Funny reactions when my Peruvian number turned Brazilian

Luis's (the student I wrote about before with the awesome thesis) response:

(Carioca = born & raised in Rio de Janeiro)

Jessica's response:

...and the picture she sent me:

Hah!! I love that he answered

(Another awesome student) Marcelo's reaction:

These people make me smile. :D

Rio - a month in!

It's been about a month since I wrote about my nice little (but not little) birthday surprises so now they're all well underway. Job, volunteer work, soccer, Art of Living, capoeira, dancing & dancing buddies...New life in Rio: Success!!

First of all, my job is great. A sincere thank you to my man, Tim, who generously left me all of his private students on his way out of the country. I go to the Olympic Committee for a few hours every day to teach the wonderful people who are planning the Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics. The atmosphere is wonderful--everyone is always happy and they have that beautiful, international, cooperative spirit of the Olympic Games flowing at all times. I'm teaching English and some Spanish and loving every minute of it!

I'm also volunteering at a nearby favela on Saturdays, teaching English to the kids there who want to learn but don't have the money to go to classes. Gabriel, a young guy who lives there and already speaks English, started this program on his own. It's at his house, he uses his own computer and he bought a few books and a whiteboard to use with the kids. He's been working with Dawid, from Poland, for the past few months but now a couple of his friends, as well as Luise from Germany and I, are there as well. The number of kids is increasing each week and we're just planning lessons together over facebook and dropbox. It's really fun starting from scratch and figuring out how we can best help these kids.

I'm doing a language exchange with a new, dear friend of mine that I met online, who lives about two hours away from Rio and, on top of that, I'm taking two Continuing Studies courses online and learning a ton! I even found Art of Living here! Life is seriously a freaking success.

I finally got to play soccer, too, but I only lasted a week. Beach soccer is totally different than the soccer I've always played and it's a complete blast but it totally destroyed my feet. People here are used to playing in the sand with no shoes but I am not. After a week of kicking the ball (including one night that we played foot-volley and I served with my right foot all night), my feet, especially the right, were swollen and useless. It's now been three freaking weeks and they still haven't healed (although they're finally starting to....thank you anti-inflammatory pills!) so I haven't played since but I'm hoping to get back out there at some point before I have to leave.

The funny thing about my injured foot? Even though it hurts when I walk, run, kick the ball, try to bend it and sometimes throbs even when I'm just sitting, when it comes to dancing salsa, I don't even feel it. It's like I forget that I even have feet. My friend that I met in Cuzco and I go salsa dancing each week. There's a live band that's really good and we always have at least each other in case other people don't dance but usually there are a few decent dancers.

I also went to a week of capoeira lessons with my friend and they were great but I've since been taking it easy because of my foot. As soon as it's healed, I'll be back for more! I've met some really nice friends there too, particularly a girl from France, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with them.

Random thought that made me laugh: My two grocery stores were shut down by sanitation this week. Nothing more needs to be said.

My Birthday Surprises

No one will believe that this just happened.

So, I've been trying to look up a place to do Capoeira (I tried one class but it was going to be really expensive to keep going there), a way to study Portuguese in a class-like setting, a place to play soccer, a place to go dancing and a place to do Art of Living. Oh, and a job!

Well, a couple of days before my birthday, I literally ran right into all of it!

That particular Saturday night, I was looking on facebook and meetup, trying to find groups that I could go out dancing with and, when I had no luck, places that I could play soccer during the week. I wasn't able to find anything and it wasn't getting any earlier so I decided to go for a run on the beach before it was too late. I told Alessandra that I was going to go for a jog and look for people to play soccer with.

There weren't many people on the beach but I decided to just keep running and running until I found someone. I honestly didn't think I would but I totally did! I saw two girls and three guys who were juggling and asked if I could play. "The more, the merrier" was the response. A few minutes into the juggling, they asked if we wanted to scrimmage and, since that was precisely what I'd been looking for the past couple of weeks, I, of course, said yes!

We played a fun little game (playing in the sand is HARD but awesome) and then most of the people wanted to sit down and rest. One guy and I continued shooting on another kid and we started talking....Where are you from?/What do you do?/Blah, blah, blah (all in Portuguese, though. Woo hoo!!). Out of nowhere, he asks, "Do you know zouk?"

