Finally favela

I literally have the house to myself right now except for the house manager and probably the house manager’s grand[son/daughter – we can’t tell for certain which yet]. Everybody else is going out tonight but I’m playing tightass with my money and probably going to listen to music and go to bed early. Seven weeks is a LONG TIME and running out of money in like week three would be awful, so it’s good that I’m conserving now right? Right? I’ll go [all] out tomorrow.

I actually started working with the kids yesterday. To get to my favela (Favela de Mangueira is the name), I have to take two busses; it's about an hour of travel through Centro (the downtown area) and then into the sketchier part of the city. I'm working in a library converted by the woman I mentioned in the last post, and the building is right on the edge of the favela next to the public school. So we're not really inside (BLOGGING BREAK: the he/she child is singing so very loudly/incomprehensibly. It's 11:04.) the favela, like some other people from my house are in their projects. This is both good and bad: I don't really have a reason to walk around inside so I don't get to experience it quite as fully, but of course I'm ostensibly much safer on the fringes. On Monday, we were given a tour of the favela; it was reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally incredible, built into the hill and just twisting up and up and up. The man who gave us the tour (Jefferson, who helped us at the school on Wednesday but doesn't speak a word of English) explained (through our translator) that every space possible is built up by people looking for homes. He also showed us some houses built by the government for people whose homes collapse due to poor foundation. He spoke with such disdain for the government, though, that it was easy to tell that the solution of temporary housing wasn't nearly enough. Huge chunks of the favela smelled very strongly of trash or feces, and we saw quite a few mangy dogs roaming around, but for the most part it seemed fairly calm (some of the others in the house have told stories of being 20 feet from cocaine negotiation or passing guards with guns aimed on top of sandbags).

Only four children came Wednesday afternoon (they're expecting quite a few more when word gets around that strange people are at the after-school program). They had a LOT of trouble with the English, so really we just went over "Hello," "What is your name?" "My name is" and "How are you?" Brazilian Portuguese doesn't use a lot of "th" sounds and their "s"es are usually said as an "sh" so "is" comes out "iz-zhuh." Even though their pronunciation was terrible, they were enthusiastic and making them repeat it over and over seemed to help. The two hours went really quickly (we also drew and played outside, photos soon but the internet is too slow for them right now) and at the end they all gave us beijos (kisses). The woman running the center then insisted on feeding us ham sandwiches and cookies. Tomorrow we're teaching from 9-11am, have a three hour break to spend in the favela, and then again 2-4pm.

New food obsession of the day: the barbecue chips here actually taste like meat. If you know me you know this is the most exciting snacking news of the century.