No a computador AGORA

(That means online NOW)

Guess what: we have a rat in the house! which should be in no way surprising as it's next to a huge garden and is over 100 years old. This rat has provided far more entertainment than it probably should. Sally thought she saw a tail disappear behind the old-as bookshelf in our computer room when she was drunk on Saturday morning, but she wasn't sure. Then someone else saw it run behind the bookcase Tuesday evening, and last night in the kitchen, another volunteer and I saw it run from the hallway under the oven, then again from under the oven to a different part of the kitchen. What makes this lil' retelling amusing is that one of the grown men in the house freeeeeeeaked out when he heard about the rat and ran to his room. This prompted Sally and I, sick of the sheer boredom of going from a house of 30 to a house of 9 and desiring to take advantage of Brian the semi-pervy Irish guy, to run to the store, buy some random vegetable whose name I don't remember in English much less Portuguese, and fashion a fake rat to leave random places around the house. PROBLEM IS now they think we never had a real rat and are calling off the exterminators. OOPS I feel like a sheepish nine-year-old.

In other news, I'm working with someone new at the project, who's so much easier to work with than my previous co-volunteer it's almost unbelievable. Yesterday we played bingo for the full two hours and they loved it; turns out I'm actually working with elderly Americans. The bus stops by police have become a regular part of the trip home. I've been questioned every time but have only had to get off the bus that once. I've started bringing my ID.

My Portuguese somehow became somewhat proficient; I had a full conversation with a cab driver last night and can now understand my kids about 75% of the time. They call me one of four names: Leah (very rarely), Mia (again for some reason the translation of my name), Tia (sounds like "chia," this one means Aunt and is what I get the most), or Profesora (which rolls together like pfffessssra) when they really need my attention. I still get confused by no, the Portuguese word for on and in, which makes every billboard look really negative. NO Rua do Catete, no sua marcado local, no casa, etc. (Nao means no but sounds like "now" so you see where the confusion ensues?) Also, I recently learned moro and morro mean live and die, respectively. The children asked me vai a mora em Rio? and I was all like "NO what are you suggesting?!" For the most part, though, I'm maintaining a tenuous grasp on the language, preparing for my week outside the city when I won't be with English-speaking people and I'll need all the communication tools I can get. I THINK I MIGHT GO BUNGEE JUMPING during that time. But I'm not sure yet. XTREME Rio?!

Oh here are some pictures of things:

This is Flamengo Beach, where I run every day (or did at least until I did something silly to my leg).

A gorgeous picture of Luara, the 8-year-old love of my life. I let her win twice at bingo.

This is a random picture from my birthday. Fist pumps are big in Rio.

Too many parentheticals?

Hi,
The past few days have been really eventful in ways that aren't really interesting to blog about. (I know about the preposition-ending but it would have been more awkward to switch the wording, no?) I don't want to get behind, though, so I'll give the update on the birfday etc.

Thursday night was the celebration of my birthday/most of the group's last night/PARTYTIME. The group of 16 that I came with all went out to PizzaKilo (that's not the real name, it's not even a kilo restaurant it's a buffet, these waiters bring around pizzas and you can take a slice of whatever you want, I had two beef stroganoff pizzas among others, they also have dessert pizza which tastes just like when you put bread in chocolate fondue), then to Casa de Matriz, acclaimed by guidebooks as the most hipster of Rio's clubs. The last night activities were really sweet, two from our group organized an award ceremony with joke awards for everybody. I got made fun of for running the stairs to the beach for exercise. You all can be comforted to know I haven't changed much.

Anyway, a birthday in Rio allowed me to start drinking well before I actually turned 21, and drinks in Rio are STRONG, and my friends were generous so I definitely had the 21st birthday experience one is supposed to have. I got in from the club (I'm not really sure how many hipsters were actually there, I remember seeing a waify model but nobody here wears American Apparel so it's hard to tell. The DJ played some old Clap Your Hands Say Yeah I guess, but probs its label was a misnomer) at 6:45 and had birthday cake for breakfast.

Everybody left Friday, which made for an emotional, kind of hollow actual birthday. Anna and I went to the beach, and I had an acai, and in true August 1st birthday fashion it was hot as hell (WINTER IT'S WINTER HERE) but saying goodbye sucks. Living and working in a strange city with few people that speak English bonds people in a really unique way, and as much as I anticipated falling in love with the city and being indifferent about the housemates, I lucked into getting the best of both worlds. Also, the new people seem pretty cool and I'm fully intending to make the most of my next two weeks (ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS) in Rio. Then it's one week of travel (Paraty/Buzios/Iguassu/I dunno yet) and then HOME. I need a new drivers license.

