I suppose I ought to apologize for falling off the face of the Earth. My life has accelerated somewhat unexpectedly in the past two months. Of course, the second I sat down to post this Glicia popped into the room to tell me that in a few minutes we'll be leaving, heading out a day early for our latest trip to BH. Christmas season is party season (I'm in Brasil, when is it not party season?) so we're off to visit Amanda and company and attend sambas that will embarrass me so monumentally I'll look into theories of spontaneous combustion in the hope that I might be able to get the hang of it. Do know though that I have not abandoned this blog, and that I am thinking of you lot. I have several posts typed up already describing some of my recent escapades, but the internet in Curvelo isn't keen on uploading things at the best of times and throughout this week it has simply not been in the mood.

In an unrelated note, if anyone is planning on sending me things for the holidays and has not done so yet, it might be best to hold off. I'll be traveling all throughout January, and will not be able to stop home to retrieve anything. Then again, if it's noting perishable you might as well get it in the mail now, since packages always take such a sodding lone time to arrive here anyway. (For me anyway. I hear the Canadians have far better luck than I, which I do in fact find suspicious.) I'm holding out hope that my contact lenses may actually arrive in time for my trip, but I won't be overwhelmingly surprised if they don't. Just very audibly distressed.

Also, I must send massive congratulations to my cousin Laurie, who it has been ascertained is having a girl, and to my dearest Nicole, who found herself a Bible boy after all. He better be able to swim, that's all I'm saying. My Aunt Ellen is due to give birth soon and Reed acceptance letters were sent out on the 15th, so frankly I'm on the edge of my seat over here.

 First of all, I apologize in being so long in posting.  Family has been visiting, I've begun working with a Portuguese tutor, and my local Rotary Club turned 25 years old.  I want to thank everyone who sent my Happy Birthday messages, especially my Grandma O'Brien who sent me a card in the mail.  There's a lot that's happened these past two weeks and I know a bunch of people wanted to know what I did for my birthday, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait just a little bit longer.  My host parents are heading out of town again, this time to a couples' retreat, and I'll be staying with some Rotarians this weekend.  Guess which ones?  That's right, it's Peter Pettigrew and Company.  It's my worst nightmare realized, but also completely unsurprising.  Luckily he has a daughter two years younger than me who's a real sweetheart and is always chomping at the bit to ask me about my experience, because she'll be engaging in a shorter exchange to France this December.  Any way, this just me letting you know that yes, I'm still breathing.  It's raining like the Dickens and I finally figured out how to work the cable box, which means I can watch more than just futebal and horrifically terrible sketch comedy shows.  I get HBO.  And HBO2.  It's a rare thing that my host father isn't watching movies or sports, but it's good to know I have that power.  Also, I have scrapped and restarted all of my application essays.  They are due in two weeks.  Wish me luck.

Today is Tuesday, which you would think indicates school, but yesterday was the day of Brazil’s Patron Saint, Nossa Senhora (or Our Lady, or Mother Mary – who I’m not actually sure is a saint), and Brazilians are reasonable about this kind of thing.  What’s better than one day off?  Two days off!  So today is called Dia do Professor (Teacher’s day), and there is nao escola for me.  Typically this would mean I’d have the chance to sleep in, but you try doing that with heavy construction occurring 10 feet from your bedroom window.  It probably wouldn’t be nearly as bad if the workers were not all compelled to shout at each other constantly while they did it, but what are you going to do?  I officially gave up on restfulness at about 8 o’clock and went in search of breakfast.  Did you know that people eat ricotta cheese in solid form?  There’s a round of it in my refrigerator.  I sampled a bit, but found it quite bland by itself.  Here’s something tasty you should try if you ever get the chance – take a mug of whole milk and heat it up in the microwave.  When it’s done, fill up the remaining space with sweetened black coffee.  It’s good, and doesn’t leave un-dissolved residue in the bottom like Nescafe. 

 

Lilya came in and noticed me flitting around the kitchen with nothing to do.  We had a stunted and stumbling conversation about baking bread, and then she gave me a tin bucket to pick the red fruit for juice.  I know they’ve told me what it’s called, but I’m simply rubbish at remembering plant facts.

