Gaucho's Valeu

Tudo Bem?

This post consists of the rest of my trip to “Rio Grande do Sul” to present day!! So all those who have been begging for more, here you go.

Before I get started, as my time in Brazil has dwindled to only 20 short days remaining, I want to reiterate how much I love the people of Brazil. Not just Roberto, Rachel, Yagel, Nata, Rafa, Diva, Diva’s family, Ge, Stephanie, all my students, Meire, Carlos, Robert, and so so so many others, but also the random people I have encountered during my stay. I believe the people of Brazil have connected to the truth of the Gospel in the importance of being motivated by love, as seen in the greatest commandment of the biblical scriptures.

I also would like to give a shout out to Christ Episcopal Church especially the amazing sermons of Paul Walker, Dave Johnson, and Dave Zahl (http://www.christchurchcville.org/?page_id=289).

In Brazil things aren’t exactly backwards but they are backwards, parallel, diagonal, and all other ways around.

Amazing Things Backwards/Diagonal in Brazil

· Toothpicks: In Brazil one of the most magical little ditties is the fact that at every single establishment not only do they have toothpicks, but further, there are toothpick dispensers at every table. Although theses toothpick dispensers resemble an ill-designed saltshaker, the little hole on the top of the dispensers holds a vast supply of toothpicks free of charge or the embarrassment of attempting to work the plastic wheel toothpick dispensers where it has a 40% success rate.

· Brazilian Commercials: Brazilian Commercials are simply put amazing and weird. Imagine that every single commercial is the caliber of the commercials during the Superbowl. Since in Brazil the idea of political correctness hasn’t been absorbed everywhere like in America, the commercials tend to take risks on the side of humor. For example: http://www.barpubchat.com/2008/03/01/hilarious-brahma-beer-commercial/

· G Portuguese Slang/Interesting Words:

o Boneca: “Doll” We use this word as a joke referring to one another from time to time

o Palhaço: “Clown” My usual response if I am called a “boneca”

o Valeu: “Thanks” This word makes people realize that you didn’t learn Portuguese from a book but from the people

o Beleza: “beauty, cool, legit”; “Beleza” is used predominantly as a salutation.

o Tre: “very” This word is from “Rio Grande do Sul” and is used in place of muito.

o Cara: “guy, dude”

o Gato, gata: “good looking guy or girl” Gato actually means cat but in this case a sexy cat.

September 9^th

In the morning Diva and I took a bus to Porto Alegre together, before meeting up with Ge in Novo Hamburgo for the night. A note to all travelers in Brazil: make sure to grab a guide of the city or something of that fashion before you leave the bus, or train station as tourist information centers are sparse and hard to find. In our circumstance, we finally hailed a cab that took us to an open air bus company (which I have said many times and will say again is the best way to sightsee in a city as you have free transportation provided to you to everywhere you want to go) even though in this case the tour bus was completely booked. One of the workers was nice enough to highlight and draw on one of the tour companies maps some of the interesting places to go in the city (even though Diva went to college in Porto Alegre, she hadn’t lived their for many years). We ended up walking to a festival called “Acampamento Tarrapilha,” held in a massive park in the middle of the city. This festival was basically a representation of the Gaucho culture of “Rio Grande Do Sul” which is representative of Brazilian cowboys and cattle ranchers. Diva and I ended up convincing one of the men that owned one of the makeshift houses to share some of his home cooking with us, which to say was delectable. The head “Gaucho” also taught me the Gaucho handshake that is similar to that of the “strength and honor” handshake from Roman times.

The rest of the day we walked around the fair looking at the wide array of leather boots, cowboy hats (as well as official Indiana Jones’ hats), and many other items typical of “Gaucho” culture. After the fair we walked to the historic center of Porto Alegre, which was entirely made up of cobblestone streets. There were also many Brazilian Military History museums, since Porto Alegre is a main center for the Brazilian military. When we stopped in at a few of the museums, I found that some of the most cordial people in Brazil were the military personal working in these museums.

