September 7: Brazilian Independence Day

Oi, tudos! I know it´s been a few days. I have been keeping busy trying to figure out what classes I want to take. So far on my schedule is screenprinting, an interactive design class, an editorial design class with lot of theory, and photography. Soon I will find a portuguese tutor as well. So I will have a lot to do soon.

The other students at ESDI are very nice and love when we try to speak portuguese. I´m learning a lot as far as understanding when people speak to me. The trouble is when I try to speak because the accent here is so strange. It is very nasal and there are actually two dialects here, the "brazilian" dialect which I know the best and learned before I came and the "carioca" accent, which about half the people in Rio speak. It´s strange to learn how to say every word two different ways and apply it in each situation. I get by in any case.

Well, on Thursday night some students took us gringos out to Lapa, where everyone goes at night to party. We had been there once before but since it was the eve before the Brazilian independence day, it was a lot more rowdy than usual. The next day we went to Ipanema beach where there were about 10 people per kanga (towel-like things they use at the beach, beach towels are for tourists). It had such a festival atmosphere with spontaneous singing and music playing and such. Getting home was a mess because there was a military parade and a peace demonstration on the street near our apartment. So a few miles by bus took us about 90 minutes. And today of course we took the surf bus to a new beach, this one was called Barra de Tijuca. It was beautiful there but not like my favorite beach Prainha.

Next week in school I will be printing on my tshirts in screenprinting class with my professor Milton. I will update everyone with photos of how they turned out.

Okay. Here´s what I learned this week:
1. Bon de ver - "it was good to see you"
2. I have been taking the internet for granted.
3. No matter how well I think I´m blending in, everyone still knows I´m a tourist
4. I was most definitely born in England (so people keep telling me).
5. Chinese food here isn´t quite the same as in America = ramen noodles and onions?
6. Brazilians don´t know what napkins are. For some reason they keep handing me tissue paper with my food. I guess they are trying to curb the deforestation of the Amazon or something.

Cool stuff I ate this week:
1. agua de coco - coconut water, they give it to you fresh from the coconut everywhere
2. acaí com granula - Amazon berry smoothie with granola on top
3. salgado - fried bread with ham and cheese inside
4. caipirinha com maracujá - drink made with sugar cane liquor and passion fruit

Homework?

Boa noite, tudos! Hello again from the marvelous city. Today is the first day I have done homework. All of us in the apartment are taking a screenprinting class and our first tshirt designs are due tomorrow. It´s really neat to see the graphic styles of each design roommate. So much inspiration. : ) An update will follow with pictures of our designs.

Anyway...the last few days we have just spent hanging around with the new girl from Germany, Karolina. She has traveled all around Central and South America so she knows alot about being in a foreign country. Her specialty is product design, so I don´t know how many classes we will be in together at ESDI.

It really seems like Brazil is my new (temporary) home because the shop owners around the neighborhood know us well by now and always wave and greet us when we pass by. We have a porter at the entryway of our apartment and he tries to teach us something new in portuguese every time that we pass through. Communicating with home is a little harder than I imagined just because Skype isn´t always working on the internet cafes around my house. Technology and Brazil don´t mix well.

My new favorite beach is this one we found called Prainha. It means "little beach" in portuguese. It took about an hour to get there on the surf bus which we take from right by our house. The beach is very picturesque and while it´s small it is also surrounded by tiny little mountains on both sides and a park behind it. But anyway the surf was crazy with waves coming in the bay from all directions, and three of us (Jens Um, Sebastiaan, and me) did some hiking to get a great view of my beach. Also, Jens Dois bought a surfboard so hopefully I can catch a wave eventually. First I´m going to bodyboard. Baby steps.

What else. Oh yeah. Our grocery store finally discovered that you can put plastic wrap on the meat and it lasts longer and doesn´t make the store smell of rotting flesh. Go SENDAS!

Mosquitos are horrible. Laundry is expensive. Chocolate is expensive. Jewelry is cheap. I bought some new Brazilian shoes. Exciting. Okay I´m rambling now so I will go back and play with my "flatmates."

missing my OSU family! tchau!

ps. check out my friend alicia´s blog. she is in argentina right now. muito legal!
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=184793128

Fotografía

this is sebastiaan. very funny cool guy. he is from antwerp and made some fabulous spaghetti sauce to go with the meatballs krista and i made.

the amazing view from our apartment!
if you look out kristas window you can see the cristo redentor statue of jesus all lit up at night.

the jenses from schwabisch gmund, germany, on ipanema beach. jens dois is on the left, jens um on the right. they are both hilarious.
sorry about the spelling, boys.

krista definitely not being a tourist.
this is a few blocks from the apartment. the location is perfect, we are in a cute little residential part of the city and the residents are getting used to the gringos running around all the time being confused.

