"Spring Break"

OK, so the picture above was taken before my Spring Break trip. My school organized a "field trip" for exchange students to an old coffee plantation. The countryside was awesome and we got to play around in lakes/pools all day. 

Our first stop on the Spring Break trip was to Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais. I loved the town! It feels much more manageable and safe than Rio. The food in Minas is incredible and quite cheap! We visited several free museums and went to one night club before heading to our next stop. 

This picture is from Ouro Preto, a colonial town about 2 hours away from Belo Horizonte. We only got to stay for a few hours, but I would have stayed forever! The town has beautiful churches, a lively crowd of college students, and chocolate all over the place.

I present to you the world's largest rodent, a capybara. These guys are absolutely disgusting. Apparently, they can run as fast as horses. These that we saw were quite lazy and just bathed in the mud all day.

We left Minas Gerais for Bahia, where we stayed in Chapada Diamantina for several days. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

The water is black because of the minerals it contains. Despite the strange color, it is actually fresh enough for the local people to drink. 

Jeitinho Brasileiro

First of all, I promise that my next post will be exclusively pictures. I am currently on “Spring Break” and exploring the Northeast of Brazil with 2 Americans and 2 Germans. We have found ourselves in a small Brazilian paradise called Chapada Diamantina in Bahia. Getting here was a bit of a struggle. "Jeitinho" literally translates to "little way," but it is a Brazilian cultural aspect so strong an entire book could be written about it (and I'm sure one exists). Anyway, I have employed it several times in the last few days, sometimes successfully, other times not. I am going to have to explain in a list so I can make sure I am clearly recalling my memory. 

-We arrived in Belo Horizonte on a 7 hour overnight bus ride from Rio. BH is awesome; it is safe, fun and has amazing food.
-After a few days at the very cool Samba Rooms hostel, we decided to visit Ouro Preto, a beautiful colonial town near BH. The line to buy a bus ticket to Ouro Preto was 2 hours long. People were bombarding us in the back of the line with offers to take a personal car to Ouro Preto. We didn't think it was safe, so we passed. When we finally got to the front of the line, the ticket we wanted was sold out. One more personal driver heard what happened and ran up to offer us a ride. Fed up and tired, we took it. So Jeitinho. It was very pleasant and the driver was awesome. Sometimes in Brazil you just have to trust people. 
-Ouro Preto was one of the coolest places I have ever seen. A great small town escape full of nice people and beautiful churches. I'll post pictures soon.
-After the lovely visit we returned to BH where we waited for our 24 hour bus ride to Salvador. We arrived at the bus station excited for the long journey through the Brazilian country side. When we went to board the bus, the driver told us that we were supposed to board the bus at the other station (WHAT OTHER STATION!) Long story short, we missed our bus. We complained for a while to the company telling them that nobody explained anything about this "other station." Great Portuguese practice. In the end, they told us all they could do was let us sell the ticket to anybody trying to take the same ride anytime in the next year. We tried to sell it for 2 hours or so. A funny sight, Gringos running around the bus station trying to sell a 24 hour ticket. Obviously, we did not manage to sell it, and we probably never will. At the end of the day, we lost 100 bucks a piece. In the grand scheme of life, having this story to tell is probably more valuable than that 100 bucks. 
-So how did we get here? We found some other small, less official looking company that sold us the same ticket for the same price. The employee working at the stand was about 12 years old, and the company only accepted cash. What's worse, the other big, official company had never heard of it. We didn't have much of a choice, so we just went for it. Very Jeitinho yet again. We boarded the bus in a strange place, not the official terminal. The whole event was extremely unorganized, but that's Brazil!
-16 hours into the bus ride, we found out that we were going to have to get off and transfer to a different bus somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Nobody told us this, but it did not come as a surprise. It worried us for a while, but it worked out just fine in the end.
-We finally arrived in Salvador and stayed for about 24 hours. Currently, Salvador is one of the most dangerous places in Brazil. We are only going back to catch a flight back to Rio.
-Right now we are in paradise. Yesterday we took a guided tour that included a waterfall, a beautiful view from the top of a mountain, a cave, and a natural pool that is as blue as the sky. Some of the best pictures I will have from my whole experience in Brazil probably will come from yesterday's tour.

21st Birthday Abroad

The question asked most frequently during the first few years of college is probably the same for many American students: 

"When do you turn 21?"

I always knew that my 21st birthday would come in a rather anticlimactic fashion. I couldn't help but envision several different scenarios. Some involved a night out with American friends who could appreciate the significance of the day. Another prediction was a peaceful and innocent evening with my Brazilian hosts. What really happened was probably impossible to foresee. 

I usually don't like birthdays, especially my own. In my mind, society has built into our lives an over-abundance of illogical reasons to celebrate being alive, and I just don't need any more gluttony imposed on me. So, in my greatest display of hypocrisy, I impulsively bought myself tickets to Lollapalooza in Sao Paulo for my birthday. 