 

 

I’ve never been good at any kind of wilderness identification, but some things Brazil does make very easy.  Eucalyptus, for example.  While most of us associate it with Australia and koalas, they have it all over the place in Minas.  It’s a common crop for farmers, who sell it to be burned for coal.  Whenever you drive between cities, you will pass by huge swaths of narrow young trees growing in long neat rows.  It’s a pretty easy tree to spot once you know it, with particular leaves and very distinctive bark that my father would probably refer to as ‘shaggy’.

 

Mango trees are a bit of a free-be this time of year, because they’re all full of fruit.  The Rotarians laughed when I told them I’d never seen one before – they are growing anywhere you care to look down here.  I mentioned this to Bruna once, and she smiled at me.  There is one in every garden, she said, and in the summer there will be manga (what they call mango) every day, and even the men who live on the street will grow fat.

 

I have an excellent vantage point from which to watch the mango’s development – there is an enormous tree growing right next to my classroom window, and I like to stare at it and space out.

 

At the Rotary Orientation they went around the circle and asked us each to state one Portuguese word to sum up our exchange so far.  Our vocabulary was pretty limited at the time, so most kids said things like ‘linda’ and ‘legal’ (a word that means both legal as we know it, and cool.  I acknowledge the irony in that.)   I say verde (pronounce that d like a j, remember), which anyone who’s ever learned a romantic language can probably figure out means green.  They all assumed I’d misspoken, or that I didn’t know what the word meant, but I stand by it.  Brazil has been many things, but the one thing that makes me smile every morning when I look out my window is the lime tree that grows there.  More than half of the pictures I’ve taken here are of flowers.  I don’t know what I’m going to do with them all, but if nothing else it means I have a fantastic variety of computer backgrounds to choose from.

 

P.S. As it’s getting hotter and wetter here, fall is coming to my home in Massachusetts.  I admit that I feel a pang for fall.  It’s my favorite season, and how could it not be when I grew up in the Berkshire Hills?  My birthday will be at the end of the week, but it certainly won’t feel like it in this still air and sunlight.  I’ve set the background on Gareth to a picture I took of a blown glass pumpkin that my Grandmother O’Brien gave me for a past birthday.  Last night I went to sexy_mood_music’s community music sharing post for October and downloaded a fantastic number of Halloween themed and otherwise creepy tracks.  The Ghostbuster’s theme and David Bowie’s “Bring Me the Disco King”?  You don’t know what you’re missing.    I also got my first Mars Volta song, which will never not make me think of Eunice’s (true) parents, so well done there.

I had very mixed feelings about lunch today.  Limes are no longer in season, but there’s another tree in the yard that grows these red berries about the size of large grapes.  The juice made from them is orange and pulpy and vegetable-y and usually makes me feel like I’m drinking a hedge, but I’m told it is very rich in vitamin C.  This observation is quite irrelevant, compared to the two tidbits of news I received.  The first was that Glicia was so bothered about my behavior that she actually contacted my mother.  Fantastic.  I’m honestly not sure what to do about it.  No matter how many times I say it, she simply cannot believe that I’m fine, and I don’t know what to do to convince her.  I’m friendly, approachable, and amicable to anything anyone asks me along for.  I occupy myself and engage in no questionable habits.  My peers are out painting the town red and I get a bloody call home – for what?  A suspicious lack of deviant behavior?  From what I can tell ‘youth exchange student’ is synonymous with ‘young social alcoholic’, and they don’t seem to know what to do with me.  My guess is that telling them to leave it well enough alone will not improve the situation.  All I know is that it made me feel like a third grader who teachers suspect of being mentally unstable.

 

On a much better note, I was told that my package had arrived.  My mother sent me a package nearly a month ago, and I had essentially given up on it, but I was glad to see it.  It’s contents were as follows:

 

A Portuguese dictionary and basic grammar guide

 

A Portuguese phrasebook

 

A pocket French dictionary (My host parents and I communicate primarily in French) and some French vocabulary sheets

 

A box of Andes mints

 

A carton of Dove tiramisu chocolates

 

3 composition notebooks

 

A set of size 6 knitting needles

 

A small pocket guide on knitting that comes with a set of size 8s and two double pointed needles

 

My glasses

 

An itty-bitty pocket knife - don’t worry, I’m not joining a street gang, it comes with a pair of scissors

 

A box of Earl Grey tea

 

Some brightly colored underwear

 

And perhaps best of all – Ginger mints AND Reed’s Ginger chews!  Hurrah!

