Sunday, October 18, 2009
Another Apology
I have been out of town and without internet, so I havent updated, and I have tests so it will be a few more days, okay?
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
A Third World Apartment
Today as I helped Edgar and Victor clean the apartment, I realized that I truly do live in a developing country. Then again... maybe it's just this apartment that is 3rd world.
Here in this apartment, I don’t have many of the things that I have taken for granted my entire life. We are without a washer or a dryer and if you want to wash your clothes, you either do it by hand and dry it on a line in the house or pay a lot of money to go to a Laundromat (Laundromats here are not cheap, so everyone in the household washes their clothes by hand- who does that these days?) We steal someone else’s internet and 65% of the time it doesn’t work. We don’t have heating or air conditioning. Dish washers? What are those? I almost forgot to mention them because I have been living without one for so long. Oh, I wish I was joking. We also don't have clean water, so we have to buy our own water bottles every day to stay alive. There are no screens on the windows here (I don’t think I have seen a single one since I came to this country). Our chairs are made of wood from the 1950’s (most of them are broken) and the beds here are broken. I don’t even have a bed. I don’t know what I sleep on, but it is somewhat comfy, so it’s okay. We are without a microwave as well, and sometimes the stove randomly breaks. We don’t even have a mop- we tie a creepy looking rag to the broom to clean the floors.
And yet I am happy here. I am happy washing my jeans in the shower and cleaning all of my dishes by hand. I am happy waiting days for my clothes to dry. I am happy cleaning the floor with a really nasty rag tied to a broom. I am happy without heating or air conditioning or a bed. I am happy to be sharing a small apartment with 5 other people (not counting the random guests who come and go and spend the night). I am happy to be living in a corner of a room which I share with two men who sleep in the same bed.
I am so, so incredibly happy here in this crappy, broken, drama filled Brazilian apartment. The happiest I have ever, ever been.
Here in this apartment, I don’t have many of the things that I have taken for granted my entire life. We are without a washer or a dryer and if you want to wash your clothes, you either do it by hand and dry it on a line in the house or pay a lot of money to go to a Laundromat (Laundromats here are not cheap, so everyone in the household washes their clothes by hand- who does that these days?) We steal someone else’s internet and 65% of the time it doesn’t work. We don’t have heating or air conditioning. Dish washers? What are those? I almost forgot to mention them because I have been living without one for so long. Oh, I wish I was joking. We also don't have clean water, so we have to buy our own water bottles every day to stay alive. There are no screens on the windows here (I don’t think I have seen a single one since I came to this country). Our chairs are made of wood from the 1950’s (most of them are broken) and the beds here are broken. I don’t even have a bed. I don’t know what I sleep on, but it is somewhat comfy, so it’s okay. We are without a microwave as well, and sometimes the stove randomly breaks. We don’t even have a mop- we tie a creepy looking rag to the broom to clean the floors.
And yet I am happy here. I am happy washing my jeans in the shower and cleaning all of my dishes by hand. I am happy waiting days for my clothes to dry. I am happy cleaning the floor with a really nasty rag tied to a broom. I am happy without heating or air conditioning or a bed. I am happy to be sharing a small apartment with 5 other people (not counting the random guests who come and go and spend the night). I am happy to be living in a corner of a room which I share with two men who sleep in the same bed.
I am so, so incredibly happy here in this crappy, broken, drama filled Brazilian apartment. The happiest I have ever, ever been.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Shopping Leblon on a Sunday
Here in Brazil, I am on a pay-as-you-go basis for my cellphone. Talking on cellphones here is extremely expensive compared to in the US and I need to put more money on it about once a week, even though I only use it when I need to, and calls here are never long (due to the price of a call). For example, when at home we always use skype to call other people’s cell phones and if you are out and about and don’t have credits on your phone you can forget about asking a stranger to use theirs, and you only ask a friend when the call is really important and short.
Today I woke up without credits and so I went to Shopping Leblon to put money on my phone. As soon as I passed through the sliding glass doors, I knew something was off. There were fewer people than normal, but that wasn’t the first thing I noticed. Everyone was wearing normal clothing.
Here in Rio going to the mall is an event, especially in Shopping Leblon. Every lady wears an expensive outfit, does her hair perfect, and makes sure everything coordinates just so. Every man is dressed sharp like he is about to go out to a fancy night club. And everybody makes sure to look at everybody else. I sometimes feel like I am going to the catwalk when I stroll through Shopping Lebon.
So to see people dressed normally was off putting. What was wrong? I ascended the escalator and noticed that every single store was closed. Oh, it is a Sunday, this makes sense. But, why are there so many people here then? I looked around to see couples looking into store windows like it was any other day of the week. They would point at items and converse about them, even though the store was obviously closed. In fact, the only open thing I could see in the entire mall was the Starbucks, in which there were quite a few of Rio’s upper class sipping away. I circled the second floor and watched as everyone there walked from store to store, gazing into the darkened displays leisurely.
How very strange.
Today I woke up without credits and so I went to Shopping Leblon to put money on my phone. As soon as I passed through the sliding glass doors, I knew something was off. There were fewer people than normal, but that wasn’t the first thing I noticed. Everyone was wearing normal clothing.
Here in Rio going to the mall is an event, especially in Shopping Leblon. Every lady wears an expensive outfit, does her hair perfect, and makes sure everything coordinates just so. Every man is dressed sharp like he is about to go out to a fancy night club. And everybody makes sure to look at everybody else. I sometimes feel like I am going to the catwalk when I stroll through Shopping Lebon.
