Nora, and Bethany (all three of which puked on the boat ride... at one point I was sitting between Bethany and Baird, rubbing their backs while they both heaved... somehow I held it down... I think the only other people on the boat not vomiting were the drunk men and the crew.)

We stayed at a beautiful hostel with a hammock and tons of beautiful birds and plants. On Friday we visited the beaches and Saturday we took a clay-mud bath and washed it off in the ocean. I went back with Bethany Saturday night because I wanted to attend the Health Conference that started Sunday. (We drugged Bethany up for the ride back and it went fine.)

Saturday night I stayed up until about 3 AM writing my paper for Raça e Classe, then went to the conference Sunday afternoon and skipped classes to attend Monday as well. It was an incredible experience and gave me an overview of the current controversial issues in public health in Bahia.

Last weekend I went to Lençóis with Bethany, Breanne, Kristina, and Maggie. We took an overnight bus ride Thursday night and I came back Sunday night with Kristina. Lençóis is a community in the interior with tons of natural waterfalls, caves, rivers, mountains, etc. Friday we hiked a 9 mile trail up and down a mountain with the 2nd biggest waterfall in South America. Saturday we snorkled in a cave and visited several caves and waterfalls. Sunday we hiked several trails and slid down a rock slide into a lake. It was amazing! I'll post pictures when I get my laptop running.

I'm meeting with Barreto this afternoon. I went by his office again last week with no luck, but I talked to his secretary and she told me to e-mail him again. I did so and marked the e-mail as HIGH PRIORITY... and he responded. :o) At last! Wish me luck...

My charger doesn't work.....

Hello everyone. Just to let you know, the charger for my laptop is not working. Therefore, I cannot get online at Conchita's house to talk on Skype or answer e-mails. I apologize if you were waiting to hear back from me but I will have to postpone things for a little while until I get my computer running. Talk to you soon.

Gilberto Gill

Example of forro music. It's great for dancing!

02 Track 2.wma

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.