After a bit more sightseeing and walking around the city, Diva and I headed to the bus station to catch a bus to Novo Hamburgo to meet up with “Ge” and the rest of Diva’s family. Bus travel in Brazil is very affordable, and convenient, and is comparable to train travel in Europe. You can basically take a bus to anywhere pretty inexpensively; most of the busses are also executive buses where the seats are about the size of a first class seat on a plane. The one problem that arose was that awkward bus conversations are made even more awkward when the conversation is in another language. I attempted to make very, very small talk with the girl in the seat next to me, but after the first few basic questions; she and I mutually decided to simply listen to music on our ipods/cellphones instead.

When we got to Novo Hamburgo, Diva and I realized that we were at the wrong Bus Station. We had mistakenly bought tickets to take us to the old bus station instead of the new one. The problem was that none of the payphones worked around us, no one knew any of the city bus routes to get us to the correct bus station, and we also didn’t have a cellphone (on a side note, life is about a thousand times as hard without a cellphone, meeting people, picking up people from the airport etc.). Finally we found a working payphone, after the third attempt; Ge decided to simply drive to the station and picked us up as it was still only 30 minutes away.

September 10^th

The next day Ge, Diva, Stephanie and I went to another Brazilian state, Caxias do Sul, which is a 2-hour car drive north of Novo Hamburgo. We were going to visit the wine region of Caxias do Sul to peruse the different vineyards. The first winery we went to was a massive wine complex called “Aurora” which is the biggest wine maker in Brazil. At the beginning of the tour we watched a hilarious “cheesy wine video” in Portuguese, that basically was attempting to represent in pictures that “Aurora” wine was comparable to the artistry of Dante’s “Paradiso.” Although it was interesting to see a big winemaking factory, I was more interested in the smaller vineyards with a higher quality of wine. After the tour we drove to the nearby, Valle dos Vinhedos, to stop in at some of the smaller more boutique wineries. At one of the smaller wineries we went to, called Cordelier, I partook in an excellent wine tasting of about 6 of their wines. The wine from Cordelier was excellent, as it seemed to have escaped the tainted image of Brazilian wine, which is known to be very, very sweet like Welch’s grape juice. Ge even bought a bottle of Brazilian liquor which is comparable to an excellent tasting Tawny Port. The rest of the day we went to a few other wineries, and drove around the valley before making the trek back to Novo Hamburgo.

Later that night “Ge” decided to play a practical joke on me by icing me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icing_%28drinking_game%29). Yagel and I had mentioned this hilarious, weird cultural pastime to Ge a few days earlier where you buy a friend a Smirnoff Ice as a joke. When Ge handed me the drink, I literally was in shocked falling on the floor in hysterics. After the icing, I partook in some late night television and attempted to watch “Snakes on a Plane” with the sound fading in and out from Portuguese to English.

September 11^th

The next day for lunch as a thank you I treated Diva and her family to a Churrascaria/Pizaaria in Novo Hamburgo called “Hamburgo Grill Churrascaria e Pizzaria.” It was delectable, to say the least! Later that night Ge and I went to a local bar to watch the Gremio vs. Corinthians game. As I mentioned in my previous post Gremio is making a turnaround, but Corinthians is a team in the top 5 of the table from Sao Paulo. Most of the kids from the trade school support Corinthians as it tends to be a team that is more of the people. Surprisingly, Gremio pulled off a huge upset defeating Corinthians giving them their first loss at home since last November.

September 12^th

As I alluded to in one of my previous posts, I have been attempting to teach Ge certain American sayings such as “bold moves are made everyday,” and famous movie lines like “So, I got that going for me, which is nice,” from Caddy-shack. Although some of these endeavors were more successful than others such as using the phrase “bold moves are made everyday” in response to his Evil Knievel type driving maneuvers. One of the cultural lessons that Ge embraced was the “punch-buggy” game (which is a dangerous proposition in Brazil because Volkswagen Punchbuggies or Beetles are everywhere). The next morning, Ge, Ge’s girlfriend, and Diva drove me to the Porto Alegre airport; on the ride Ge had saved up 8 punches from his “punchbuggy” sightings which he promptly distributed at the airport before I said my goodbyes.

I would once again like to thank Diva and her family for being spectacular hosts. Ge, Rosaria, Stephanie, and everyone else thank you so much for dealing with not only one crazy American, but also embracing a complete stranger in my friend Jonathan Yagel.