What. The. Hell?!? I tried to contain my excitement but barely could. This kid turned out to be a freakin dance instructor!!! As soon as I said I dance salsa, he took my hands and we started dancing right there on the middle of the beach soccer field in Copaca-freakin-bana. It was hilarious. We did some salsa, bachata, zouk, fox and whatever else he randomly started doing.

Wait. It gets better. So after the whole thing, we're standing around talking and these two girls tell me that they play for a city-funded soccer program every night of the week with a coach, training session and scrimmage every time, and that I'm welcome to play!

There's more. So once we figured out that everyone likes to dance (turned out those guys and girls had actually just met each other right before I came onto the scene, too), we decide to go out that night together. We ran back to our houses to shower and then met up again and spent the night in Lapa (downtown). It's a really cool area. There are tons of bars and clubs all over and the streets are full of people drinking, dancing, listening to the music, eating, taking walks, you name it. We walked around from club to club dancing to the different types of music, but never going inside so never paying. It's a genius system!

Then, while we're walking around, one of the other guys ends up telling me he does capoeira! What the hell?! I couldn't believe it! He said it's free and not far from my house and that I can go with him.

I'm by far the oldest of this new little group of friends but they're all really sweet and these guys are hilarious. It was really fun chatting with them all night (all in Portuguese which was mostly a first for me) and they were cracking me up with their ridiculous dance moves. We danced some brasilian funk and a lot of hip hop, too, but this instructor kid was busting out zouk and whatever else anyway. Hilar.

On the way home, the one kid was teaching me the Portuguese alphabet and then, for whatever reason, I asked him what the past tense of componer was and, since he didn't know, he yelled from where we were on the front of the bus, all the way to the back where his brother was. Turned out he didn't know either, so he turned around and started asking random people. It was hilarious. Not a typical situation in my life but no one on the bus seemed to find it too weird. I was dying laughing...in the end, no one even knew.

Anyway, can't believe life just did all this for me...again.! :D!! Happy 27th to me!!

First week back in Rio! It's ON!

I've been back in Copacabana for a week now and it's been great! I made a friend on the plane ride over here and we've hung out a couple of times and run together on the beach which is always awesome. There can be no complaining when you live in the land of fresh, chilled coconuts and acai, two blocks away from a beautiful beach lined with soccer fields and beautiful views all around. Beyond that...late-night pillow talk and movie nights with my wonderful, new friend, Alessandra. What more could I ask for??

I also started a language exchange with a friend I met through couch surfing who's a tour guide here in Rio. I was only looking for the language part but we've done plenty of walking around and it's like having my own personal guide for free! Day one alone he took me to the huge library downtown, The Selaron Steps (which I loved), the Cinelandia area, a few museums, apparently one of the 10 fanciest/most beautiful bakeries in the world--random, I know--the market at Uruguaiana, the Lapa Arches & more! We're about the same level in each others' languages so we talk in both, helping and correcting each other along the way.

I've also started an exchange with my friend that I met when I was living in Cuzco. I'm teaching him English in exchange self defense classes. He's a jiu jitsu master and has his own gym in Cuzco but has come here to learn more from the even bigger experts. He started off teaching me some different techniques but we quickly found that I like boxing more than everything else we've done. Something about punching someone is really fun to me (which will in no way surprise either of my youngest siblings). I guess I figure we all have everything in us....violence and non-violence, patience and impatience and so on. Even if the one side is much smaller than the other, it's gotta be in there somewhere! I wouldn't consider myself a violent person but, I gotta say, it's kind of a blast letting that part of me come out! (The only issue is that sometimes I have laughing attacks because I'm having too much fun and my friend....a much more serious person than me...doesn't know how to handle it and gets kind of pissed. I'm working on it.)

I've also started taking two Continuing Studies courses online that I'm already really enjoying--a Linguistics course and a Creative Writing course (maybe these blogs will eventually get better). ;)

Life is good when you're in Rio de Janeiro! All that's left to find is a new Capoeira class, Art of Living and a job!

My Awesome Student's Thesis

One of my last classes in Brasilia was with a student of mine named Luis. We had planned a three-hour class and I had lots of activities in mind--plenty of conversation as well as pronunciation, writing and reading exercises. However, we started our conversation and didn't stop talking until five hours, two or three pages of notes, a two-course dinner and a dessert later. No time for the other exercises, I guess!

