The First Week

So, remember how I was saying that my blank stare was becoming my most popular look?


"Como foi o vol?" Mae asked me. She kept repeating it until I used my French skills to guess what she meant. Como sounds like comment, vol sounds like voler, I know that o was an article, and I went out on a limb and guess what foi was went or something like that. And somehow, I was right. So I passed the first test. By the skin of my teeth.


We left the airport (Pai [pronounced like pie] went back to work) and I was treated to a first-hand show of how Brazilians drive. Mãe [which is Mom in Portuguese - Jeanne said just to call her Mãe (pronounced like my], and I had no qualms about doing so because it wasn't a word I had already associated anything with) was making all kinds of illegal turns and going the wrong way on one-way streets. And of course nobody wears seatbelts in the backseat, so the buckle was under the seat and I was in the middle holding on for dear life. 


It was fun.


Fortaleza (For-tah-lay-zuh) is a medium-sized city, with about 2.2 million people. Of course, to me it's gigantic, coming from the small Maryland town that I come from with anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 people. I immediately had my country-boy complex, staring upwards at tall buildings and fighting the feeling of induced vertigo. Mãe and Bella talked about landmarks and important buildings as we passed them, but I wasn't really listening - partly because I was getting used to her accent, and partly because I was too enthralled by the tall buildings and all the new surroundings. 

View of my school from my bedroom window

We got to my apartment complex, which is right across the street from my school. That's a happy thought. 


Then I immediately shelled out some money for a uniform, which we got across the street at the school store. The changing room was kind of open, as it was just a curtain and rod and the curtain didn't go all the way across on either direction and yeah. Privacy is a luxury.


Then I Skyped my mother. It's so much cheaper than calling - if you have the option to do this, do it. It was then that I figured out that the time difference in Brazil from EST is one hour, except for during DST, in which Brazil is two hours ahead - I suppose Brazil decided that because it's a equatorial country, the change in the hour doesn't affect the time the sun rises or sets, so they just nixed it. Good thinking, Brazil. Way to not make your citizens lose an hour of sleep as soon as school starts. Ten points for being smart. ^^


Then we went for "dinner". I suppose they thought it would be a good idea to ease me into Brazil by giving me American food, so we went to a place called "The Burgers on the Table". I said that didn't make sense. Bella got mad (it doesn't need to, she said) and Mãe said that it made sense to them. I still held my position that it didn't make any sense. 


In hindsight, that was pretty obstinate of me.


Anyway, upon ordering I was surprised to find that the cost of a simple burger was anywhere from 16 to 20 reals (pronounced hay-eyes). Mãe explained that things in Brazil were more expensive than in the US even with the exchange rate. 


Awesome.


So we ordered and got drinks - they only had soda, which I didn't like, so I tried this new Brazilian soda called Guaraná. I decided I liked the flavor, but I don't like the carbonation, so I didn't drink much of it. During this time, Bella put the wrapper around her burger and began eating. 


Let me repeat. She put the wrapper around her burger and then began eating. 


I asked her, why are you doing that? In Brazil, she said, we generally don't touch our food with our hands.


Mind blown. Obviously, there's the unavoidable slip of the finger, but I couldn't process that. But, I got my sandwich and well, when in Rome...


After we finished, we went back to the apartment and I unpacked. Mãe had two gifts for me - a book with pictures of all the beaches of Ceará and a pair of flipflops with the Brazilian colors - green and yellow. They were a size too big, so Bella said she'd take me to get them exchanged tomorrow morning during the tour of the area that she was giving me.


I decided to take a shower, since I was in dire need of one. So I got in the shower and noticed a couple of key things:


1) The shower glass was entirely clear (so you lock the door...but what if you fall? Not likely to happen, but still : P)
2) There was no fan in the bathroom (but there was a window!)
3) There was no warm water (Mae explained that you didn't need a warm shower in Brazil)
4) The water smelled different (not bad! It just didn't smell metallic like the water I'm used to.)


Yay fun. The water was frigid, and it was probably one of the most difficult experiences of my life. I counted to three and forced myself to jump under, then died a little inside as my spinal cord tingled with the assailing pinpricks of ice. So naturally I jumped right out. However, I was wet enough, so I soaped and shampoo'd up, and then jumped back under to rinse off. The second time wasn't as bad, but it was still intolerably cold.


A few hours later, we hopped in the car and went to meet friends at a place called Coco Bambu. 

Bella, Me, Samuel (Lais's Brother, Lais)

When I was emailing my host family, Mãe said that she and Pai were really close friends with about six other families, so I joked that I'd have seven host families and not just one. We were going to meet two of those families. 

Lady Jane, Pai, Mae and Lais

Coco Bambu is a fancy pizza place/restaurant with the atmosphere of a beach hut...it was very tiki-tiki. Sand for a floor, wooden tables and chairs, you get the idea. Bella's best friend, Laís, was also there, and she was also fluent in English. Mãe said that she'd take it easy on me during the first weekend, but once school started (Monday D:) it'd be mostly Portuguese. 


I took the menu and immediately stared it down to see what I could comprehend. I'd like to say that I won against the menu and the Portuguese, but I lost, and that's kind of pathetic (especially since I knew I'd be here also a year ago...in hindsight, not a good decision). Bella and Laís helped me by translating different words. I decided on something called sucu de cajá to drink, and whatever pizza was ordered. 


The cajá juice was really good (sucu = juice) and sweet and kind of tasted like orange (laranja, also one of my favorite words to say). That wasn't so foreign. It was weird for me, of course - anything new tastes weird - but it wasn't so off the chart that it was difficult to register. It was comforting in the way that it was something my brain could put in the category of "beverages that taste like citrus". 