After I said my goodbyes on my walk through security, a weird song and clap started; at first I was perplexed, as I was the only person, besides airport employees, in the security area. Did I when a prize? I eventually figured it out that the strange commotion was an impromptu birthday clap for one of the employees at the Airport, and sadly was not for me. During the flight I mostly reviewed some of my Portuguese, but during the landing, I pier out my window to see the vast metropolis that is Sao Paulo. I realized what a massive city Sao Paulo was as it is the 7^th largest Metropolitan area in the world with 18,850,000 people; it is quite an amazing site to fly over the city. Another interesting aspect of air travel in Brazil is the fact that the Brazilian passengers are in an unabashed hurry to leave the plane. Even before the “seatbelt sign has been turned off” many passengers were out of their seats proverbially putting their feet in the starting blocks to exit the plane. This is very peculiar, because in my experience Brazilians are so accustomed to the concept of lines and waiting, but I guess this is kind of restlessness falls into the same category as the insane nature of Brazilian drivers. Since I was not in as an unbridled hurry as the rest of the passengers, I was one of the last passengers to deplane. Instead of pulling into a gate, we had to take a shuttle bus to the main terminal. Since I wasn’t 100% sure what was going on, I decided to ask the man sitting next to me on the bus in correct Portuguese: if this bus was going to the main terminal. To my shock he responded, “Nao falo Portuguese.” This was a moment of pure hilarity/joy in my mind, and while holding back laughter of the situation, I asked him if he was an American, and then proceeded with further pleasantries. It turns out that he had met his wife in Brazil during Carnival 20 years ago, and he had come back for the first time for one on his wife’s relative’s weddings. Crazy huh!!!!

Roberto, Rachel, and Yagel were at the airport waiting as R&R had returned to Brazil the previous night. For the rest of the day, we (the reunited crew) had lunch at a place near Roberto’s old neighborhood; then we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to clean the pool.

That night we all attended the 25^th year anniversary for the Assembly of God Church near the school. This was a special night, Rafa and one of the Brazilian guys who lives in the neighborhood and helps out at the school, Robert. Robert and Rafa were both in a play and were also singing an English song as part of the festivities for the service. During the play the Christian song called “Everything” by Lifehouse blared over the speakers as it depicted the harsh reality of life in contrast to the loving arms of the Lord in Jesus Christ. This play was a Brazilian representation of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA. Robert played the Jesus figure in which was displaying the unmerited, all-powerful, agape love that the Lord has for his creation. Rafa played his role brilliantly basically as the addiction of gambling and the endless pursuit of money which tempts humanity as it wrenches all your earthly material goods away from you. This play represented the ever present fact of life that no matter where, who, how, what, etc. your life is difficult. After the play, Robert and Rafa sang the song “Draw Me Close To You” in English for the whole congregation. The sermon centered on Matthew 6, and also drew from 1^st Corinthians 13; although the sermon was completely in Portuguese, I am starting to understand the language a lot better and am able to get the main ideas and movements of conversations (but sometimes miss the details, but a lot of the time that is the same story for my English). The main point of the sermon was the primacy of Grace over the façade of Christianity and works, where the reason to go to church is not the music, the good looking people, or whatever, but you should “come to Church for Jesus Christ, and what he has done for you through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.”

September 13^th – Present Day Highlights

The first week of class after I got back was fairly difficult since most of the week Jonathan Yagel was sick, and no longer could speak since his illness caused him to lose his voice for a few days. Yagel was even sick on his Birthday on the 14^th of September. L But on a happy note both English classes threw him a surprise birthday party with a cake and even the singing of Happy Birthday in English and Pork-and-Cheese. That Tuesday night Yagel and I also partook in our weekly game of futebol with some of the adults from the neighborhood. Although my soccer skills have grown in my eyes exponentially, I did not play that well (even though I didn’t embarrasses myself, Which is nice!).