 

An excellent turnout – so excellent that I can almost (but not quite) forget that everyone I know in this country thinks I am three steps from the edge.

This week was, in a word, troublesome.  I’m an odd person.  I do, say, and like odd things, which is not very helpful when everyone I interact with is constantly monitoring me for abnormal behavior.  There seems to be nothing I can do to convince the Rotarians that I’m not pining to death for home.  What I don’t tell them is that it’s not like for me like it is for the others.  For me to go back now would not be a return to what once was – it would be to enter into something new.  My living situation has altered dramatically.  I would probably be living in Nicole’s attic and trying to sift my possessions out of sloppily packed storage boxes.  This wouldn’t be so bad of course - I’d probably be dragged along for more hikes than I’d typically seek out on my own, but my baking would be encouraged and I could badger Nicole about her sty – the point is that it would be something new. 

 

I have no trouble spending time by myself.  I enjoy the company of others, but there are a lot of solitary occupations I appreciate as well, things like reading writing and knitting.  I’m not keen on going out drinking, particularly when I’d just be watching people do it, since I can neither drink nor speak.  It has them worried about me, even though I’ve explained countless times that it’s all par for the course for me and that the only out of character things I’ve done lately are censoring my sense of humor and writing poetry (it’s as unpleasant as you might imagine).  

 

To make matters far, far worse my sleeping issues have been somewhat exaggerated these past few weeks.  I’ve never been very good at falling asleep, but by the end of this week I was practically nocturnal, only managing to drift off during the day.  The naps were not the cause of my troubles though – I only started them after three days of no sleep at all, during the day or night.  On Thursday I fell asleep at 2 o’clock, slept until 8, and was awake all through the night and into the next morning, where I redressed and headed off to school.  My host-family is now probably convinced that I’m manically depressed.  Oh well.

 

The other issue with this sleeping pattern is that it leaves me few things to do.  I’ve read all of the books I brought with me, with the exception of Swans Way, and my notebook is full to bursting.  The chairs on the porch have been stripped so they aren’t too dirtied by the ongoing construction, and the hammock has been taken down as well.  Moving around the house caused too much noise, and though I could tiptoe to the kitchen for a small snack, there is only so long I can linger over some cocoa and crackers. 

 

Eventually I turned to the Internet and went in search of some American TV.  In retrospect I'm not sure what I was I thinking.  Perhaps my distance from pop culture had minimized its detestable qualities in my mind.  I won't be making the same mistake anytime soon.  Most American things I see here are second hand – pirated movies with dubbed voices, knock-off products, and so on.  I thought it might be nice to see something new, something hot off the press.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds, as most companies have licensing agreements that keep them from making their shows accessible to people outside of the US.  I acknowledged the legal reasons behind this, but it didn’t keep me from grumbling about them all being xenophobic bastards when I realized there was absolutely no convenient way for me to watch The Daily Show.  Realizing that I was probably missing Top Gear my friend Rachel had recommended casttv.com, a website that hosts links to various online TV viewing sites.  The problem with that, of course, is that most links eventually lead back to Hulu, one of the sites that only steams to the US.  Plenty of the major networks host theirs there as well, including CBS and NBC.  I tried a proxy to hide my location, but Hulu's caught on to that and wouldn't let me through with it up.  It’s a bit of a bummer.  YouTube is a bust because the companies go around deleting any episodes posted.  Essentially my only hope is if some kind soul posts an episode to an alternative site like zshare or megaupload.  This was how I came to discover Glee.

 

I had seen advertisements for the show all over the place, but knew absolutely nothing about it.  I was aware that it is shown on Fox, which is kind of a major turnoff but I reminded myself that Arrested Development had been shown there, and that’s one of my favorite shows.  I decided to give it a chance.  As the video loaded I read the show summary beneath it, and I became rather excited.  It’s a musical comedy!  Now I am considered to be a fairly stable individual, and I suffer no known mental abnormalities (with the exception of synesthesia, which hardly counts), and despite these facts I utterly love musicals.  Apparently the show was about an enthusiastic high school teacher that sets about reviving his school’s glee club.  Sounds reasonable enough.  What could go wrong?

