em que eu tento comunicar

saturday night, blair was invited to a party at a bar, and he brought us along. blair, emily, shaina, and i took the bus to el dorado where we met up with david, an american student at UNICAMP in campinas who came to SP for the night. we took a taxi to the bar and went inside. i was terrified! we were all wearing jeans and casual clothing, and everyone is dressed up and looking nice. plus, it was the birthday party of several people, so we all felt like we were crashing a house party. how sad! blair's friend joana was there and she was really friendly, plus her english is excellent so we all felt a little more calm. we hung out for awhile, and i had my first caipirinha in brazil. it was great- i had it with strawberries instead of limes. delicious, but the problem is that you can't taste the cachaca (brazilian sugarcane rum). joana said to be careful- that it's easy to tell who the tourists are by seeing how many caipirinhas they drink, and how quickly!

there was a guy there that kept hanging around 'the american girls' but joana said he didn't speak english so even though he clearly wanted to talk, he couldn't. david (from UNICAMP) is pretty decent with portuguese, so i told the guy to come sit with us and talk. it was hilarious- the guy (i don't think i caught his name) was speaking a mix of spanish (so i could understand) and portuguese (so david could understand), and david and i responded in portuguese and spanish, respectively. i actually understand a lot of portuguese, i just can't respond in kind! but spanish has been very useful. anyway, the guy was telling us all about brazil, culture, economics, etc. apparently there's a guy by the name of santos dumont who had the first flight, or at least that's what the brazilians are taught! the guy had never heard of the wright brothers, and insisted dumont was the first. it's strange to see history through someone else's biases! he also said that we were nice for americans, as the general consensus amongst brazilians is that americans are snobby and greedy.-i'm glad to be here defying stereotypes!

while our portu-spanish conversation was going on, blair was busy chatting up joana's friend valdir. he's a lakers fan and is one of very few people (or students, anyway) that has a subscription to SkyTV- including ESPN! blair is very charming, despite speaking almost no portuguese, and convinced valdir to have us over to watch the game sunday night. things started to die down so we took a taxi home and passed out until...

sunday! blair came over and we hung out with rafael and renata downstairs (the brother and sister that live in the place where i'm staying). we dropped renata off so she could go to church, then the three of us went to a park to watch the sunset. it was gorgeous!

with blair, en route to the park

the park

me at the park


blair, me, and rafael

sun-setting

it's done!


after the sunset, we decided to go have pizza. rafael took us to faria lima where we went to a pizza buffet. it's about $8 USD and the pizza doesn't stop. i must have had 5 slices- it's different from the pizza in the states, but still delicious. one strange thing was the cheddar pizza, which had a kind of soft (think velveeta) cheddar cheese on top. it was my least favorite, but i had to try! after the regular pizzas they bring out pizzas doces, dessert pizzas. the crust is a mix between pie crust and pizza crust, and the toppings include chocolate pudding and fudge with strawberries, just chocolate, coconut cream, and my favorite... grilled bananas with vanilla ice cream! i couldn't believe i ate so much, but it was just all so appealing. we will definitely have to go back to that place soon.

we came home from dinner and valdir was there to pick us up for the basketball game. we went to his apartment where we met his roommates and waited for the game to start. once the game began, all the roommates left the living room (i guess they aren't into basketball) and it was just blair, valdir, and me sitting around the TV. valdir and i were both rooting for the lakers, but blair was for the magic. it was really entertaining because valdir doesn't speak much english and neither blair nor myself speak much portuguese, so it was a lot of 'yeah fisher! yeah kobe! defense!' from me and valdir, and not much else. lakers won so i was happy, and valdir took us back to our neighborhood.

monday morning, blair and another student, justin, met me at my house at 8. we went to the paderia (bakery) up the street to eat before school. we all had pao a chappa (sp?) which is a roll, cut in half and buttered, then toasted on a griddle with a heavy metal press (kind of like an iron) on top of it. i also had my first cafe con leite since arriving in brasil, and immediately regretted it (only because i know there will be much, much more where that came from.) The woman working behind the counter, Andrea, is familiar with blair because he goes there a lot. she introduced herself and figured out that i could understand her, so with some broken english and portuguese we realised we could both speak spanish, which we did. she was very sweet and patient with us, and told me to tell blair he looks like eddie murphy (he kind of does...) while i still wish my portuguese was better, it felt good to communicate with someone (someone not american, that is) and to feel useful because i can understand what's going on! i'm just thinking of it as more motivation to study the language.

my work in the lab was uneventful- i'm just learning how things are done around here. this is a long weekend, so i'll post more later.