For the rest of the week, class proved difficult as many of the students are starting to understand the basics, yet any forward momentum past basic English concepts come to a screeching halt. That being said, there has been a dramatic improvement in many of the students which is clearly visible; in fact although class can be a difficult endeavor, I am re-energized when I see the fruits of Yagel and my teaching come to fruition through the excitement of the students that are actually understanding English when previously they would never have thought to have the opportunity to learn English.

Roberto had to return to the U.S. for business on Thursday till the next Thursday. So Rachel, Yagel, and I were left to fend for ourselves.

On Friday, we went to the small cafe in R&R’s subdivision to have lunch. While lunch was getting ready Yagel and I decided to shoot some hoops on the nearby basketball court. Shortly after, two Brazilians asked us if we wanted to play a pickup game. Not to brag, but Yagel and I took these kids to the proverbially house, or school. After lunch Yagel and I played futebol and futsol with the kids from the area for the rest of the day. Don’t fret I learned from my previous experience on the turf field and made sure to wear shoes. Since Yagel has been teaching me many different drills and techniques for soccer, I decided that should teach him some baseball skills in return. Although we didn’t get the chance to throw around, I plan to teach him how to throw a sinker, curveball, changeup, and hopefully a slider.

On Saturday, we had a game day for the students at the trade school where we played many different games like ping pong, 4-square, futebol, and other games to enforce basic English concepts. Jarrett, an American living in Sao Paulo is helping out at the school on the weekends decided to teach a class as well. This was very helpful to Yagel and I since he is fluent in Portuguese and he could accurately gauge the knowledge of the students. During the class, we incorporated an English movie to enforce understanding as well. After all the students left we dropped Jarrett off at the airport so he could catch a taxi to his apartment then went to a nearby mall for lunch. This mall was massive as it was previously a typewriter factory that had gone out of business for obvious reasons (computers if anyone was wondering). The mall even had an indoor amusement park complete with a Merry-Go-Round, Bumper Cars, a huge swinging pirate ship, huge arcade, and even a rollercoaster. After lunch we walked around the mall perusing the merchandise in the mall. We almost bought a memory card but the salesmen told us in English that it was 14 dollars, yet the price mysteriously changed to 30 dollars (guess it was yet again something “Lost in Translation”).

On Sunday, Rachel went into the city with her brother in law Carlos to return Nata’s car, while Yagel and I stayed at the ranch sleeping and reading. Carlos dropped off Rachel at the house around 5pm with an interesting story. Apparently “Hummingbird’s” battery, R&R’s car, was dead, and Carlos informed her that it wasn’t good for a car to jump it (I know not true). So she informed us that Carlos was going to pick us up early the next morning in order for us to get to school on time.

The next day, after the early wake up, when we got to the school I realized that my back was bothering me so I decided to lie down. For the entire day my back was darn right uncomfortable, but after a few doses of Aleve everything was back to the normal amount of dull annoying back pain that I get the pleasure to experience pretty much every day. We headed back to the ranch for the night after we got the battery in “Hummingbird” changed. That night Rachel, Yagel, and I continued our bible study on Ephesians that we had started that Sunday night. It was very interesting to see the mix of religious backgrounds that we all come from within Christianity and learn from each other.

On Tuesday, Yagel and I had a very successful morning class, since we decided to go back to the drawing board and heavily plan out this class; we also decided to work as a team rather than having a lead teacher and an assistant teacher for each class. Since it was a Tuesday, we had planned to play soccer again with the adults from the neighborhood, but since it rained all day they canceled the game due to the wet court.

Thank you all for reading.

Grace, Peace, and Love to you all!!!

Rio Grande Do Sul

Greetings!!

Tudo bem (Response: Tudo bom or Tudo)

In Brazil things aren’t only backwards but they are backwards, parallel, diagonal, and all other ways around.

Things Backwards

· Popular Styles: Although I am no connoisseur on the ways of high fashion, or any fashion at all, as the typical college male dressing code of a Polo shirt, SSBDs (Short Sleeve Button Downs for those uninformed) and slacks or khakis does apply in Brazil. Anything less than what is to be considered stylish clothes is dressing down. Nostalgic T-shirts that have been worn and washed so many times that they feel like magic on your skin would quickly be in the trash in Brazil over preference for the graphic tee, since these shirts with character no longer contain that new, fresh look. Further, (possibly due to a Brazilian band called ReStart pronounced He-Starch) bright, obnoxious colors are all the rage, on women and men alike. I have seen lime green jeans, purple pants, sky blue tops, fluorescent pink shirts and everything outside and in-between. I promise that I will not bring this new trend back to the U.S. and I will continue to wear Mountain Khakis, Slacks, SSBDs, old, flavorful T-shirts, athletic jersey apparel, Wrangler Jeans as worn by Brett Farve, and other.