First Day of School @ ESDI

What can I say...yesterday we went to ESDI and took a tour of the campus. It took about 5 minutes. The design part of UERJ (the larger university in Rio that ESDI belongs to) is separated from the main campus. And it is small. VERY small.

We came back today to attend some classes so we can finalize our schedule only to find that two were canceled, and the one that was not we went to 2 hours late. Around here time does not matter so much. Very hard to get used to.

Still, it was good to get a feel for the school environment and we talked to some students too. The second year students we met took us to lunch at a pay-by-the-kilo buffet restaurant, which we estrangeiros love because we can see what we will be eating. Also, there is a school cat named Diana and she and her kittens roam around the campus freely.

If you think that maybe my writing does not sound quite right, you are right. My English is getting worse by the second, thanks to the German and the Belgian influence. Portuguese is improving slowly though. Oh, also the keyboards here are different and for some reason they do not have an apostrophe key so I guess I will stop writing contractions.

Overall though, I am really starting to adapt to the carioca life.

I will leave you with some small bits of wisdom I have learned.
1. Potato chips are called a pack of crisps in Britainglish.
2. Traffic signals are suggestions.
3. Bikinis=Thongs

Samba and Phunk

So far we have been to a samba club and then last night to a phunk club. Samba was really fun and pretty easy to catch on to. Our Brazilian friends Leticia, Alicia and Maite took us to the samba club and taught us how to dance. It is really different here going out at night because no one is at the club until after midnight, and when we left at 5 in the morning it was still going strong. The phunk club was funny, they remade a lot of bad American rap songs with some trumpet and assorted other noises and that was apparently phunk. Guys here are really cheesy with horrible lines. Basically two minutes after you meet them they start talking about how you are destined to be together and something about the stars and marriage and the beach and they are so in love with you they will die if they can´t get your phone number. Interesting approach, brasileiros.

We are having such a great time hanging out with our roommate family, last night we made spaghetti and meatballs from scratch. I´m learning a lot about German and Dutch culture, which is fun. I am slowly getting used to the city, I think yesterday Krista told me I woke up without bags under my eyes, so maybe now I´m relaxing a little bit more.

Hmmm. Oh, Krista and I are going to learn how to surf. We´ll start with bodyboards and then work our way to surfing from there. We know a couple people who surf here already, and there is a surf bus you can take that stops at all the best surf beaches.

Yesterday there was some kind of party at the McDonalds near our apartment. There was a DJ and people were dancing...we´re not really sure. I guess that people get really excited to eat Big Macs here.

Okay enough ramblings for today. Até logo. See you later.

Deus é brasiliero.

My roommates woke me up this morning at 8 screaming that the sun is shining. Ha, we are really excited because Tuesday and Wednesday the it was overcast. So today we are going to Ipanema beach to hang around.

Yesterday Krista and I went to the supermarket to buy some cleaning supplies for the apartment. We asked an employee for a mop (in portuguese of course, no one around here speaks English that we´ve talked to) and she takes us to this aisle full of squeegies(spelling?).
We were confused because there were no mops so we just went home. Anyway, later we hung out with a Brazilian friend of our roommates who speaks English and he said they don´t use mops. They squeegie their floor like we do our windshields. He said he had only seen an American mop on television. Funny.

I´m having a little trouble with Skype because the computers in the internet cafes are usually really slow or don´t have the program and won´t let me download it. I will keep looking. Once school starts on Monday it shouldn´t be a problem.

Oh yeah and we have another roommate from Antwerp. He just arrived last night and no one even knew he was coming. So we are really crowded right now but he is getting his own apartment soon.

I´ve met a few Spanish speakers so it is really fun to talk to them instead of struggling with my Portuguese. Anyway Portuguese is coming along slowly, I am the best of all the roommates, but that isn´t saying much.

There is a saying here Deus é brasiliero. It means that God is Brazilian, which is why he gave Brazil such beautiful places.

Alright well I miss you all! Love you Mom and Dad!

Estou aqui!

Hey all! I arrived safely after a 9.5 hour flight from Atlanta. Things were great the first day, we had our Brazilian friend Maite pick us up from the airport and then her boyfriend from Germany who is here visiting (who studied at OSU as well) took us around. We met our roommates, two German designers, both named Jens. So now I am learning a little German along with my portuguese. Our apartament is sort of crazy right now, because there is a student from Belgium and one from the Netherlands who are squatting there until they fly home later this week.

Anyway...it is so beautiful here, we spent the afternoon on Ipanema beach and hung around with the Jenses. My favorite part of this place so far is that you can buy everything you need right on the beach. And it is really pretty cheap too.

One more thing, we went to the supermarket yesterday and I realized they don´t have fresh milk. They keep it warm in these cardboard box packages (ew). So my roommates know how sad I am. I guess I will have to find a new favorite drink.

Tchau!