So to see people dressed normally was off putting. What was wrong? I ascended the escalator and noticed that every single store was closed. Oh, it is a Sunday, this makes sense. But, why are there so many people here then? I looked around to see couples looking into store windows like it was any other day of the week. They would point at items and converse about them, even though the store was obviously closed. In fact, the only open thing I could see in the entire mall was the Starbucks, in which there were quite a few of Rio’s upper class sipping away. I circled the second floor and watched as everyone there walked from store to store, gazing into the darkened displays leisurely.
How very strange.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Days of the Week- Final
Saturday
I woke up at 5 in the morning, extremely happy. I pulled back my curtains to smile at the sun… oh, the sun hadn’t risen yet. As I waited for it to rise I played music and danced and painted my toenails and ate a small breakfast and left the house at 6 to arrive at school at 6:45, along with about 100 other international students who were dumb enough to sign up for a field trip that left at such an ungodly hour. We went to a farm in the middle of nowhere Brazil, walked through a rainforest that had huge bright blue butterflies, paddled on a boat covered with huge spindly swimming spiders, and swam in a pool and drank a little too much alcohol; including a “mix drink” that was merely cachaca and honey. Luis and I paddled a small boat around the lake they had and chatted and enjoyed the tranquility. Renata completed the extremely hard obstacle course (go Renata!) while Christian tried and failed at it twice. Luis and I looked at them struggling and he taught me a phrase in Spanish. “Estoy borracha, perro no penteja.” I am drunk, but I am not an idiot.
That night I stood by the lake, looking out into the night, when I saw a flash of light. What was it? My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I realized that there were fireflies everywhere. I grabbed Josh, my one friend who would truly appreciate it, and together we gazed at the fireflies, which made the hills in front of us look like they were sparkling. Later we walked out onto the front lawn on the farm and lay on the grass and stared at the stars for about half an hour. All of the constellations were different here in the southern hemisphere.
Once we got back my friends and I stumbled to a post on the beach and drank agua de cocos (coconut water- they literally take a huge knife and pierce a hole in the top of a coconut and put a straw in it). A bunch of Spanish people joined us and I came to the realization that even though everyone in this country speaks Portuguese, I would have to learn Spanish just to be able to understand the people that I hang out with. I watched Josu chain smoke. Pretty much every one of the international students from Spain or Mexico smokes cigarettes, but none quite like Josu smoked this night. As soon as he finished one cigarette he immediately grabbed another one and lit. It was fascinating and worrying at the same time, watching him.
Sunday
Cristian invited me to coffee at 7 pm. We went to the only Starbucks in Rio de Janeiro and walked around the city talking.
Cristian is seriously a cool person. He is a good man, a hard worker, and he is intelligent. He loves Mexico City and spent a lot of time telling me about Mexico’s history. He was once living off of Welfare with his mom in a basement and today his neighbor is Gabriel Garcia Marquez (he says her wife looks scary and has a beehive hairdo! Hahaha). He also lives in the same neighborhood as Carlos Slim, who was the richest man in the world last year. He says that Slim drives in an old VW bug. That makes me happy. We talked about everything, from our life stories to our past relationships to our future goals in life and next thing I know we are walking through the drizzle along the beach in Copacabana and it is midnight. We had been talking for 5 hours!
I woke up at 5 in the morning, extremely happy. I pulled back my curtains to smile at the sun… oh, the sun hadn’t risen yet. As I waited for it to rise I played music and danced and painted my toenails and ate a small breakfast and left the house at 6 to arrive at school at 6:45, along with about 100 other international students who were dumb enough to sign up for a field trip that left at such an ungodly hour. We went to a farm in the middle of nowhere Brazil, walked through a rainforest that had huge bright blue butterflies, paddled on a boat covered with huge spindly swimming spiders, and swam in a pool and drank a little too much alcohol; including a “mix drink” that was merely cachaca and honey. Luis and I paddled a small boat around the lake they had and chatted and enjoyed the tranquility. Renata completed the extremely hard obstacle course (go Renata!) while Christian tried and failed at it twice. Luis and I looked at them struggling and he taught me a phrase in Spanish. “Estoy borracha, perro no penteja.” I am drunk, but I am not an idiot.
That night I stood by the lake, looking out into the night, when I saw a flash of light. What was it? My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I realized that there were fireflies everywhere. I grabbed Josh, my one friend who would truly appreciate it, and together we gazed at the fireflies, which made the hills in front of us look like they were sparkling. Later we walked out onto the front lawn on the farm and lay on the grass and stared at the stars for about half an hour. All of the constellations were different here in the southern hemisphere.
Once we got back my friends and I stumbled to a post on the beach and drank agua de cocos (coconut water- they literally take a huge knife and pierce a hole in the top of a coconut and put a straw in it). A bunch of Spanish people joined us and I came to the realization that even though everyone in this country speaks Portuguese, I would have to learn Spanish just to be able to understand the people that I hang out with. I watched Josu chain smoke. Pretty much every one of the international students from Spain or Mexico smokes cigarettes, but none quite like Josu smoked this night. As soon as he finished one cigarette he immediately grabbed another one and lit. It was fascinating and worrying at the same time, watching him.
Sunday
Cristian invited me to coffee at 7 pm. We went to the only Starbucks in Rio de Janeiro and walked around the city talking.
Cristian is seriously a cool person. He is a good man, a hard worker, and he is intelligent. He loves Mexico City and spent a lot of time telling me about Mexico’s history. He was once living off of Welfare with his mom in a basement and today his neighbor is Gabriel Garcia Marquez (he says her wife looks scary and has a beehive hairdo! Hahaha). He also lives in the same neighborhood as Carlos Slim, who was the richest man in the world last year. He says that Slim drives in an old VW bug. That makes me happy. We talked about everything, from our life stories to our past relationships to our future goals in life and next thing I know we are walking through the drizzle along the beach in Copacabana and it is midnight. We had been talking for 5 hours!
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