· Airport Due-Diligence: Although Customs at Brazilian airports are no laughing matter, judging from Yagel and my first domestic flight they need to reallocate some of their resources to domestic travel. First off, concerning the shrewd individuals, in airport security, who have decided to sit in front of a device that emits X-rays for their occupation while looking at a obscured vision of your luggage on a screen were not able to use their detection skills to see the shaving razor that Yagel mistakenly left in his bag. After Yagel and I calmly waited to board our plane at our assigned gate attempting to pay close attention to the intercom announcements (although they were in Pork and Cheese), unbeknownst to us our gate had change. So when I was about to walk onto the gangplank towards the plane as I handed my ticket to the gate attendant, on a whim I decided to ask (in Pork and Cheese) if this was in fact the flight to Porto Alegre. To my surprise, since I had already been handed my ticket it was not. This flight was traveling to Porto Seguro, which is over a 2-hour flight north from Sao Paulo (and we were going to the southernmost state in Brazil to Rio Grande do Sul). I can only imagine if Yagel and I had boarded the plane and somehow, if our seats had been empty, we would have landed in Porto Seguro while thinking we were actually in Porto Alegre. We quickly got out of line then went to the correct gate or so we thought, and then were told to move again to another gate where we eventually boarded our plane to Porto Alegre. Wary to all who engage in domestic travel in a foreign nation where you don’t really know the language.

Things Diagonal

· Everyone Loves Dogs? Maybe too much in Brazil?: It is a pretty establish fact that most people in the United States of America love dogs; if I am wrong, and you are part of the dissenting few, please watch the film “Marley & Me,” if you are not weeping uncontrollably at the end of the movie then you simply are heartless. Well, in Brazil like in America, dogs are everywhere. The difference is here that there streets are filled with packs of stray dogs, as well as almost every Brazilian household having a so called guard dog which every time anyone walks by their households gate barks uncontrollably. I don’t know if they don’t have a pound here, or Brazilian dog catchers need a refresher course, but the howl of packs of dogs can be heard at all hours included with the hoof beats of horses and the never ending sounds of cars.

· Irregular Sized, Close-but-no-Cigar Children’s Characters (Such as an overly fit Barney): Although I have noticed this Brazilian trend of portraying things as “close-but-no-cigar” previously, during Yagel and my trip Rio Grande Do Sul, we saw a peculiar sight that verified Brazil’s inability to accurately represent, then copy items from American pop culture. My epiphany of this fact occurred in Gramado where Yagel and I saw a person dressed up in a “Barney” costume, handing out fliers and such for promotional purposes. The “Barney” we saw in Gramado was not an accurate portrayal of the real purple dinosaur because this “Brazil-Barney” looked like it had enrolled in a weight-loss program endorsed by Dan Marino because “brazil-Barney” was missing about 200 pounds of fluff. This skinny, shapely, fit “Brazil-Barney” was to be sure a peculiar sighting.

· Bouncers as Dancing Police: You Can’t Dance if (HOW) you Want To: Apparently in Brazil the long arm of the law controls the way and intensity of your dancing skills. When Yagel and I went out in Novo Hamburgo, my dancing intensity, moves, or who knows what exactly irritated the bouncer. The bouncer came over to me and told me that I was not allowed to cut a rug in that manner and that my type of dancing was not allowed in this particular bar; my reaction was to simply play the ignorant American card and simply dance in the same manner (however the heck I wanted). He came over to me again later, and reminded me that there were rules on one’s dancing intensity which I simply ignored yet again. The band “Men Without Hats” who had the hit single “Safety Dance” would have not approved (Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7movKfyTBII and The Glee Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG4WOUB3wB4). On a side note, “Safety Dance” was meant as a protest song.