It was an absolute pleasure for me to have class with such a well-educated, well-rounded, caring person. He's currently studying a masters in Political Science and is writing his thesis on some of the rich cities on the northeastern coast of Brazil, which are surrounded by many of the poorest people in the country. He's writing about how the politicians there use the limited access to water to bribe the people, thereby maintaining their power and wealth. Fascinating paper...messed up situation.

Luis already understands many things that I intend to learn about. He's educated on these topics (and of course is still studying) AND he has a broad perspective. He's not only learning about these people and their situations; he has traveled to the Northeast to get to know the place, the people and the politics that he is researching and writing about--clearly necessary in order to truly understand his topic.

Among the many interesting things he talked about that night, here are a couple that stuck out to me:

1. From the time I've spent talking with Brazilians, I'd already learned that the general perspective is that people in the northeastern regions are the friendliest in the country and that people in the south are the least friendly. I'd also already learned that there are many descendants of Germany and other Europeans countries in the South (because I'd been told multiple times that I could pass for Brazilian as long as I said I was from the south). Luis, however, brought these two ideas together for me.

People in the northern parts of Brazil are descendants of Indian, African and Mestizo populations while people in the south are, like I said, descendants of Europe. The people in the north, therefore, still have their strong traditions of hospitality and kindness, while people in the south, since the time of the colonization period, have had a colder, less hospitable, less-friendly, we're-better-than-you 'tude. Talking about his travels to both places, he gave me specific examples from how the people act in both places (though I'd already heard similar things from many other Brazilians earlier in this trip).

For example, he told me about one particular evening that he spent at a family's home in the northeast, while he was there conducting research. They had a family of seven people (the same as the family I grew up in) but they only have access to a small amount of water once a week (used for cooking, showering, drinking and everything in-between). He was there during the family's dinner time and they had one--yes, one-- small fish to share between the seven. (That sounds as foreign to me as a freakin Biblical story, but it's an unfortunate reality there.) Per custom, they would never have a guest in their home who didn't eat so they offered to share some of their one fish with Luis. Refusing would be offensive and rude so Luis reluctantly accepted. In the south, however, this is not typical. People there see what's theirs as theirs. They have more of an "I have to feed my family...sorry, but you'll have to find a way to get your own food" attitude.

In this life, I've learned that you can't really judge and say that one is any better than the other since people on both sides of the coin usually have good intentions backed by their own sincere reasoning but, when I look at these two situations, I can't help but ask myself "Which people would I rather spend time with?" "Which people are probably happier with themselves as human beings?" "Which people are truly living fuller lives?" and "Which people do I want to be like?" and each of my answers points to the same group of people. Maybe the answers to those questions are different for everyone, but I know what they are for me.

2. Everything is relative, right? We all know that, but here's another interesting take on it:
Systematic racism unfortunately exists just as much here in Brazil as it does in the U.S. and it's just as ugly. Luis, however, made an interesting point. As a white male in Brazil, he has more opportunities and fewer barriers to success than his black counterparts. However, were he to move to the U.S., his skin color would not be seen as quite white anymore. What is he, then? He's "white" in Brazil but would be considered "mixed" or something if he were to go to the U.S. Interesting...and yet another reason that racial discrimination ultimately makes no sense and should have no place in this world.

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My thoughts: Hearing about the political manipulation and poverty that the people in the northeast are dealing with is heartbreaking and this type of situation is entirely too common. Knowing how easy it is to sit somewhere comfortably, blissfully ignoring issues like poverty, sexism and racism because they don't effect us personally, I'm only motivated to keep traveling. I will choose to see more. I will choose to see what's difficult to see and to look into the eyes of people who are affected by my decisions and the decisions of my country and race. I will choose to see everyone as humans who deserve just as much as I do. I will continue to help the people around me everywhere I go as much as I can. For every person I know who doesn't travel, I will spend that much more time out here trying to connect with and understand other people, people who are different than me, opening my mind, growing and changing...learning to love, learning to see, learning to help...not ignoring, not being complacent, not keeping my blissfully ignorant mind where it is now forever. This is my mission.