This April in Brazil I traveled with friends, with Rotary, visited new places in Recife, took tests, started taking Jiu-Jitsu classes, played soccer, celebrated my birthday and went to a wedding, among other things.
Easter break at the beginning of the month I went with my Brazilian friends Rafael and Lucas to Lucas’s Dad’s company’s beach house about two hours south of Recife. We three had our own air-conditioned bed room, and there was a pool and we brought a guitar and a soccer ball and spent four days there just chilling. One day Lucas’s uncle took us to the river and we jumped off the pier into the water, about a 10 foot drop. We weren’t sure if there were crocodiles or not, so we didn’t spent too much time in the water. Besides crocodiles, at the resort there was a wide variety of wildlife to admire, run away from or try to kill. There were enormous frogs that came out at night, lots of lizards, a gecko or two, lots of bugs, including a praying mantis, and on the beach there were tons of little crabs scurrying around, that we had scared out of their little holes in the sand.
The first day of school after break was canceled because there was no power, so I went to CBV to see my old friends. I took the bus back with Paulo.
The next day I participated in my first Jiu-Jitsu class in the closest gym to my house, called SOMA. It is 160 reais a month, but for students it is only 80, and it is a very good gym, and close to my house, so I joined. It is air-conditioned, has lots of classes, lots of treadmills, a luncheonette, a pool. And two of the trainers are members of my church.
Jiu-jitsu is Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you can go in the afternoon, the night or both. The only problem is I don’t have a kimono yet. But I am learning the moves. The type here in Brazil is Morganti Jiu-Jitsu, and it was developed by the Gracie family in Rio in the past century. I don’t really know how it differs from the Jiu-Jitsu from Japan, but the point of the fight is to immobilize and inflict pain onto your opponent until he taps out. You can achieve this with strangles and various arm and leg locks and I’m sure a bunch of other advanced moves that I don’t know. The fight is more about technique than brute force, so size does not matter that much, and my Jiu-Jitsu teacher is actually not much taller than me. When two jiu-jitsu masters fight each other, the fight can end without either of them breaking a sweat. The class starts with everyone kneeling in order of belt color which signifies your skill level. The master will say a few phrases in Japanese, and every time, you have to bow your head to the floor and say ‘Ons.’ The class goes through a couple warm-up exercises to improve balance and technique, then everybody pairs up and goes through specific situations that you would encounter in a fight, and finally each pair spars. When the class ends you repeat the bowing process and then shake everybody’s hand.
The next day, Wednesday April 7th, I met my American friends Lauren and Maddie in the center of the city, where I actually had never been before. I had been on the Conde Boa Vista, which is in a neighborhood called Boa Vista. The actual center of the city is an island called Sao Jose, and I had only been there once before, but just right across the river, in the House of Culture. This time I went into the Market of Sao Jose with Lauren and Maddie and bought postcards and a really nice hat, fedora style. We then visited the tourist information center and then walked around the shop-filled streets. I bought a bunch of stuff that I had been needing, like washcloths, earphones, sunglasses.
That weekend I met up with my friend Marcos who plays saxophone, in a bus station on the outskirts of Recife that I had never been to. Then we went to a school where a band was practicing, in a neighborhood I had never been to before. It was raining so I brought an umbrella. Right now in Brazil it is winter, and what that means, rather than a temperature change, is an increase in rain. So I will be needing this umbrella for my last months here in Brazil.
That afternoon, I met for the first time Lee, a guy from California who is living here in Recife and studying at one of the public universities. He is 22 and wants to eventually be a PE teacher. Hehehe. He is very tall. He was riding a bike borrowed from a friend, and luckily the bus driver let us bring it into the bus, which was necessary because the buses here don’t have bike racks. We went to Isabela’s to visit her and Erika. We swam in the pool, then Lee went to a Churrasco and I stayed and watched a movie and ate pizza with Isabela and Erika.
The next day, Sunday, I went to Church. I talked with the band about playing sax with them, but they have already been playing together for a long time and know the music they play, and I don’t. But they invited me to a practice session. But it would be on Friday, and I was going to be out of town that Friday. Later, during the service, I sat with a kid that I knew from when I used to do parkour. Like my little brother, he is extremely small for his age.