· Roosters Crowing: Apparently roosters in Brazil did not get the Memo (about the TPS Reports), because in Brazil you hear roosters crowing at 3AM instead of when the sunrises (the crack of dawn). Apparently rooster’s biological clocks are yet another thing “Lost in Translation.”

· Bigger is Always Better: So Why is everything so small??? Although there is still a very prevalent American attitude of “bigger is always better” concerning food, size of stores, etc., in my opinion America has begun to embrace and appreciate quality over sheer size, and quantity (even though Costco is still the best store in the world.) The rise in popularity of Microbreweries, boutique stores, etc. proves to me that America has seen through the messy façade of size towards quality in the appreciation of the small town American ideal. In Brazil, this is not the case; the biggest thing is always the best. This mentality makes its claim in popular music, in the enormity of shopping malls, etc. The puzzling factoid though is that most Brazilian goods are small. They have small cups (which is so frustrating, because I would kill for a huge glass of sweet tea), small cars, and small this and that. Everything is still small here so maybe that’s why the bigger things are automatically associated with being better.

Things Parallel

· Late Night TV: One thing very similar is the type of programming for late night TV, worthless, mind-numbing television. For example, the other night I watch the movie “Snakes on a Plane” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4t6zNZ-b0A), which is so terrible it cannot be put into words.

September 1^st to Current:

Today, Yagel and I once again woke up at the trade school with Rafa (who we have been calling “boneca” which means doll in Pork and Cheese). Yagel and I decided to teach the morning class together, then during the afternoon class I did both of our laundry while Yagel taught the class, since Yagel and I were heading to Rio Grande do Sul the following day. Laundry, in Brazil, is a taxing, terrible process that takes an inordinate amount of both will power and energy. Although there is a washing machine at the trade school, washing machines in Brazil are basically large tanks of water that slowly oscillate. So what I decided to do was actually expedite the process by engaging in hand washing as well, by sticking my hands in the washer while it was slowly, slowly spinning. Also, dryers are an extremely rare commodity in Brazil, so one is forced to ring your clothes out to an inch of their life so that they will be able to be dried when they are hung on the clothesline.

As I previously alluded to Yagel and I were heading to the southernmost Brazilian state “Rio Grande do Sul” the following day. We were going to be visiting my child-hood live-in housekeeper, Diva and her family. Diva moved to Atlanta from Brazil and by a serious of coincidences she began working for my family the day I was born. Diva now lives in Atlanta and operates her own drapery and design business, but she has always been and will always be considered a member of our family (she even taught me how to ride a bike, by taking the training wheels off my bike and forcing my to ride it as I cried and whined like a little baby). When I talked about staying in Brazil for a prolonged period of time she decided to time her visit to her family in Brazil while I was there as well. Later that day Yagel and I played a game of futebol with some neighborhood kids then chilled at the school with Rafa the rest of the night.

September 2^nd

I taught the morning class and left Yagel sleeping because he had been up the previous night till 6AM working on a project for his former job at UVA, as a professor’s assistant. Although we had talked to Carlos and Miere many times that week about leaving for the airport at 2pm, somehow, yet again, it was “Lost in Translation” as Carlos came to pick us up to go to the airport at 12:50 instead. So Yagel and I quickly packed up our stuff, forwent showers at Miere and Carlos’s house, and headed to the airport. We got the airport fairly early for our flight so, we decided to indulge in some MacDonald’s; I had a BigMac, it was delectable. As I mentioned in the first part of the post, domestic air-travel in Brazil does not cater to non-Pork and Cheese speakers. [Same as above: After Yagel and I calmly waited to board our plane at our assigned gate attempting to pay close attention to the intercom announcements (although they were in Pork and Cheese), unbeknownst to us the gate change. When I was about to walk on the gangplank towards the plane as I handed my ticket to the gate attendant, on a whim I decided to ask (in Pork and Cheese) if this was in fact the flight to Porto Alegre. It was not. This flight was traveling to Porto Seguro, which is over a 2-hour flight north from Sao Paulo (and we were going to the southernmost state in Brazil to Rio Grande do Sur). We quickly scurried out of line, and boarded the plane where I was luckily enough to have a window seat on the plane as well as the aisle completely to myself.]

