NEW life and NEW things

As the title of this post suggests everything in my life is NEW!!! I have done sooo many new things here in the last week that I had to share.

#1 New Family
I am now living in Santa Cruz Rio do Pardo. I have a new family who only speaks to me in Portuguese; a mom and a dad and two younger sisters, who are 15 and 12. On my first day with my new family, as all my new English-speaking friends drove away back to the city, all I could think was OMG!!! And here goes nothing, slightly wishing that I was in the car on my way back to Sao Paulo. But I am here to stay, so I figured that I have to make the best. As I began to unpack, I went outside my room and saw that Jorge(my new dad) was writing the names of all the things in the house on little papers and taping them to the different household items, covering the house in paper. It was soo cute. It made me feel so welcomed and started to think that I could do this. And strengthened my reasoning for why I need to live here in santa cruz for a while. So this is my new house. I have my own room (below) with a balcony, which is pictured above. I might be off in the middle of now-where Brazil, but I am in no means roughing it. My family has a maid that comes to the house daily. I live like a princess, Dona Leonor makes my bed, cleans my room, cooks delicious food and washes my laundry. (jac think about the next time you wipe your ass with your hand:) She calls even me to the Brazilian version of four o'clock tea, which a sandwhich spread that she puts out for me.#2 New Food I ATE MEAT!!!!(yes colin read that again) and I LOVE IT!! So this all went down last weekend when Barbara and her roommates and I arrived from Sao Paulo. In honor of me coming, Barbara's parents threw a big BBQ called a chorrasco(pronouced sho-haska). Where all your friends come over and eat meat all day long. So in Brazilian fashion I followed suit and ate the best sausage I have ever had ;) considering I have never had sausage, but this one is going to be pretty hard to beat. To get the festa(not a typo) started, one of the guests drove his car into the backyard and blasted samba and forro music off the huge speakers he had in the trunk. With all of the commotion and noise, it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to understand what people are saying. So mainly I had to sit there until someone speaks in English to me. I felt like the loser in the corner and unsocial because I could not talk and participate. But I still had a great time.

#3 A New Drink Further continuing in my pursuit to be Brazilian I also tried a new drink called a Caipirinha. They are made out of cashaca (a brazilian alcohol), sugar(the key ingredient) and fruit. They are really good; taste

like a combination of a margarita and mojito and can be made with any fruit. At the party they made ones oout of watermelon and lime, lime, watermelon, grape, and pineapple. you pretty much just crush fruit that you have and mix with alcohol.

#4 New Way to Drive

I drove stick shift today!!!!!! Barbara and her boyfriend taught me how in the parking lot of her grandma’s hotel. We had been laying out my the pool and as we walked to the car to go back home, she said… hey why don’t you drive. I stalled about 4 times before I was able to reverse, but I go the hang of it. So I practiced by making donuts in the small hotel parking lot. After about 6 rounds and only moving to third gear once, they said, “I think your ready to drive on the street”. I was thinking.. umm no way but what the hell why not. So I drove us all the way home. It is a lot easier than I had expected, but by no mean easy. I only got stuck once on a hill, but I think I did really well for my first time.

#5 New Language

So my life is carried out completely in Portuguese. If you thought I was bad at writing or spelling before... just wait. Now I have all these Portuguese words floating around in my head that I am desperately trying to remember further reducing my spelling abilities. But then I also have a lot of Spanish words too that I are coming back to me that only add to the confusion. Knowing Spanish has helped and hurt me. It helps because I can throwout words that I know, hope that they are similar that then get corrected by my family. It also hinders my progress because I have more Spanish ingrained in my head from years of lessons, so it is difficult for me to remember to use a new form for "the"= a, o, as, os instead of la, el, los, but I think that I am progressing well. not sure though. Though I can get by, it is VERY frustrating not to be able to completely express myself or explain things to my host family. Also, there are many times when they are discussing something about me(such as my Portuguese class) and all I can do is sit there and listen trying to pickup what exactly they are saying.