 

The video started up and I quickly realized that the answer to that question was ‘just about everything’.  With a resigned sigh I felt my excitement evaporate into disgust.  I have a few strongly ingrained pet peeves – things like sheets tucked under the mattress and people saying ‘fine’ when I ask them how they are – and one of them is people who waste good premises.  It was a musical!  It could have been so very good, but then they wrote it right down every clichéd avenue they could recall and destroyed it from the inside out.

 

Note:  What follows will be an excessively long and suitably scathing review of this garbage, because it’s Saturday afternoon and we’re expecting grandma over for lunch and I have nothing to do in the mean time.  If you wish to avoid such nonsense, skip ahead to the string of ~~~’s below.  Thank you.

 

We’ll start with the characters, because the plot itself is messy and inane and trivial.  The teacher’s name is Will Shuster.  He instructs Spanish, though his accent in the language is, from what I can tell, dreadful.  Will is painfully similar to my old Trigonometry teacher – a young man teaching in the same high school he attended.  How depressing.  He is oblivious, petty, juvenile, is basically an idiot, and sings like a Backstreet Boy (and does in fact start a boyband called Acafellas), and I have zero attachment to him as a character. 

 

 

He does not appear to hold any affection for his wife, whom he believes to be pregnant.  His wife, in turn, realized it was just a hysterical pregnancy but doesn’t want to tell him because she knows he has one foot out the door.  Let us never forget that the best way to solve marital issues is with a baby.  When she finds out one of Will’s students is pregnant, she waits for the girl in her car and requests her baby, somehow deluding herself into thinking that that strategy won’t totally blow up in her face.  Does she think the doctors are just going to play along?  

 

Then there are the Glee kids themselves, a band of misfits and losers like one might expect.  The lead singer of the group is a moderately talented over-achieving twit named, ironically Rachel.  She makes me think a bit of my Rachel, but without the breasts, personality, sense of humor, or right to live.  She says things like "You're really talented.  I can tell, because I'm really talented too."  (Quite reminiscent of my own Rachel's "He's off pitch.  I can tell, because I have perfect pitch."  I utterly detest her.  That’s not weird – I have a chronic hatred of all main characters – but she is unspeakably infuriating.  She's probably the most easily detestable TV character since Kavanagh.  It came on quick too – she auditioned with “On My Own” from Les Miserables, the anthem of self-indulgent, self-pitying and deplorably desperate young divas the world over.  She sings the female solo for each and every song they ever perform, but when the teacher gives the solo of Maria from West Side Story to another girl, she has a colossal bitch-fit and accuses him of trying to punish her.  Everyone turns on the teacher like its his fault, and in the end he apologizes to her.  I could have screamed.  She always puts a gold star sticker next to her name when she signs it, to indicate that she’s going to be a star.  They must love her at the bank.  There is not a single thing she has said so far that hasn’t made me want to kill her.  She is the spitting image of a freshman upstart from the OHS drama club that each and every one of us wanted to shove into the pit band each time she opened her mouth.

 

 

She is tragically attracted to the Quarterback (why is it always the Quarterback and never, say the Kicker or a Linebacker or something?) of the football team, a jock named Finn who risks the alienation of his peers to join Glee and has, of course, the most talented male voice of the whole lot.  I think I’ve seen this in-flight movie.  Oh yes.  It’s High School Musical.  This awkward teen romance is probably one of the worst I've ever seen on screen, largely due to Rachel's involvement.  She's seen so many movies and musicals that she's certain she and Finn are destined to be together.  He gives her no indication that he likes her in the pilot, so she throws up and joins Celibacy Club to impress him.  She tells his suspicious girlfriend that she is too honorable to steal someone else's man, but that's just what she sets out to do.  That's our modern Heroine, what a gal.  (Of course they will end up together, which is even more annoying.)  I’m not sure what’s worse - this kid’s writing or his acting.  They try to depict him as a popular boy with cruel friends but a heart of gold, but it’s not very believable, as he is just as bad as the rest of them, helping his friends throw Kurt (who will be discussed later) in a dumpster during the pilot and throwing pee balloons at Kurt’s house.  He is supposed to play the dumb jock, but all of his ‘stupid’ lines come out of nowhere and seem really out of character, which just leads viewers to believe he is suffering from sudden fits of mental deterioration.  He informs Will with some surprise that you’re allowed to borrow books from the library, he has no clue what the word ‘chivalry’ means, and when his cheerleader girlfriend tells him that she’s pregnant and he points out that they’ve never had sex, she reminds him of the time they fooled around in the hot tub - “But we still had our swim suits on!”  “Yeah, I guess it’s the right temperature or something.  It actually makes the sperm swim faster.”  He accepts this as the obvious truth while the audience shouts, “It was your best friend!  He’s the babydaddy!”   