When we arrived in Porto Alegre, Diva was there to meet us, as she had flown in the night before, as well as her nephew, Guilherme. Guilherme (Ge), who knows English very well since he spent a year in Michigan toward an exchange program, then drove Yagel and I back to his place in another town called Novo Hamburgo. When we got to his place, Rosaria, Diva’s sister (Diva has an extremely large family, who are very, very loud but it the good sense of the word), Diva’s niece Stephanie, and Guilherme’s girlfriend all joined us for an extremely loud dinner where mostly Portuguese was spoken as Yagel and I searched the expanses of our mind to keep up and hopefully understand the main subjects. By this point, I am able to understand Portuguese well enough to get around town, buy things, and survive, but for mastering conversational Portuguese I still have a ways to go. I understand the main points of conversations and able to speak the language a lot better than I can understand it in the public forum. After dinner Diva shared some Gaucho Tea or “Cha Mate” as it is called in Portuguese which tastes like a form of green tea but looks more like peat moss in a cup; A Gaucho is the term Brazilians use for anyone from “Rio Grande do Sul” who are influenced by the cowboy, farm and cattle culture.

September 3^rd

The next day the weather was pretty cold and rainy, so Yagel and I stayed inside most of the day. I did get the chance to watch the movie “Home Alone 3” which was on TV; although I think the first two movies were better, the third film is actually a really good flick as well. That night Rosaria made us Lentil Soup, then took the bus to Cenela with Diva where we were going to meet them tomorrow. Guilherme (known as Ge) and Stephanie took as to a bar in Novo Hamburgo that night called “The American Bowling.” Yes, not, The American Bowling Alley, as there was no attempt to use the English language grammatically correctly. This bar made many attempts to copy American culture with pictures of Michael Jordan, Cal Ripken Jr., Elvis, James Dean, etc., but it failed to capture American culture accurately as everything was just a little off with a picture of Roger Clemons (In a Red Sox uni???), a infant sized baseball glove and bat, the signs for the restroom that read Man and Woman, and other various incongruities. We all decided to bowl, in the connecting bowling alley, before the bands started. The bands that night were playing a style of music in Brazil called “University Country” which is pretty hard to explain, but I was told that Brazilian country music has been hardly changed but that the new manifestation is a style that has been called “sertanejo universitário” (here is a taste http://www.sertanejouniversitario.net/blog/). When we started dancing, I was confronted with the Dancing Police as I referred to earlier. [Same as beggining of post: Apparently in Brazil the long arm of the law controls the way and intensity of your dancing skills as my dancing irritated the bouncer. The bouncer came over to me and told me that I was not allowed to dance like that in this particular bar; my reaction was to simply play the ignorant American card and simply dance in the same manner. Luckily, the problem dissolved as more and more people began to pack the bar. One thing to note is that Brazilian women are exceedingly forward of which I was unaware.]

September 4^th

The next day we woke up, and drove to Canela, which is a town in the mountains, to meet up with Diva and the rest of her family. On the drive into Gramado, the town next to Canela, we stopped at multiple points to take pictures of an amazing view of the valley, a train museum, and other numerous points.

When we finally got to Canela, we stopped by the Diva’s sister’s house then decided to go back into Gramado to do some more sightseeing. Gramado has a very European feel as most of the Architecture is very Germanic; Gramado also is a very popular destination for other Brazilians with many hotels. Yagel, Ge, and I walked around Gramado for a while blowing into bone horns similar to those used in the Ricola commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dDFIHfTFqg), being very cold, trying on amazing hats that looked like Uncle Eddy’s hat in “National Lampoons Christmas Vacation” made out of sheep wool, so basically being silly tourists. We decided to stop for Hot Chocolate, as well, near the center of town where Gramado holds a famous film festival. This hot chocolate can not simply be described as your run of the mill hot chocolate but it was the best hot chocolate that I have ever tasted in my life as they used homemade marshmallows where the thickness of the marshmallow could balance a spoon standing straight up.