Jesus Christ!

So I was one of the last people here to go see the huge Christ the Redeemer statue up close. My logic was that I had 4/3/2 more weeks so why rush it etc etc, BUT this is Max's last week, so he and Sally and I (and a boy that just moved in named Russell) decided a while ago to go Tuesday morning. Except... we went out Monday, so we all slept in, then Sally and I went to the beach until about 1:00, then Max made lunch, then we had to go to the bank so really we didn't leave until 2:30.

Christo is the highest point in the city, and the views of all of Rio are supposed to be amazing from there, so the best time to go is when the sun is bright and the clouds are few. Of course, we got there around sunset with a lot of clouds. The way to get all the way up to the top of Corcovado (means hunchback, descriptive name of the hill Christ is on) is with a special van/taxi that costs something like R$36 each to take you up, stop three times on the way, wait for you for an hour, and take you back home (in our case, all the way back to Gloria). It's quite a ripoff. We were afraid of missing Christ by daylight, so we only stopped at one of the helipad photo-op spots and only for five of the twenty minutes we were alotted (the bus driver seemed quite shocked at this decision).

I expected this excursion to be underwhelming (that may have been why I waited so long); however, even though we came at the wrong time of day and even though I've been seeing Christ peripherally for weeks now, seeing really large things up close is always gonna be pretty cool, and this was no exception. What's even more incredible that I didn't really anticipate is how HIGH UP this mountain is; we were above clouds, and even through the clouds, the view of the city from that height was really breathtaking.

PIXX:

No but it's, like, really tall up close.

The good thing about having pictures with the statue is it's hard, solid, evidence that I was in Rio de Janeiro if I ever need it.

Sally took like 100 pics of me with Christ when I asked for one. This photo's my favorite, because it looks like my head was photoshopped in.

The perk of going at sunset.

Shit

On my way home from work tonight, I got on the bus like usual and was sitting by myself (Anthonette didn't go today). The kids had been horrendous this afternoon so I was kind of exhausted/preoccupied; I noticed the bus had stopped but didn't pay attention to why until I was tapped and looked up to see three armed police officers staring at me. One of them asked me a question which I of course didn't understand. I guessed that he asked "where are you going" because I heard "onde" so I answered "Praca Tiradentes" which is where I catch the second bus. This annoyed him, so I quickly told him I didn't speak Portuguese which annoyed him even more. I then figured out that he was asking where I was coming from and so responded the next time he asked "Mangueira," the name of my favela. (It didn't occur to me to lie to this police officer, and even if I had the presence of mind to, I don't honestly know any less-questionable spots beyond the favela where I could have hopped the bus.) Anyway, the policeman then made me get off the bus, pointed me a spot on the sidewalk while the bus drove away, and thoroughly searched my person and my bag. I, meanwhile, was using my limited, limited Portuguese to explain that I was at the favela as a volunteer teacher (forgot how to say "teach" which didn't help) and that I lived in Gloria (which is a fairly nice side of town). Of course I didn't have my ID to back up my story that I was American (we were told not to carry it, even a paper copy, into the favelas) and of course it didn't help that I was carrying pepper spray. The whole time I was also terrified that the police (who are almost always corrupt) would just take my camera or expect me to bribe them just to get home. Anyway, the cops were eventually satisfied that I didn't have drugs (though the two other girls that got pulled off the bus definitely did) and told me I'd get another bus. When I asked why I'd been searched/what was going on, one of the police officers responded "because you're coming from Mangueira." Shiiiiiiiit.

BO-TO-FO-GO and Drinks at the Palace, Or More MBs Than Any Post Thus Far

UPDATE PART I: Enthusiasm

After a blissful morning at the beach, I went to my first professional soccer (futbol here duh) game Sunday evening. Rio (/the greater Rio de Janeiro state?) has something like 16 teams. My program director is a huge Botofogo fan; he threatened to kick us out of the program if we cheered for anyone else (semi-seriously). Botofogo is the team most middle and upper-class fans cheer for; all my favela kids support Flamengo, the team Botofogo happened to be playing against Sunday. The game was in Maracana stadium, the biggest stadium in the world when it was built and one of Rio's most famous landmarks. It holds 100,000 people, and I think about 36,000 were there Sunday.

Botofogo's colors are white and black can you tell. Felipe is in the bottom right of the picture, he has a lot of hair.