 

 

 

Then there is stuttering a Asian girl who they describe as ‘goth’, even though she’s just partial to black and chains.  She is given no personality to speak of and holds no subplot of her own.  I’m pretty sure her name is Tina, but it could be Georgia O’Keeffe for all I know.  Her only notable line is when she's discussing Kurt's sexuality with the others and uses the phrase "lady-fabulous".  I give props to Arty, the boy in the wheelchair, because they do actually manage to include him in their choreography pretty well.  He’s given almost no lines, but who wants to talk to a paraplegic kid?  They may be losers, but they do have standards.  Then we gave the mandatory Effeminate Gay Kid.  His name is Kurt, and according to Fox, he's a soprano.  I don't know jack about music, but it seems to me that he's just a high tenor, perhaps a countertenor.  (Look at me and my vocabulary, Brandon would be so proud.)  He hits the same notes Martin did in Les Mis' "Bring Him Home."  By calling him a soprano they're just trying to emasculate him further.  He auditions with Mr. Cellophane from Chicago.  Probably the only thing they could do to make him more of a walking stereotype would be to give him a small dog and a lisp.  In the fourth episode his father walks in on him dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” in a black sequined uni-tard - he explains that he was doing callisthenic exercises.  Cough, cough.  A part of me really wants to appreciate his wardrobe, because it tends to be kind of fabulous, but it doesn’t make any sense.  He lives in Ohio.  He is the only child of a single father, and whatever his father does doesn’t really look like it’s getting him the big bucks, because he walks around in flannel and a baseball cap all the time and comes home early to watch Deadliest Catch.  I don’t mean to make assumptions, but it seems very unlikely that he could afford to buy to brand new SUV he supposedly gave to Kurt for his 16^th birthday, and in the middle-class financial bracket that I presume them to be a part of, even if Kurt spent every penny he had on clothes, a wardrobe of that quality and quantity would be improbable, if not impossible.  When a newcomer to the Glee club wants to buy his favor she presents him with a thermos of liquor and a stack of muscle mags, and he promptly declares that he worships her.  When he tells his father that he’s gay, his father tells him that he’s known since Kurt was three, when he requested ‘sensible heels’ for his birthday.  I call foul!  That’s like saying that every little boy who wears a pink shirt or plays with his sister’s doll is going to grow up to be a complete nancy, and it validates people’s small minded assumptions and paranoia.  My brother tried on my dresses plenty of times when we were kids and he has been described by some (I will name no names) an ‘immaculate specimen of man’, a jock and a Rocky fan to his core.  This scene was like a backhanded compliment – on the one hand Kurt’s father accepted him and said that he still loved him, while at the same time spitting the sort of trite nonsense that aligns him with the lamentably numerous ignorant people Kurt will have to face later in his life.  Also, he tells Kurt that he loves him no matter who he is, but he only buys Kurt his car after Kurt swears to stop wearing form-fitting sweaters that stop at the knee, and later takes the car away when he discovers Kurt's tiara collection.  Shame on you sir.

