Sao Tome (60 photos), by Briana Pero

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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

The past month

So I have been in Brazil for about a month and a half now. The time has flown by so fast. This is probably because I have moved about a lot during this time and have not really stayed for an extended period of time in Santa Cruz. In this month, I have been on a cruise to Rio, made another week trip to São Paulo, spent a weekend at the beach Gaurujá, and managed to be in Santa Cruz (my small city) for Portuguese lessons.

I have to say that though I have been abroad before for an extended period of time. I am really missing being at home and in the U.S. during the holiday season. I didn´t celebrate Thanksgiving here. I was going to make it for my family but since I live in the middle of nowhere, the packages that my family sent of goodies and ingredients have yet to arrive..hahaha. It´s very strange to think that it is Christmas time here when it is 90+ degrees and humid. Also, the decorations are very sparse, since Christmas trees do not even exist in Brazil we have a small fake tree that we have decorated, but no one has lights up on their house (Kim, get your but down here, there are 192M people who could use our Christmas light stylings). Though on the main street in São Paulo the banks are putting up a lot of decorations, Santa and his reigndeer and the North Pole look out of completely out of place in such a tropical environment.


RIO DE JANEIRO
The cruise was really fun and relaxing. It was GREAT to see Barbara and be with the family. We went on the cruise for a 30 year college reunion of my host father. We travelled to Rio the city and then two beach towns in the State of Rio. Our first stop was Rio and since we were on a cruise, there wasnt enough time to tour the city properly. Rio is famous for its harbor which is amazing. It was spectacular to pull into the harbor with a 15 kilometer bridge in ahead and the city to the left. The weather was really overcast and cloudy so we couldn´t see the Christ statue. But then as we were docking the clouds parted and the Christ came through. Its so interesting in Rio to see this statue above the city of skyscrapers and shanty favella neighborhoods. (If you look closely at the picture below you can see the tiny Christ on the top of the hill)
We took a bus up to the Christ but the traffic was AWEFUL. There is a single road that leads up the 5 miles to a middle point where one has to catch a government bus another 3 miles to the top. This road is complete chaos because cars are parked on side of the road, shrinking the little space that there is, turning the street into a one way road. Due to the traffic we decided that it was faster to just walk. So now you have cars trying to inch their way up and down, and pedestrians weaving amidst the cars, needless to say that was a mess. Finally we got to the Christ. Unfortunately, the weather and cloud cover was really bad during the day, making it a difficult and cold visit to the Christ. The following is a picture of all the women in my family waiting for the bus to the Christ. I, being the foreigner who read the travel warnings about it being the ´´rainy season´´, was the only person who brought an umbrella.
The cloud cover was so thick that we were unable to see the best part about being at the Christ...the view of Rio´s harbor.The only part that I could see was the lake which is very close the famous beach copacabana and is the most posh part of the city.

This is view that one should see of Rio´s harbor from the top of the Christ:




And this is what it looked like when I was there...almost exact, no??




It was great to add another world wonder to my list, but overall the Christ was much smaller up close than I had expected and not as spectacular as the Great Wall. Anyway, I have to go back and see all of Rio. But from what I saw, the favellas are sooo poor. And the city was not as beautiful as I had imagined(though we were only in the outskirts) and covered in graffiti. But then again I did not have time to go to the main downtown or to the beaches/harbor and only saw this city, that is famous for its beaches in the pouring rain. But no matter what, they have a TON of work to do before 2016.

BUZIOS
The next stop we went to Buzios, a very pretty quaint town. Barbara and I took a tour boat around the area, where you get to see the beaches and jump in the water at different points.

The town is really pretty and full of stores with vacations clothes...I wanted to buy everything! I have to say that Brazilians are incredibly fashionable, and the vacation wear that was on display in these stores are AMAZING!!

GAURUJÁ

The entire city of São Paulo had a long weekend so Barbara, her boyfriend Mario, her roommate Célia
(a French girl studying abroad) and I, went
to Mario´s beach house in Gaurujá to relax and get some sun.The beach was soooo different from those in CA. No one brings a towel, everyone has a beach chair and
a beach umbrella. There are many kiosks along the
beach with drinks and food and everyone packs in together. The best thing is that you can get anything that you want while sitting down, I mean anything.

Vendors walk up and down the beach selling items from ice cream, caipirinhas, pastels (flaky pastry stuffed with either cheese, meat, or other combinations), dresses, bracelets... I mean EVERYTHING. The nice thing is that the vendors will advertise, but are not like Mexico where they dont leave you alone if you aren´t interested.

So I tried for the first time agua de coco from a real coconut that a man cut open with a machete and after you are done drinking the water, you can go back to the stand and the guy will cut the meat of the coconut out for you to eat.

SANTA CRUZ RIO DO PARDO
This is another picture of my house here in Santa Cruz, where I spend most of my days. Though I have traveled a lot, I have spent a lot of time here where I lead a rather simple life. I typically get up at 8am and have café de manhá, which typically consists of fresh bread from the bakery my mom owns and milk with Toddy (pronounced Toddi) a kind of olvatine time chocolate mix. I am home alone during the day as my parents are at work and my sisters have school early in the morning until almoço, or lunch time. The entire family comes home to eat lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day. I have rice and beans(different than Mexican) daily with some type of meat, they only eat a little bit of vegetables here.

I typically have Portuguese class three times a week. I walk one way either to or from portuguese class to get some exercise and because my host parents work so I cant get a ride. The dad owns a large construction store and business and the mom manages a bakery and butcher shop.
It cute, every time I pass by the bakery on my way from class and I stop in and say hello. My mom´s mom also works at the bakery and if I have class in the afternoon I sit with her for a half hour and talk while drinking my espresso or fresh squeezed orange juice.
But overall, here in Santa Cruz, I live a very simple and slow life, but its so strange that I dont waste time and get up rather early but never seem to have enough time in the day to accomplish everything that I want to.



SUMMER VACATION PLANS
This week is my last week of Portuguese classes and then summer vacation starts until FEBRUARY. I just found out about this and am seriously wondering what I am now going to do with all of my time. But everyone is on vacation, even my little sisters and some of the friends that I have met here too, so hopefully that will help me find things to do.
I am headed back to São Paulo this coming week for three days(Dec 14-16). A professor from USC is coming to arrange the MBA PRIME week in Brazil. I will be accompanying him and the USC Alumni coordinator on meetings with about 10 Brazilian companies/contacts that the MBA students will be working with in May.
For the New Year, I will be traveling to Célia´s beach house in Itauna´s, in the state of Spirito Santo, in the North East from Dec 28 to January 5th.
Miss you all!!! Enjoy the holiday season and cold weather for me :)

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.