Anyway, I've perhaps never seen so many people as excited as these people were about their team. The teams have sets of cheersongs that literally do not stop from about an hour before the team comes on the field until after the game. (By the end even I could cheer along with them to most, one was to Unchained Melody. There's also a few men on drums the entire time.) They have about six of those GIANT flags and everybody is wearing the team's colors except when they take their shirts off as part of the cheer. People light flares all over the place and hand out confetti that they've made to throw, pick up, and throw again. It was total madness. Felipe had us sit in a particularly enthusiastic section, so we got the full experience. The men around us screamed and jumped and opened their mouths really wide and pointed us out if we weren't screaming or clapping (I don't know what they would have done if we would have sat down or stepped off of our seats). The high-stakes game ended up 0x0, and we were instructed to stay in because the nil game might induce rioting. (There was a riot at one point right after the first half; a HUGE crowd just started running and we ran with them, not knowing what was happening.) The point is, All-Stars, we need fans like these. Next year: flares at every game.

It was hard to remember most of the time that a game was actually being played; some of the men leading cheers didn't turn around once. Felipe told us that we're not there to watch Botofogo, we're there to support Botofogo.

Flares, confetti, and a man we stood by that genuinely looked like he was going to cry at one point because we weren't singing.

This video, which Blogger won't let me center on the page, demonstrates what happened THE ENTIRE GAME. This may even be a down-time.

UPDATE PART II: Elegance

Last night, it was my friend Shauna's (Alex and Aaron, that one) 21st birthday. Everybody had been wanting to dress up and go someplace fancy, so for her birthday celebration we all surprised her with drinks at the Copacabana Palace hotel. I didn't bring heels (I know right what was I thinking!!) but I did bring pearls and managed not to get kicked out for wearing flip-flops. I got a R$20 margarita and drank it in the Piano Bar, then sat by the pool with the other 20-year-old volunteers and tried to flirt with the men walking past in suits. The plan for my 21st birthday as of now includes a three-day bender, a group-rented room in the LoveTimeHotel (which charges by the hour... classy) and meat on a stick, so it's good the classiness is out of everyone's system now.

Da pool.

The group (ironically, sans Shauna) that busted all up in the classiest hotel in Rio.

My friend Max made a comment that the bartenders dressed up more for work each day than he had ever dressed in his entire life. In his defense, he did trim his beard for the occasion.

Afterward, we went across the street for R$2 beer at a beach bar.

Tomorrow: touristy pictures with JC (finally right?)

MJ in RJ

Tonight, I was walking home from the grocery store, and I passed a newsstand kiosk on the street with a television facing toward the sidewalk. I noticed as I approached that about nine or ten people were crowded around this newsstand TV and so I moved in curiously to see what breaking news story might potentially be so interesting. This group was actually watching the music video for "Beat It." One of the men in the crowd said "Michael Jackson!" and pointed at the screen.

I'll do a real post tomorrow about a soccer game and drinks at the Copacabana Palace but for now I just wanna upload pixx and maybe watch half of Weeds and go to sleep.

Things Brazilians really like:

1. Chris Brown's "With You." It plays everywhere; I hear it at least twice a day. Ultimately I think it will be the song that reminds me of Rio. Not samba, not favela funk, Chris Brown.

2. Key-making places. There's at least one kiosk and one store on every block.

3. Salgados, aka really cheap, really fatty snacks sold at every restaurant and every Lanchonette, usually in a deal with a pop for R$2. The salgados themselves are about .60-1.00 and are usually some combination of fatty breading/pastry, meat (hot dogs, sometimes chicken or ham), and melted cheese. I don't understand how everybody's not 300 pounds if all they're eating all the time are these snacks.

Mostly I just wanted to complain about "With You," which I heard about three separate times while shopping for a few hours today. I went to the craziest mall, Rio Sul, which is about eight stories of mostly upscale boutiques that are just beyond my price range all selling clothes that look similar, "going out" blouses and dresses, etc. It's extremely confusing because every store display looks the same, and they have no maps of the mall. I got lost about four times (a girl from my house got so lost last week when shopping with three others that she just took a taxi home alone). For the most part Brazilian fashion is just fine, but some garments I saw today were HIDEOUS -- there was a shirt like that sassy woman's "ethnic dress" on PR last week with what looked like fins on the side, and they're really into elaborate crossing bits of fabric that need to be tied. Anyway, I bought a pair of jeans (which are the one thing I desperately needed) and a bottled water. BIG SPENDER.