Minha Vida no Brasil: Its only kind of beginning to look alot like Christmas

The weekend before last was Black Awareness Day, or something along the lines of that. Anyways, because capoeira came from the African slaves when they were brought here a long time ago, the capoeira group that I am with did a bunch of demonstrations in the city here. It was really fun to spend time with the capoeira people, and super interesting to learn some of the history, although I’ll admit I didn’t understand all of it. As we did the demonstrations, the capoeira master would sing call and repeat songs about the history of capoeira, and then tell the story of how it evolved to be what it is today. By the end of the 3^rd demonstration, I think that I understand quite a bit of the history and origins.

On Thursday night, we did a demonstration at the university in town here. First an African drumming group did some drumming show, and then we did a capoeira ‘roda’, what it’s called when you make a circle, play berimbau( the main instrument, which looks like a bow for a bow and arrow, and you play it by hitting the wire with a thin stick of bamboo) , drums and tambourines, and play capoiera in the middle. They used me as an example of an awesome student who has learnt a lot in a month, which I have to say, I was super nervous to do capoeira in front of a huge crowd, but it made me happy that they let me play, and weren’t just embarrassed that I went there with them. I guess one of the things that I like best about my capoeira group is that they are really accepting of everyone, and don’t have any problems letting people of all levels perform and play.

Friday, we did another demonstration at a church outside of town. There was a special mass at night for Black awareness day, and there was also African drumming there. We performed after the mass, and then Livia, a girl who is really good at capoeira, invited me to go to samba night with her. So, as Brazilians normally do, we went out around 12:30, and had a good time dancing, well, in my case, trying to dance samba, with a live band. There is pretty much always live music where people go out, I will definitely miss that when I go back to Canada; here people expect live music whenever they go out, even most restaurants have live music on weekends.

Saturday morning, another demonstration at the big church downtown here. It was really hot out, as normal, but still enjoyable to do capoeira. In the afternoon, the people from the African drumming, and the capoeira group were invited to a free Jongo class, which is African dancing. So, I went there, and learned how to jongo! It was really fun, and not even that difficult. One thing that I really enjoy about capoeira and jongo, is that with just a few instruments, the entire music and rhythm base for them is created, and then vocals usually tell a story as people are dancing to it. It’s really neat how this type of music is such a part of the culture here. Saturday night, the capoeira people had a churrasco (barbeque) and it was really interesting to go there. Basically, when they get together, they cook a bunch of meat, and typical churrasco food, like bread with creamy tomato sauce, and rice with farofa, and play capoeira music all night. I learned how to play an instrument with is kind of like cowbells, and I kind of learned how to play the berimbau, but I will definitely need some more practice. The simplicity of playing music all night with a bunch of fun people was really neat, and for me showed a lot about the culture of the medium to lower class people of Brazil, who do not need to spend a lot of money, or go out to have a good time.

Sunday, I went to the city to watch Harry Potter with Erin, my friend from LA. It was awesome, and also, great to hang out with someone who understands, and speaks English.

During the week, I’ve been going to the farm with Vinicius quite often, and still doing ballroom dance twice a week. As of this week, I’m officially done school until February or March, so summer holidays are here. I don’t know if this is totally good, because at least with school, I had something to do each day. However, I think that I will be able to find things to do. Going to the club to swim, or window shopping always seem to occupy my time well. It’s getting a lot more hot here, and humid too. It’s getting up past 30 degrees often, the heat is quite unbearable at times, making me want to just hidein my air conditioning.

Renata and I put up a Christmas tree (fake, of course) here the other day. I have to say, it was the weirdest thing to be decorating a Christmas tree with shorts on, in heat like this. Christmas here is pretty much a copy of North American Christmas, people like to coordinate all their decorations, and all the stores have decorations in their windows now. I can’t imagine how different Christmas is going to be without snow, and no cold.