After sightseeing we went to watch the futebol team “Gremio” who was playing a team from Rio, called Botafogo. Gremio changed their coach a few weeks earlier by recruiting the best player that had ever played for Gremio called “Gauchou.” Since then has slowly turning the team around from 18 out of 20 on the group table to 10th, as seen in Gremio’s comeback against Botofogo to tie the game at 2-2. That night we all went to dinner at an all you can eat Pizzeria for Diva’s birthday, which was the day before. Pizzerias in Brazil work in the same fashion a Brazilian steakhouse, Churrascaria, bringing around hundreds of kinds of pizza to your table, but in Brazil they also have many types of desert pizza as well such as chocolate, bananas with ice cream, etc. This particular place had a haunted house theme with pumpkin lanterns and such, so they came to the table with witch hats for all of us to put on and a desert pizza for Diva’s birthday.

September 5^th

The next day Diva’s family prepared a home made Chuascaria for lunch before Ge, Yagel and I went to a national park 30 minutes away to hike and to see an amazing waterfall. The Park, “Parque do Caracol,” was breathtaking especially the massive waterfall. The park had built a metal stairway of 730 Steps down to the observation area for the waterfall, the entire walk down all I could keep thinking was that these are just the type of incidents you hear about on the news if this thing falls. Although we all made it fine to the observation area, the other section of the stairway closest to the waterfall (basically under it) was broken in many places by flood damage to which proved my fears were in fact real. The refreshing part of it was that in the U.S. that type of stairway would not easily exist because if the government put a permanent structure their and someone got hurt then they were liable.

When we got back to Rosaria’s house, Diva and Rosaria were not home; their car was nowhere to be found. Diva’s brother who was driving Yagel to the airport in Porto Alegre, since he was leaving before me to return to Sao Paulo, told us that they had gotten so worried and worked up about us that they decided to get in their car to find us that we hadn’t gotten back for the park (although we got home at 6:30 when we said we would). For some obscure reason, they had thought we had fallen in the waterfall; so as we found out later they went to the police calling for a massive search party for American men that had fallen in the waterfall. The police simply laughed in their faces, and told them to call the house or Ge’s cell phone. When they called I answered the phone and told Diva that we were perfectly fine, and to hurry home, so Yagel could say goodbye before he left for the airport. When they got back Diva and Rosaria were shaking so bad out of fright that they couldn’t stay still. For some reason, they neglected to call Ge’s cellphone which he had on him the entire time and instead decided the best decision was to drive around town looking for us then go to the police station if they didn’t find us immediately.

September 6^th-8^th

After Yagel left Canela, I decided to recover from my perpetual cold that I have mustered through in Brazil and simply catch up on some sleep and reading. I finished reading “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder which is the of Paul Farmer who as the subtitle reads “the quest of Dr. Paul Farmer: a man who would cure the world.” If you haven’t read this book I highly suggest it (even one of my good friends Lansing Lee called me the day I was leaving for Brazil and demanded that I take it to Brazil. He said, if I didn’t have it he would deliver to me immediately, luckily my uncle, aunt and cousin Hans, Lori, and Sarah (who is a currently a 1^st year at UVA) had given the book to me previously). Lansing thank you for once again suggesting the book as it was marvelous, and I encourage all who are looking for a good read to pick it up. I also re-read “The Screwtape Letters” C.S. Lewis which was amazing as well. It was so refreshing to read C.S. Lewis again, and realize a fact of life that many people are tricked into forgetting about how hard and difficult life is. The world sells us this image of the easy life, but the reality of it although there are many triumphs we have to constantly deal with failure. Every moment we are in the constant need of God’s grace as it must be paramount in our lives as the world is against us but is GOD IS FOR US.

During these few days the frustration of Brazil’s inconvenient truth (that everything is so much less convenient here) grew almost too much for me to bear. The frustration with Brazil did subside, but it certainly reared its nasty head. One of the days, Rosaria and Diva took me on a drive to see another beautiful park that surrounds a massive lake which seemed to bring a calming sense over me by experiencing the majesty of God’s creation, even though the continuous jostling on Cobblestone streets in a car without any real shocks or suspension did not do wonders for my back.

Until next time Toodaloo.