All right, for this post I think I'll talk about some of the highlights of living in the fabulous city of São Paulo.
First off, crowded buses! Never get on the bus between 4:30 and 7:00pm. We've had that experience a few times. By the time you get off the bus your concept of personal space is kind of warped. If someone is two inches from your face while they talk to you you'll wonder why they're so far away.
I haven't talked much about the lady we're staying with, so here goes. Here name is Genô (short for Genolina). She's 74, and loves to talk about her family. I think she's a little crazy, and I think sometimes she ignores what I say because she thinks its in English or something. Whenever Jeff and I leave the house she asks if we're going girl-chasing, which is pretty funny. For some reason she keeps making chicken stroganoff over and over again. Before we left for Rio we had it four days in a row (two of those days were leftovers, but still....) then this Sunday she made it again and we've had another two days of leftovers. I used to love stroganoff but I'm pretty sick of it now. I don't think she's realized we're kind of tired of it. Other than quirks like that, she's really nice. She does our laundry for us (usually without asking, which is sometimes not a good thing) and tries to feed us more than we want, need, or could possibly eat (which has led to some pretty hilarious fights between her and Jeff).
Our schedule is usually class from 8:30 to about 11 in the morning, then around 1-2 we'll all meet up to go someplace. We've been to some art museums (my favorite exhibit was a life size statue of a blue whale covered in - you guessed it - blue jeans.) We've seen some really cool parks, and yesterday we went to Ibirapuera, São Paulo's answer to central park. We rented some bikes for an hour and rode around and it was way fun. I've discovered I can stand on the center bar of the bike without falling off. Hopefully someone reading this is impressed by that, because no one around me was. At any rate, I was pretty proud of myself.
Movies here are cheaper than in the US since we get half-price tickets with our student ID cards, so we've been to Transformers 2 and Ice Age 3. Tomorrow we're going to Harry Potter 6 (apparently we all have a thing for sequels....). Movies are either dubbed in Portuguese or shown in English with Portuguese subtitles. Transformers we saw with subtitles, but we saw Ice Age 3 dubbed in Portuguese, which worked pretty well since it's a cartoon and lip sync isn't perfect anyway. When we're in the mall at a movie theater watching a movie in English it's easy to forget we're not in the US, until we get on the bus and reality sinks back in.
First off, crowded buses! Never get on the bus between 4:30 and 7:00pm. We've had that experience a few times. By the time you get off the bus your concept of personal space is kind of warped. If someone is two inches from your face while they talk to you you'll wonder why they're so far away.
I haven't talked much about the lady we're staying with, so here goes. Here name is Genô (short for Genolina). She's 74, and loves to talk about her family. I think she's a little crazy, and I think sometimes she ignores what I say because she thinks its in English or something. Whenever Jeff and I leave the house she asks if we're going girl-chasing, which is pretty funny. For some reason she keeps making chicken stroganoff over and over again. Before we left for Rio we had it four days in a row (two of those days were leftovers, but still....) then this Sunday she made it again and we've had another two days of leftovers. I used to love stroganoff but I'm pretty sick of it now. I don't think she's realized we're kind of tired of it. Other than quirks like that, she's really nice. She does our laundry for us (usually without asking, which is sometimes not a good thing) and tries to feed us more than we want, need, or could possibly eat (which has led to some pretty hilarious fights between her and Jeff).
Our schedule is usually class from 8:30 to about 11 in the morning, then around 1-2 we'll all meet up to go someplace. We've been to some art museums (my favorite exhibit was a life size statue of a blue whale covered in - you guessed it - blue jeans.) We've seen some really cool parks, and yesterday we went to Ibirapuera, São Paulo's answer to central park. We rented some bikes for an hour and rode around and it was way fun. I've discovered I can stand on the center bar of the bike without falling off. Hopefully someone reading this is impressed by that, because no one around me was. At any rate, I was pretty proud of myself.
Movies here are cheaper than in the US since we get half-price tickets with our student ID cards, so we've been to Transformers 2 and Ice Age 3. Tomorrow we're going to Harry Potter 6 (apparently we all have a thing for sequels....). Movies are either dubbed in Portuguese or shown in English with Portuguese subtitles. Transformers we saw with subtitles, but we saw Ice Age 3 dubbed in Portuguese, which worked pretty well since it's a cartoon and lip sync isn't perfect anyway. When we're in the mall at a movie theater watching a movie in English it's easy to forget we're not in the US, until we get on the bus and reality sinks back in.
I've added a few things to the list of strange meats I've eaten in Brazil. I've now had filet mignon (that's not strange, just ridiculously good), ostrich meat, octopus, sushi, and capivara meat. If you don't know what a capivara is, go out and watch The Princess Bride, and pay close attention to the fire swamp where Wesley gets attacked by the Rodents of Unusual Size. Capivara's, which are the worlds largest rodent, are kind of like the ROUSs. Their meat tastes pretty good though. Tomorrow Jeff's taking us to an authentic Japanese Ramen restaurant he found in the Asian neighborhood, so I'm pretty excited for that. I'll finally get to try eating soup with chopsticks.
For my birthday I got my first surprise party ever. Jeff convinced me we were going to the mall to "help the single girls in our group buy some stuff" (the girls don't speak much Portuguese). I didn't realize it was all a setup, and even when the rest of our group showed up I just thought it was a weird coincidence until we went upstairs and bought a cake (I know I'm awesome enough to merit my own party, but I feel like I should point out that Rob, another guy in the group, has the same birthday, so it was kind a double party).I'd try adding some pictures today, but I left my camera in the apartment. Sorry I've been pretty lame about pictures. When I get home I'll have about a thousand to post on facebook and stuff and I'll trick out this blog like no other. Until then y'all will have to be content with the "trial version." Sorry.
The Lanhouse closes in 5 minutes so I'll end this post for now. This'll probably be my last entry until next Wednesday or so. Until then.
Tchau,
-Kevin
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