The following Monday, the 12th, the second round of tests began, the first round having been in March, exactly when I traveled to the South, meaning that I had to make up all of those tests in the “Second Call” at the end of April. The real problem however, was that I missed a bunch of tests on Friday, because I was obligated to miss school that day because of a Rotary trip. So, there were about four subjects that I didn’t do either the first or the second test, so I only took it during the Second Call, and this was because of the Rotary trips I took. It is unfortunate that it happened this way, and perhaps if I hadn’t traveled I would have gotten higher grades. But I still have the tests in May and June.
So, let me explain something about the tests here in Brazil. The test of each subject is only 10 questions, and a 6 or 7 is considered a good grade, and an 8 or more is more or less rare. As much as I have always hated and argued against homework, I am lead to hipostulate that these lower grades here are due to the fact that the teachers don’t give out homework. They expect the students to study on their own. But I know that in the US, the only reason people study is because they have homework, and the only reason they do homework is because it is part of their grade.
On Thursday I went to my old host house to pick up some things I had left there, and Laura, the one-and-a-half year old, hid when she saw me. That night I went to see a class of the classic Brazilian dance, Forró, but it was just adults, so I´m not gonna sign up. Some Forró is really good music, and the rhythm is deceptively simple. It would be really cool if I could dance it well.
So, on Friday 16th my host dad drove me, Julie and Laya to the pick-up point where we got on the bus where all the exchange students from the two cities from the north were waiting, after already being on the bus many hours in order to arrive in Recife. Then we picked up the exchange students from Caruaru and Garanhuns, finally arriving in Paulo Afonso, our destination. The point of the trip was to visit a Hydro-electric plant and see the Sao Francisco River. That night after dinner at the hotel a local Rock band came and rocked out on the pool deck for us. It was nice.
So on Saturday we visited the Hydroelectric plant in the morning and then we all got on a big Catamaran and went to a special place in the river where it is surrounded by cliffs and the water is nice and cool and 75 feet deep. We jumped off the pier and swam around with noodles. Despite all of these tiring activities, we later climbed up a ridiculous amount of stairs to see a view of the river, went back to the hotel, had dinner. I convinced one of the Rotarians to take me to see a bit of the city so we went to a bar where there was live music.
On Sunday we went to a park where there were some nice views of the river. The tour guide was a real sour apple. I fed some bits of popsicles to some monkeys but was warned not to touch them because they could have rabies. (Which is ‘anger’ in Portuguese.)
We had lunch in Garanhuns and I saw the Flower Clock, which is probably Garanhun’s biggest and only attraction. I received a t-shirt and a CD, maybe because of my birthday.
I celebrated my 17th birthday on April 20th, a Tuesday night. The next day, Wednesday, was actually a holiday, in honor of the Brazilian political activist Tiradentes who was executed for his actions. I invited the exchange students, my host families, Brazilian friends and a few Rotarians to a restaurant near my house called Bugaloo. I had reserved a private party room. I was very disappointed by a lot of people who said they would come and didn’t. But all the exchange students came except for one who got sick. Lee came, my friends Karina, Tarci, Erika, Isabela and Paulo. My Rotex Leo came, my second host Mom and brother, my Rotary chairwoman and my current host family. But none of my friends from Boa Viagem or my first host family came, and they used the distance as an excuse. The cake was chocolate, and I had bought little candles and stuck them in the cake. But as soon as I lighted them, the wind blew them out and I ended up blowing out just one candle. Everybody payed and my friend Isabela’s parents dropped me off at my house around midnight.
The next day, the holiday, I went to Aldeia with my Church group. There were about 100 kids, and a lot of my friends! I met a guy named Bruno, who is in the same class as my friend Rafael in Santa Maria, so it was a coincidence.
I only played one game in the official tournament and I had to borrow somebody’s cleets. The rest of the time, I played soccer in the dirt field, chilled or wrestled in the pool with a chubby little kid. Lunch was feijoada. Well it turned out that at the end of the day, my team was the champion, (Ironically, our team name was, “We Are the Champions.”) and I got a gold medal, and they elected me the smelliest player so I won a canister of deodorant! Having done nothing, I won two trophies! It must have been the luck of my first full day being 17. Then I took pictures with my friends and slept on the bus on the way home.
