Carnaval!!!!

So I know that this post is extremely overdue.. but I have been EXTREMELY busy this past month but I figure better late than never. So for carnaval I went to Diamantina the state of Minas Gerais. This is a carnaval of the street in an old historic town of cobble stone streets and old colonial buildings. I went with two of my roommates and then some of their friends. Honestly, it is impossible to describe carnaval, it is just a completely different world. A carnaval of the streets means that the party is not one where everyone sits in the stands and watches the parade go by, but rather a bunch of small parades and parties in the street. In diamantina, the main event is at night where a large 'bataria' of 20-30 poeple play percussion instruments. The band starts playing at 7pm and goes until 7am, when you return to your pousada and eat breakfast. The pictures can give you a better example of the energy that is Carnaval.

I also went to a 'desfile' or a parade of the top Samba schools of São Paulo after carnaval. This is what is shown on Brazil on TV with the feathers, drums, floats, confetti and girls jeweled bikinis. This was probably the best parade I have ever been to. The pictures in the blog are in the end of the file.

Brazil-Carnaval (112 photos), by Briana Pero

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Sao Tome (60 photos), by Briana Pero

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.
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São Paulo

After the New Year, I decided to take the plunge and move to the Big City, teaching kids to read good and do other things good too...To pay the bills, I am currently teaching English in private lessons around São Paulo. A city whose traffic makes LA's seem like a suburb and suffers from torrential thunder/rain storms daily. This leads me to trapes around the city daily by metro, bus and on foot, spending as much or more time commuting than teaching. One newspaper exaplians the problem "Sao Paulo's financial district is so bad that vendors have started selling cold beer and snacks to motorists during rush hour. "

I have a class on Monday beginning at 7:30am(this is incredibly early for Brazilians who usually show up to work at 9am) and a class on Friday that ends at 10:30pm. So needless to say my schedule is less than ideal. After a week of this, I feel like Pinocchio, all I want is a real job.

Happy 2010 in Itaunas

HAPPY BELATED NEW YEARS FROM ITAÚNAS!!!
For New Years I traveled to Itaunas, Espirtito Santo with one of Barbara's roommates. I arrived safely after a 4 hour bus ride to São Paulo, a 2 hour plane ride to Vitoria, Espirto Santo, a 3.5 car ride from the airport to this village of 2,000 people (the last 20 miles of which was on a dirt road).

Itaunas is exactly what you imagine the beaches of Brazil to be... pristine sandy beaches, with hut-like kiosks lining the waterfront. Itaunas is a small village with huts and one super market, it is about a mile from the beach. One has to ride a bike over a bridge and through a kind of swampy area to get to these dunes, hike up and down a large dune and then choose from one of the 5 restaurant huts, walk along that restaurant´s lofted bridge/sidewalk to get to the water. It is seriously amazing there.

One night there was live samba band that played outside until 5 am. It is very hidden from the main tourist groups and only attracts a more hippy crowd, so the people here are much more relaxed in their manners and dress then the suits of São Pualo, which is great for a relaxing vacation. Since it is a lot more north, people are darker here also, much more people of mixed race.

To bring in the New Year, everyone in the town dawned white in typical Brazilian custom and headed for the dunes at the beach. At mid-night, there was the usual fireworks....on a much smaller scale and everyone sang a special New Years song. It was the most different New Years that I have ever experienced but one of the best:)

Mele-Kalikimaka Christmas

So I know that this blog is long over due, but this is the first free moment that I have had to write this. The best way to summarize Christmas in Brazil as HOT. The heat made it difficult to feel the holiday spirit. I have to say that one that the U.S. does well is Christmas. I sorely missed the commercialized frenzy of an American Christmas with decorated shopping malls, houses covered in lights, pumpkin spice candles, Starbucks coffee holiday cups,

Christmas here is not as big of deal and is a little different. First of all, Christmas trees do not exist in Brazil, thus everyone has fake ones, if they have one at all. Also, here Santa Claus (papei noel) is not really a magical person. Here families have one person dress-up and come to the Christmas dinner and give gifts to the children. Also, gift giving is a much smaller things here.

This year Christmas was at our house, meaning that on the 24th all of the family and closest friends come over for a dinner...that doesn't start until MIDNIGHT. In typical Brazilian fashion, though people were expected at 9:00, the first person arrived at 10:00. In total we had about 30 people over. Here everyone chats until midnight and at midnight fireworks went off and you go around to every person and wish Feliz Natal, and after this you start to eat "cena". It felt a lot more like News Years than Christmas, but was still a new and fun experience.

Famous in a Small town

So now I completely understand what Miranda Lambert meant by the song 'famous in a small town'. I appeared in the society pages of the local Santa Cruz newspaper, The Debate. You can imagine my surprise when my host mom called me while I was in Sao Paulo and told that I was in the newspaper, with a picture. After this paper ran, I seriously had everyone coming up to me saying that they had seen me in the paper. Well here is a rough translation (as it is my translation) of what the article said:

"Welcome, Briana, an intelligent North American who is in Santa Cruz with hospitality of Jorge and Selma Raimundo. A visitor and a graduate of Business Administration, who came to Brazil to learn the language. Secondly, she thinks that Brazil is a country of the future and that a knowledge of Portuguese will be required. She goes to the Ica gym and is learning samba, axe, and capoeira. Welcome Briana!"


Here is the link to the archived articles of the paper
http://www2.uol.com.br/debate/1494/index.htm