Minha Vida no Brasil: January 2011

So, its been a really long time since I wrote, so this post may be quite excessively long, but here it goes:

A month or so ago, my phone rang, and someone asked me if I was busy for the next 4 days. As I’m hardly ever busy, I said no. Then, I was asked if I would hang out with 12 Taiwanese Rotarians wand translate from Portuguese to English and back for htem while they toured the area. How I succeeded with it, I have no idea- but surprisingly, I was able to translate for all the tours of the farms, community projects etc. that we went to. The first day, I went to a Rotary meeting with them, but thankfully they had other people to translate their presentation to the Rotary Club, I would not have been able to say all that they said in English in Portuguese, and besides, it was crazy hard to understand their English to begin with.

The next day, we went to the country club in town, to walk around the artificial lake. What would normally take 10 minutes to walk, we went a quarter of the way, in 40 minutes, because they asked about 30 questions about every different plant, or tiny thing that we saw, which had to be slowly translated to Portuguese and back to simple English for them, while each person took about 30 pictures per minute. After that, we went to a tourist place with a pool and some cute little monkeys to spend the day. Translating was fairly easy, because they all went their own directions, leaving me with just a few curious Taiwanese. That night, another Rotary meeting, with, again very thankfully, someone else to translate their presentation.

The visit to a rubber and orange farm was a lot of translating again, but by that point, I was starting to get used to it. At lunch, I had to translate all their drink orders to the waitress, which I was quite happy to be able to successfully order 12 drinks, and direct them to the right people in Portuguese. We also visited the a few children’s care centers for children that live in the slums, who go there to eat a good meal, get help with homework, do sports and learn to use computers. It’s a community project to keep them off the streets. In the new year, I am planning on volunteering there.

By the end of four long, braintiring days, I was hardly able to translate anymore, without speaking English to the Portuguese people, or vice versa. However, I really enjoyed getting to meet the Taiwanese people, and they were all really appreciative of my translating, which was nice. It was also a great opportunity for me to meet Rotarians here. I think I probably learned some more Portuguese, or at least might have improved my translation skills a bit anyways. I`d like to say that I learned some mandarin as well, but it still sounds like a jumble of consonants to me.

Guarana Fruits, which are a good source of caffiene, hence, are used in many energy drinks

Curious Taiwaneses

Monkey Piggy back time

I'm not really sure where the hat came from, but the Taiwanese love taking pictures and are really friendly

A water reserve between Sao Paulo State and Minas Gerais

The Group at a Seringuera, rubber tree farm

Hi-Tech (yes, that is his name) tries to karate chop to attain some agua de coco (coconut water)

But fails...

Saying goodbye

The weekend after that, was a Capoeira festival here in my city, and was also the Batizado, or Troca de cordas, or when people change `ropes` which are the equivalent of belts for karate. Friday and Saturday, I went to Capoeira training, and a demonstration at the big church in town, then I did an Angolan Capoeira course, which showed me how it can actually be a really violent sport, when/ if I ever get to that level. Sunday, I had to capoeira against the ‘master’ in order to gain my first rope. This involved me being really nervous, because you have to do it in front of everyone, then I fought with him, then he had to take me down, in order to get the rope. It was less scary than I thought it would be, fun actually.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=899ocsUTyCk

Here is a video of me ‘playing capoeira’

After that, I had chosen Renata as my ‘madrinha’ (godmother) to present me with my rope, so she tied the rope, which is grey, around me, and then I had my first capoeira rope.

Me getting my 'corda'

Pretending to play the drums :)

Me and Mestre _____, I dont remember his name

The following day, 5:30, I left to go to Parque Estadual de Intervales, with a lady from Rotary and her grade 7 and 8 classes. It’s an ecological reserve, close to Sao Paulo, where there is the Mata Atlantique- The Atlantic Forest. After 11 hours on a big charter bus, we finally got there, and had a long anticipated lunch. It was ‘cold’ there, in other words, I finally felt a desire to wear long sleeves, which was definitely a nice break from the infernal heat that my city is developing as summer strengthens. On the way there, I learned that in the 1700s, Portuguese, Spanish and French colonists started cutting the Atlantic forest which technically is a rainforest, to make farmland. They weren’t even cutting it to use the wood. They cut for 270 years, until in 1970, a law prohibited it, and still, as law enforcement is slack here, it is being cut in some areas. Initially, there were 1,233,875 km squared of forest, and less than 100,000 km2 remains today. It was deforested 2.5 times faster than the Amazon forest was during the same time period. The environment of the entire south of Brazil was changed by all the trees being burned. The forest used to cover all the way from my city to the coast, and therefore, there used to be a much more moderate climate here. Now though, it is at times unbearably hot, and has frequent droughts. I think it’s incredible to see how much of an impact mankind has made on an environment. The forest is home to 1.6 million species, about half of which only exists there, so there are many species that are at great risk for extinction.