When I got home, my monthly Rotary money and a gift from my host family was waiting for me. They had bought me a nice polo, which was exactly my size. I wore it the next night to a Rotary commemoration of the April birthdays in the Pizzaria Atlantico, the same restaurant where I went with Andrea and Gida when they visited.
That weekend I went with my host parents to my host dad’s great niece’s wedding. The ceremony was in a fancy church in the center of the city and the party was in a party house in the extremely rich neighborhood of Apipucos. It was so fancy that the bathroom had ear swabs, mouth wash, floss, you name it. I met an American from Washington state named Hillary who is here in Recife for a few months working for non-profits. When she was a teenager she did exchange in Portugal, so she already knew Portuguese before coming here.
I met a college student named Gabi and the Rotex Leo Moura was there, and I introduced everbody to everybody. I ate appetizers, filmed the throwing of the flowers, danced to the live band, and stayed after my host parents left. Gabi’s parents took me home. I love weddings!
The following week I visited more new places in my city. I went to the Market of Encruzilhada, which is about a fifteen minute walk from my house, in a poorer neighborhood. I bought a CD and some new headphones, because the other ones had been hurting my ear. But I saw a barbershop that cuts hair for 5 reais, and the cheapest I had ever found before was fifteen! So, next time I cut my hair…
I went to the Conservatory of Music of Pernambuco and talked to the Director and she told me to come the next day to see Frevo and Jazz. I kept walking until I arrived at the May 13th Park, and I was impressed by its size and attractiveness. It is bigger than the park Jacqueira, which I have mentioned before, and it has various fountains and ponds, sculptures, statues, a track, bathrooms, work-out area and even a small zoo with various monkeys and birds!!! This park is near the center of the city and it was only a short walk to the Conde de Boa Vista to catch a bus back home.
The next day I went back to the Conservatory, and ended up getting there an hour early because of a mistake of the Director and when I explained this to her, she didn’t even apologize. I asked if it would be possible to leave my sax somewhere in the Conservatory so that I could play with the Jazz band, and she said no. So, there is no way I can play. I will just have to wait to get back to the US.
That night I had a physical evaluation and discovered that I am overweight; my IBM and body fat percentage is too high. So I resolved to start a sort of diet and get more exercise. For breakfast now I eat one bowl of cereal and a banana, at school I eat a granola bar and an apple, at lunch I am eating salad and a smaller portion of food, and I eat less at dinner as well. I am trying to go the gym Mon-Fri and run 20 or 30 minutes on the treadmill, and besides that I play soccer at school on Tuesdays and do jiu-jitsu every Tuesday and Thursday.
There are two other teenagers in my jiu-jitsu class, and they are pretty cool. This gym is the best in the neighborhood, so they are from upper-income families and what they talk about most is expensive name brand clothes like Hollister and Abercrombie and Fitch, expensive electronic devices like iPods and PS3s, expensive cars, pop music and hot girls. They offer to give me money so I can buy clothes or a PS3 when I get back to the US and then send it to them. Then they want to have a conversation in English so they can practice. The kids from my school are middle-income and they don’t talk about this stuff as much, and know much less English.
In my new house, I have already read three books in Portuguese. I read a long book of classic literature and two books by the more contemporary Paulo Coelho, who’s books are translated worldwide. Translating the titles, I read “The Alquimist,” “Veronika Decides to Die,” and now I am reading “Brida.” They all involve magic and involve similar themes, the author’s view on how the universe works. He is a good writer, and the chapters are short, which is essential for a good read. My reading speed in Portuguese is equal to my reading speed in English and I almost never have to use the dictionary anymore, so I have reached the point where I can read a book in Portuguese for pleasure.
As my exchange comes to an end, I have a few key goals that I want to achieve. I would like to get good grades on the tests, lose fat, visit the rest of the important places in the city that I have never been to, hang out with my closest friends I have made here, collect Brazilian music, watch Brazilian films, buy a shirt of my soccer team and souvenirs for my friends and family back home.
I will be leaving Brazil after the holiday of Sao Joao, on Monday, June 28, and arriving in the US on Tuesday, June 29. See you soon!