 

 

Fox has character profiles on their website where I went looking for promo pics for this, and I was monumentally insulted – every character has basic ‘vitals’, including their age, talents, quirks, and so on.  It also states their personality type, and one sees things like ‘winner’ and ‘shy’ and ‘the stunning young ingénue everyone roots for’ (kill me where I stand).  Guess what Kurt’s personality is?  Homosexual.  If I didn’t love my computer so much I would have thrown it out the window upon reading that.  I’m a bit far away, but could someone burn down Fox headquarters for me?  Thanks.  Imagine for yourself the animalistic cry of frustration that currently thunders from my being.  Anyway.  Even though he is supposedly ‘in love’ with a boy, when that boy impregnates his girlfriend, cementing the longevity of their relationship, he shows no signs of distress what so ever.  Rather, he proceeds to revel in the scandal of it all and starts gossiping about it excitedly.  I was rather amused though - when he went to the jock to ask him something, the jock immediately responds - not unkindly - “No, thanks, I already have a date.  I’m sorry though, I know how important dances are to teen gays.”  The jock has no idea that Kurt likes him and had no indication that that was what he was going to ask about.  Normally I would say ‘the lady doth protest too much’, but this is mainstream Fox, so that potential relationship doesn’t have an icicle’s chance in hell.    

 

 

The next is Mercedes Jones (Really?  Why don't we just call her Latisha Johnson?), the obligatory overweight African-American girl.  Her role is almost humorously racist.  She is described on Wikipedia as a ‘Prima Dona’ and 'Diva', even though it was Rachel who quit the club when she was given her first backup part.  Of course she auditions by singing Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ and knows all the words to "Gold digger".  She gets all of the ‘big black girl’ parts, and that’s it.  When Rachel accidently kicked her in the face while dancing she says something along the lines of “If you try to mess me up one more time I will cut you!” and likes throwing around phrases like “this skinny white chick” and “Pretty fly for a white boy!” - she even gets one "I will cut you."  She is in love with the gay boy of the troupe (conveniently giving them a way out of maintaining an interracial relationship) and thought they were dating because they had been hanging out a lot.  They are cleaning his car when she asks him about it, and when he tells her that they’re not dating, that he’s in love with someone else (the jock, SURPRISE SURPRISE DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING), she proceeds to throw a rock through his windshield.  I would bet R$200 that had it been a Caucasian girl in the same position she would have done no such thing, but throwing rocks through boyfriends’ cars’ windows is a black thing, right?  She proceeds to sing “Bust Your Windows.”  The camera spends this musical number lingering on her backup singers, a gaggle of skinny white cheerleaders in bikini tops and mini-skirts.  When Kurt calls her out for busting his window, she responds, “Well you busted my heart.”  That’s deep honey.

 

The final important addition to the club is Puck, the lead Jock’s best friend and the one who actually impregnates his girlfriend.  He tells the girl that he’s willing to take care of her and the baby, and he does have a job, which is more than Finn’s got, but she kind of tells him to screw off, citing the fact he’s going to be a townie for the rest of his life.  Perhaps she doesn’t realize that with the added burden of a wife and child straight out of high school, that’s just what Finn will be as well.  He knows she didn’t sleep with Finn, so he follows up her rejection by shouting, “Well call the Vatican!  We’ve got ourselves another immaculate conception!” 

 

 

He’s a fairly accurate high school boy, complete with an utterly idiotic sense of humor and an abominable haircut.  He has a penchant for cougars, which does lead to one rather slightly line during a football game.  One of the other players is heckling him and he turns to the kid and says, “Hey, I had sex with your mom.  No, really, I cleaned your pool and then I had sex with your mom in your bed.  Nice Star Wars sheets.”  Well.  It’s hardly clever, but I admit to a small chuckle.  He developed his own aboveground pool cleaning business solely for this purpose. 

 

There is some whole drama between the teachers, but its not really interesting enough to warrant attention.  The cheerleading coach has made it her ultimate goal to take down the Glee Club because they’re cutting into her budget, and she does make me laugh, but mostly because she’s utterly psychotic and self-righteous.  She gets lines like:

 

“You think this is hard?  Try being water boarded, that’s hard!”

 

And

 

“I frequently yell at homeless people, ‘Hey, have you tried not be homeless?!’”