Lais doing...something

When the pizza arrived, though, I was shocked. Bella picked up her knife and fork and started eating. I sat there and stared in horror. Brazilians eat pizza with a knife and fork? Crime against humanity. Not really.


But when in Rome, do as the Romans, and I suppose I was a Roman from now on, so I gingerly picked up my knife and fork (the tines were different, I notes, and it was bent at a different angle...Rapha later explained to me that most Brazilian silverware was actually made in Brazil) and began cutting. I immediately noted, sadly, that the butterknife was much duller than the butterknives in the US. Who knew China actually knew what they were doing? Either that, or we didn't get sharper knives, for some logical reason unbeknownst to me.


Then came dessert, which I honestly don't remember. We kids spent the next 30 minutes (roughly) talking. In Brazil, eating is generally a social event, so people tend to linger. Restaurants don't mind, because it makes it look fuller and that's good for business (oh, a lot of people are here, it must be good! Let's try it!). I'm also a really slow eater, so I welcomed the prospect of not consistently being the last one left at the table.


Then we went home and I immediately went to bed. I conked out as soon as my head hit the pillow. 
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The next day I woke up early (7:00...it sucked) and lingered around the apartment (which isn't very large...minus the bedrooms and kitchen, the entire thing is only 10x12 paces. However, it was plenty big enough - you have to remember that this was my first experience with staying in an apartment building...I think I've only been in one apartment before) while I waited for Bella and Mãe to wake up. Mãe got up shortly after I did, but Bella took until about 9:30. 


How I wish I could have slept that long. 


We walked down Dom Luis, which is one of the four main avenues in Fortaleza, and was also 7 car lengths away from our apartment complex. Bella showed me placed to eat, shops, malls, churches, apartment complexes, schools, and the like. Coming from a town where nothing is higher than three stories and only one street is actually urbanized enough to have been called the market in colonial times, it was mind-boggling. My brain couldn't comprehend how much stuff was arranged within an eleven-block radius. 


Actually, I've only explored that eleven-block radius doing down Dom Luis. I know that one direction stops at the beach (8 blocks) and that the other side of Dom Luis turns immediately and goes into another section of the city which is more like a highway, but I haven't been down the fourth direction or the direction towards the beach. And at the time of writing this, I've been here for over a month!


Then we went to our beach house, which we spent the weekend at. It's about a half-hour drive from Fortaleza. The countryside of Ceára is very poor. We drove through cobblestone streets with large holes filled with water, past small huts and big, gated houses that people from the city like us lived in.


They house it self have me the impressing that it was mostly meant for sleeping in (there were four bedrooms, a kitchen/eating/TV room, and an auxiliary room off to the side), but there was a patio, a pool, a ping-pong table and several hooks for hammocks. 


Oh hammocks. My family in the US used to have a hammock, but it was made for Americans, I suppose (therefore it was an American hammock). The ropes were stretched in placed and it had a base - it didn't hang from hooks. My first experience with a Brazilian hammock (and I have no idea what a plain "hammock" is, so in the interest of being politically correct I'm just going to attach adjectives)? Slightly different. I sat down and immediately capsized, thus the entire hammock swallowed me up. Then I struggled my way out (which was much less difficult than I make it sound) and tried to find the center. Eventually, Mae took pity on me and showed me how to properly use a hammock.


We went to the beach (the sand was much finer) and I tried coconut juice (gross) and Brazilian crabs. They were very watery, but Mãe says they weren't that good compared to what Brazilian crabs are usually like. Whatever. Nothing beats the Maryland blue crab. 
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School was...fun. I went in with Mãe and they showed me what class to go in. When I opened the door, everybody turned to look at me. Like, who's the new kid? The person who escorted me explained and then everyone started at me wide-eyed and erupted into applause. Unnerved, I quickly took a seat next to the one person I already knew (we went to the movies the night before...she's the cousin of Bella's friend - her name is Alana). 


More on school later. 


Since I was already friends with Alana, I started to know some of the other girls. The other girl I was next to, Rebeca (heh-beck-uh), spoke very good English was was my go-to person. Behind me sat Sarah (something like sair-rlah), a girl who lived in Germany for the first ten years of her life and consequently spoke German, Portuguese and also had very good English. In front of me sat Amanda (ah-mahn-duh), a red-haired girl who also had good English and was, until I came along, the only lefty in the class. There was also Bea (Bee-uh), whose name I learned quickly because every time I glanced in her direction she pointed at herself, and another Bea who's very outgoing and also speaks very good English. There was one guy in the group, Augosto (uh-goosh-toe). In total, there are upwards of 44 kids. 


Around Wednesday one of the boys approached me (I wasn't feeling very social due to my lack of Portuguese-speaking) and introduced himself as João (similar to Joe-aun) and told me just to call him John. He spoke excellent English and said the rest of the guys were anxious to meet me. Well, then couldn't they come over themselves instead of sending a messenger? Ah, I'm so hypocritical. 


Raphael (hah-phai-el) came home Thursday night. His English isn't as good as Bella's but it's way better than anybody's at school. I'd go as far as to call him fluent. 


João asked me if I wanted to go watch soccer with him Friday night, so I went and met some of his friends and saw some of our classmates there. Not many people spoke English, so I just talked with him. But still, it was a start. 


I noticed that Brazilians are very friendly - I've read some of the other student blogs saying that exchange students didn't feel terribly welcomed into their communities. In this case, it was too much welcoming for me to handle - I've never been such the center of attention in my life. It was a little overwhelming. I'm glad that everyone was so happy and welcoming and open and willing to receive me, and I hope that I can leave Brazil with even better feelings than these. I might have to fight the immigration department about leaving too soon if this continues. Haha.


More later. 
Jake