It was an awesome break from the city to spend a few days in the middle of the forest. We did 45 kilometers of hiking up hills to the tops of small mountains, down valleys to see waterfalls, and spelunked through more than a kilometre of caves under the hills. It became evident to me that many private school kids here haven’t had much exposure to nature/ anything out of their perfect world of mom and dad and the maid take care of everything. Most of them were complaining after about a km of walking, saying that they were tired, or their shoes were dirty, or they needed a shower. I however, was thoroughly enjoying a break from the starkness of a city, and didn’t have a problem with getting a little dirty. Maria Lucia, the lady from Rotary who brought me there, and I were determined to find monkeys there, because the guide told us that he sees monkeys at least every day normally, so we got up early in the mornings to walk extra hoping to see them. We also got a small group of the least whiney kids together and the guide took us for another hike into the forest at night. It was really a transformation between daytime and night-time. During the day, relying on sight is easy, and small insects and sounds go unnoticed. Nighttime however, eyes glint in the light of the lanterns, and small sounds seems to echo around. We saw a coral snake, which until after we’d passed it, I didn’t know that its one of the most poisonous, baby tarantulas (thank god it was a baby), tons of other spiders and insects, jaguar poo and tracks, and a small wolf. The guide had grown up in the forest, so he knew everything about the animals, and was really aware of everything around. He showed us the strong pungent smell that a jaguar leaves as a trail, which freaked the group out a bit, as it would have been quite close when we smelled it. We also saw fireflies, and I tried unsuccessfully to catch one. The last day, we hiked to the top of one of the `serra`s which gave us a great view of the rainforest around. The pictures really don’t capture how amazing the view was.

Waterfall that we swam in- everyone was complaining about how cold the water was, however, it was as warm as the lake is in summer

Rainforest Lake

The 'dorms' that we stayed in

View from the Road to the Park

Big Leaf

Monkey Food- they eat the leaves

Inside a cave

I dont know the name of these caterpillars, but they burn you if you touch them, so I was scared.

The caves were very wet inside

Waterfall inside one of the caves

Spider almost the size of my hand!

Red Mushroom!

Drinking Bamboo water- supposedly bamboo acts as afilter to the water, and it is the most pure water found on earth. Tasted good anyways. Good survival tip too, I now will never go thirsty in the rainforest.

A jaguar climbed the tree once

I saw a dead snake on the road

I realize now why they are called bull frogs, they have horns

The room I shared with 3 other girls

Maria Lucia, Robson (the guide) and I

View from the top of the Serra

The next 2 weeks I spent cooking, baking, and trying to ignore the fact that Christmas was coming. I succeeded actually, until about the 22^nd when I couldn’t ignore it anymore, and felt the fact that I would be so far from my family for the holidays. I made soup, cinnamon buns Nanaimo bars, about 100 gingerbread cookies (with imported molasses that my mom sent me) squares and biscuits.

I woke up on the 24^th, and spent 4 hours rolling out, cutting and baking gingerbread cookies and houses. That afternoon, I made gingerbread houses with Junior, Julia, Bia, and her boyfriend. It was fun to show them a Canadian Christmas tradition, but didn’t quite feel the same as it would have in Canada. They certainly enjoyed it, as much as it was a struggle to keep them from eating them before they were built. After that, Renata and I helped get everything ready for dinner that night, and we decorated the garage where we ate dinner. Dinner included rice, of course, cod, shrimp in a pumpkin, and a Caesar salad, which didn’t really go with it, but was requested of me, so I made it.

We had dinner around 10 oclock, although traditionally it would be at midnight. Before dinner, we said grace and prayed for a bunch of things. Then we exchanged gifts, and I got a beach bag, some havaianas sandals, a dress and some exercise clothes. I gave people some Canada souvenirs, and some wildlife photos of Canada, which they really enjoyed. Around 1:00, we went to visit some other family, then everyone my age was going out to some party somewhere, however, I wasn’t feeling like going out, and was super tired.

Christmas morning Renata woke me up at 11:30 to get ready to go to lunch at Vinicius’s parents house. I have to say it was weird not to be waking up early to open my stocking, or for any reason really. At Vinicius`s parents, we started by singing happy birthday to Jesus, then they prayed, and sang a couple other prayer songs, then we ate 4 different types of chicken, and rice and pineapple. After lunch, we walked around town for a while looking for an ice cream parlour that was open, which, after walking 25 blocks we finally found. After that, I came back home, and skyped with my family, which was nice to feel like I wasn’t so far away.

The whole Christmas experience here was less of a big deal as it is in Canada, and I`m happy that it was really, because it allowed me to pretend that it wasn’t Christmas at all, and I didn’t feel homesick until after it was all over here. Also, the fact that it was 35 degrees Christmas day helped it not seem like the Christmas I know. I definitely missed my family a lot during those few days, but I`m grateful to have so much family that I love and that love me, which make me cherish the Christmases that I have had with them. I will have that much more to look forward to next year.

Between Christmas and New years, I went out everyday with my `cousin` here and her friends, which ended up turning me quite nocturnal. Since Christmas the earliest I have gone to bed is 2 in the morning, and I haven’t woken up before 11 in the morning. I resisted this change to south American sleep routines, but now I`ve accustomed to it, and it doesn’t feel strange at all to start getting ready to go out at 11, and to get home after 4 in the morning.