 

In essence, this show is every dreadful stereotype and cliché that makes TV difficult to watch smooshed together into weekly hour-long segments, redeemed only by the musical bits (for the most part - some are total tripe).  Was anyone’s high school actually like this?  Perhaps were I went was some sort of anomaly, because there was more than just the losers and the popular kids, and the football team didn’t hang out in front of the school every day throwing kids into dumpsters.  Schools are cracking down on physical violence - kids don't get away with much of that stuff anymore, and it's largely been replaced with verbal abuse.  On Glee dorks get rolled in port-a-potties.  In real high school, girls actually played sports, they didn’t just cheer on the boys, and the girls who were cheerleaders didn’t wear their uniforms EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Honestly, I understand that it makes it easy for viewers to identify them, but if you just gave them PERSONALITIES instead, then they wouldn’t have to wear the same indicative outfit every day like a bunch of cartoon characters.  All of the supposed ‘losers’ have absolutely no friends, which is incredibly unrealistic.  I am aware that there are people without friends out there, but all of these kids are reasonable well adjusted and possess no serious flaws that would make people avoid them.  They may be on, as they say,  ‘the bottom of the social heap’, but there are a lot of people on the bottom, and they tend to stick together.  I for one knew plenty of kids who were hardly fit for interaction with society that had friends.  (Most of them were my friends.)  And that’s another thing!  Why is it automatically assumed that only losers would be in Glee Club?  It’s essentially just a musical ensemble, and there was a fair dash of ‘popular’ kids in chorus where I went to school.  Some of the most-liked kids were in the band, both the class clown and the Student Council VP were in Odyssey of the Mind, my Homecoming King was in the Game Club and took the lead in three musicals, and a starter on the basketball team was one of the Presidents of Students Against Destructive Decisions.  I have to imagine that this was not so unlike other schools.  There’s a lot of overlap and kids in high school aren’t nearly as boxed in as people make them out to be. 

 

Also, a lack of girlfriend or boyfriend isn’t nearly as dreadful, or as uncommon, as they make it out to be.  I went to school with plenty of people who weren’t dating, and that includes the jocks and cheerleaders.  When Rachel threatens to quit Glee however, saying that it isn’t helping her, she cites the fact that she still didn’t have a boyfriend.  Perhaps the true reason for that is that she’s a conceited and delusional bint, but what do I know?   (Of course, to rectify this problem she tries out for the school musical.  Oh yeah, I forgot, kids in Drama Club are getting all kinds of action.  Yeah.  That’s exactly how it works.)  Let’s be realistic – they live in a small town in Ohio.  I find it somewhat unlikely that there would be so little protest after they put on numbers to “Push It” and “Last Name”, songs about drunkenness, debauchery, and anonymous sex.  The Drama Club is putting on Cabaret.  Yeah, I don’t think so. No one remarks when teachers are physically affectionate with the students, or when one teacher tells Rachel that she sucks to her face, or when the football coach cracks a gay joke, or when Will wears a t-shirt to school that says “Bitch, please.”  That’s not how I remember high school, and it hasn’t exactly been a while.  Most shows and movies that take place in high school cast people that are in truth too old for their roles, but when they’re supposed to be seniors you can kind of suspend your disbelief.  These kids are supposed to be sophomores though, which is fabulously preposterous.  If that’s what the writers think sophomores look like than its been a long time since they’ve seen one.  At one point one of the girls mentioned that they were sixteen though.  Does that make sense?  Are sophomores supposed to be sixteen?  Wow.  I was a senior when I was fifteen.  Weird.  It's also weird that every single one of them is sixteen.  High school clubs are made up of a medley of all four grades - it doesn't make any sense.  It also means that both the head cheerleader and the quarterback are sophomores.  Probably not.

 

To summarize, in order to make this show they took a whole massive heap of potential, the opportunity for clever humor and spectacular dance scenes abounding, and then wrote it right into the ground.  I was pretty infuriated and if it hadn’t been three in the morning I might actually have shouted in frustration at certain points.  There were one or two redeeming bit characters, of course.  There was one very vicious choreographer who they hire in an attempt to win a competition, and he went on to verbally mangle their self-esteem, rapid fire down the row.  I laughed so hard I nearly cried, his similarities to Eunice and my lack have sleep may also have played a role there.  Olive Snook from Pushing Daisies guest, and was amusingly drunk the entire time.  “See what you can accomplish when you’re sober?”  “Sober?  Heck, I’m flying on a fistful of horse tranquilizers.  I can’t feel my lips!”  It hardly made of for the previously stated atrocities and offenses though.  What’s our lesson?  When it comes to Fox, just say No.