Though thousands were in attendance, I spent the weekend away from all Brazilians and Americans. I was in a group of 7 people including 5 girls: a Norwegian, a German and 3 French; a Spanish guy and myself. We took an overnight 6 hour bus to Sao Paulo on Friday night, attended the festival all day Saturday, crammed all 7 of us into one hotel room Saturday night, went back to the festival all day Sunday, then went directly on another overnight bus back to Rio on Sunday night. 72 hours with no bed really is not so bad.

The bands we saw included Muse, Arcade Fire, Lorde, Vampire Weekend, Imagine Dragons and many more. If you have ever been to Lollapalooza or a similar music festival, you know that sharing any other details would probably not be wise in this type of forum.

My true birthday, Monday, began at midnight in the bus station. Not a single hour during the whole weekend passed without one of my friends screaming in my face, "IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!!" so I figured the celebration was over. When the clock struck midnight, the German girl, Isabelle, put a brownie with a lit candle in front of my face: "The candle is in the shape of a zero," she said, "because today is the first day of the rest of your life!" My new friends then started to sing happy birthday to me in their home languages. Finally, they threw me a present: a white t-shirt with notes written on the back to serve as a souvenir for my birthday weekend. 

What an amazing rush it was to have friends from all over the world put so much effort into making my birthday special. Throughout the day Monday I did absolutely nothing but reflect and chat with people from home. The combination of heartfelt messages from my lifelong friends and the ridiculous stunts from my new amigos was inspiring.

As a 17 year old, I decided to major in International Business because I knew it would give me the opportunity to connect with people from all over the world. Studying languages enables me to have meaningful conversations with millions of people. The great web of life is powerful. My birthday sparked the epiphany that though the world sometimes feels so big, it is really quite small.      

Linguistic Observations

The following observations may be entirely flawed/biased/incorrect. I would be doing myself a disservice if I did not at least attempt to document how my expectations and experiences regarding the portuguese language differ.

Last night, a girl kept telling me that I speak portuguese better than her. This was simply a joke to encourage me (everybody who studies languages knows how good it feels when a native speaker compliments you), but I think she meant my portuguese was "better" than hers because she heard me use the conditional tense, which Brazilians rarely use in colloquial speech. This spurred a string of thoughts about how my portuguese, which I have learned largely from textbooks, differs from the Carioca's.

1.) The following verbs are used not only everyday, but in almost every sentence. These are verbs that I hardly ever thought to use (some I did not even know) when I studied portuguese in a U.S. classroom.

• Deixar: to leave, to let, or to allow. 
• Pegar: to get or to catch. (this verb is just as overused as "to get" is in english)
• Tomar: to take, as in to take a shower or take some food. This verb is a perfect equivalent to the french "prendre." For any of you that have spoken english with Europeans, you may have noticed that they always say they will "take" a coffee or "take" lunch. This is slightly awkward for American english, but it is the direct translation from most romance languages (at least portuguese and french, but I imagine the others as well).
• Parar: to stop. OK, so this one isn't quite as common. I personally wake up to it every morning because my 1 year old "roommate" is always getting yelled at.
• Segurar: to hold, to secure. Again, I hear this one a lot because of baby Antonio.
• Pedir: to ask. I always thought "perguntar" was more common, but pedir is always used as the verb. "uma pergunta" is used as a noun.
• Ficar: to stay, to be. I actually learned in the States that Cariocas love this verb. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that it is indeed extremely common, much more than ser or estar (which also mean "to be")

2.) Cariocas never use the imperative! It is considered overly formal and intimidating to use commands. Instead of "pare" for "stop" they simply use the third person present conjugation, "para."

3.) The future tense is basically nonexistent in colloquial speech. Instead, to express an idea in the future, Cariocas always the verb "to go" instead of using the future tense. This is less concise in terms of word count, but is often quicker in terms of syllables. 

For example, a carioca would always say, "Vou jantar às 7 horas" (I am going to eat dinner at 7) instead of, "Jantarei às 7 horas" (I will eat dinner at 7). We do this in english too, but not as often as they do in portuguese.

4.) The present progressive form is much more common than I expected. Since I studied french before portuguese (and the present progressive doesn't really exist in french in the same way it does in english or portuguese), I thought this tense would be rare. I have actually found it to be more common than the present indicative, as it is in english. Ex: "Estou falando" (I am speaking) is more common than "Falo" (I speak). In french, you would usually just say "Je parle" to express either of these thoughts, although you could say "je suis en train de parler" (literally: I am in the process of speaking) if it were necessary to emphasize the continuous nature of the action. 

5.) I have met a few people from Sao Paulo, and their accent is vastly easier to understand than the Carioca's. To provide a U.S. analogy, Rio can be compared to a New York accent, and Sao Paulo seems more midwestern.

6.) The word "oi," which translates as "hi," really means "what?" or "yes?" more than anything. For example, if somebody yells at somebody else from across the room, the receiver will shout back "oi?" to get them to repeat.

I will share more later. As boring as this topic may be for most, I find it fascinating!