"são paulo é um cinzeiro"

.."são paulo is an ashtray", or at least that's what the graffiti said as I rode from GRU to my new home. Mattheus, a PhD student from my lab and a driver picked me up friday morning. I was pleasantly surprised to find that MAttheus speaks english. he swore that his conversation with me was his first time speaking english outside of the classroom, which was very impressive considering how well he spoke.

he expressed his sympathy that i had to miss the first game of the NBA finals, but that my lakers won the game (of course I prefer the cavs but lakers come 2nd). Mattheus said he's a lakers fan, but that he also likes the celtics. i explained to him that he was an anomaly, and that he shouldn't tell people in LA or Boston what he told me. he wasn't aware of the history between these two teams! he also likes Lebron, so cheers for the Cavaliers on occasion (also because they have a Brazilian player- Varejao. "He's not good, but he's Brazilian" as m. explained). He took me to my new house so I could clean up before going to the lab. I have one of 9 bedrooms in a house, which is owned and operated by the family that lives downstairs. Rafael and Renata are the siblings that take care of everything, and their parents live here too. three other american students are staying here as well. it's very small but efficient and convenient.

view from my window

my little room
(that's my bed on the left, and also to the left of the desk is a small door to the bathroom)

mattheus came later to get me and showed me how to walk to campus, which is about a ten minute trip. the campus is HUGE but beautiful. it reminded me a lot of UHM- lots of hills, very lush and green, with buildings scattered around. we went to the lab and i met some of my coworkers, then we all went to lunch. they took me to a 'bbq house' where you pay about $8usd and have a buffet of things like paella, rice and beans, sausages, pork ribs, salads, etc. then you sit down and waiters walk around the whole time with different kinds of barbequed meat and slice off what you want. and it just goes on and on until you stop! it was great, and i couldn't believe how cheap it was.

we went back to the lab where I met Prof. Armelin (he was in a meeting earlier) and discussed some of the project I will be working on. It's really microbiology and a little bit of analytical chemistry from the sound of things, but I'll learn more next week. everyone in the lab is really friendly and many of them are excited to practice their english with me. mattheus promised to teach me the local slang so i'll be in the know. i realized after meeting with prof. armelin that i had no Brazilian money, so m. and i went to the bank. they were closed (at 3pm!) for exchanging money, but i got lucky because there was a guy there that wanted to get dollars for his reais, so we traded between ourselves. Mattheus' brother came to pick him up for a futbol game, so they dropped me off at my house.

i hung out for a little while until aaron (another american student) got home. we walked back to campus to meet up with blair, who works in the same building as me but lives elsewhere (still close by). the three of us came back to our house and hung out until emily and shaina (the other 2 american students) got home. we all went to the mall (um shopping) to eat and walk around a bit. i learned how to take the bus which is good to know. once we got home, we headed down to a bar on the corner to have a few beers and hang out. the music was great and people would just stand up and dance when something good was playing. apparently learning to samba is very difficult! not sure how much dancing i'll be able to do. after not sleeping much, I slept for 11 hours last night until..

i remembered i told blair to come over at noon, so i got up and got ready. when i went outside he and rafael were talking, and the three of us decided to go to avenida paulista (lots of shopping and restaurants in a nice area) to walk around. it was a lot of fun because rafael is also learning english and he kept telling us how surprised he was that we were nice people- apparently many brazilians have the idea that americans are all serious! this of course is based on watching the news (cnn?) and seeing so many stern faces. he said we're more like brazilians than americans, which is fine by me. we had hot dogs for lunch, which were good but weird because they have mashed potatoes and corn on them! blair and i got milkshakes, and ordered the largest size (maybe 20 oz?)... both rafael and the girl at the counter asked us more than once if we were sure we wanted 2 milkshakes that size, didn't we want to share one? or get smaller ones? we were stern but amused, and explained to rafael that we were used to much larger sizes, so to us this milkshake was like a medium or regular. rafael couldn't believe that a girl could drink a milkshake that size, which (of course) i did. we walked around some more, blair bought a shirt (and amused some brazilian salesladies), and we came home on the bus. a guy on the bus was playing guitar and singing a famous brazilian song, according to rafael. if i had been closer to him, i would have recorded it! but we were at the other end of the bus.

everyone keeps asking "what do you think of the city?" this is how the conversation usually happens:

what do you think of são paulo?
- it's great! bigger than i thought it would be.

isn't traffic horrible here?
- not much worse than what we get in LA... and at least i don't have to drive in it here!

is the size of the city intimidating to you?
-only because i don't speak portuguese... i was shocked at how many large building there are here.

is it much dirtier/in worse shape/poorer than los angeles?
-not from what i've seen... it seems very similar to los angeles, meaning that there are rich neighborhoods with perfectly smooth cement and nice sidewalks, no graffiti or garbage, but there are 'neighborhoods of a lower socio-economic status (like my place in LA!) that aren't well taken care of.

what is different about the city that you weren't expecting?
-everyone is VERY friendly. i was expecting to be looked down on as a stupid american that comes to a country without knowing the language, but people are excited to practice english or they are amused/surprised when i try my portuguese. also, the cars are much smaller here than in the states, which i hadn't thought about.

and for those of you that are worried about my safety (coughcough*mom*cough), so far everything is fine. i haven't walked anywhere by myself, and rafael (who was born here) has let me know where it is safe for me to go, and where not to go. he said "our neighborhood isn't beautiful, but it's safe." sounds like my old place in boyle heights, so i understand. i know, i know- just because someone says it's safe doesn't mean i'm going to act like a jackass, so simmer down.

i read some papers once we got home, and hung out with blair for a bit. i think we're going for pizza tonight, which is supposed to be really good here. i think i should take a nap before going out tonight. this week is a short week, with a 4 day weekend so i'm sure there will be many interesting things to write about then.

tchau!