 

In an attempt to salvage my mood I also watched a bit of ABC’s new FlashForward.  The pilot wasn’t available so I loaded up the second episode, and I wasn’t really impressed.  It was kind of as expected.  The idea is potentially interesting – Everyone on Earth blacked out at the exact time for 2 minutes and some-odd seconds, and in that time saw their lives for that length of time on the same date several months in the future.  One NYC detective sees himself unfolding the causes of the event, and when his unit discovers video footage of one man awake while everyone was blacked out, they begin investigating it in earnest.  Of course because a major network does it, there is nothing really new or special about it.  It’s not funny and I don’t empathize with any of the characters.  It’s basically a twist on a typical Police drama, though at least we’ve been spared the usual sexual tension in the workplace.  Recovering alcoholic cop with a distressed child and a deteriorating marriage – how original.  Also, it's really hard to take the main character seriously.  Come on, it's Shakespeare!



TV and movies have a special ability for killing any characters I become partial to, and this one is no exception.  They cut right to the chase – I preferred the main character’s partner above all of the other officers, and they know already from the flash forwards that he’s going to be murdered soon.  Well at least I’m not going to waste any hope on a happy ending.  The writing was completely unimpressive, but at least it wasn’t as offensively poor as In Plain Sight or The Mentalist tend to be.  It casts Jack Davenport as ‘the other man’ and John Cho as ‘the skeptical partner’, so if I suffer from excessive boredom again in the future, I may sit through another episode, but probably not until then. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

There is a happy ending to all of this though.  Friday I staved off sleep until 7 o’clock.  That’s the trick – I have to fall asleep early enough to trick my body.  ‘Really,’ I tell it, ‘I’m just napping.’  I woke up at 4 a.m. but I consider it a big step towards righting my sleep cycle.  As per my Grandmother O’Brien’s advice I have not watched Slumdog Millionaire, but a friend of mine sent me the soundtrack over the Internet, so I’ve been enjoying that.  Also, at breakfast this morning I had no trouble reading all of the food labels.  This isn’t a huge achievement since they say pretty simple things like “Nescafe is strong in natural antioxidants” and “made with love for you”, but I was pleased nonetheless.  In addition, it is a weekend, which means that I can wear my sweet teal tie-in-front-and-back pants that my aunt bought me in Provincetown.  All in all, it was a day that made up quite well for the one that preceded it. 

 

P.S.  There are no less than three lizards that hang out in the in the bushes outside of my window.  They can jump farther than you’d think to look at them.  Also, I learned today that Glee is by the people who made Nip/Tuck.  It all makes sense now.

 

 

 I know I've commented quite a bit on the asthetic and style choices of the people down here, and I apologize for the monotony, but I feel this one additional thing must be mentioned.  In my host home, on the wall near the dining table, there are too frames.  I never really took great notice of them - they were all in shades of whites and browns, and didn't really warrant further inspection.  Here's one.



Today, however, I was wandering around the house drinking limeade and singing "Under My Skin" and happened to take a closer look, and I inadvertantly discovered something fascinating.  



They're butterfly wings!  The entire picture, some 2 1/2 by l ft in size, is composed entirely of overlapping butterfly wings.  I'm still digesting this fact at them moment, and am presently unsure how I feel about it.  Huh.

I apologize for that spontaneous hiatus, but I do have an excuse.  For the span of seven days, my host parents were somewhere else.  I assume on vacation, but only because I spotted a hotel’s webpage left up on the computer last week.  They could have been doing a small stint in prison for all I know.  Sorry about the lack of forewarning, but I had none myself.  People rarely inform me of things here until approximately five minutes before they happen, or just as frequently five minutes after.  Thus, one day before Glicia and Henrique departed for parts unknown, I was told that I would be spending this brief spell in the home of two Rotarians.

 

All in all, it could have been worse.  They could have had me shacking up with Wormtail.  Instead, at about six o’clock on Wednesday evening I found myself just outside the wall of Fernando, a small friendly red-faced man with slightly bulging eyes and no more than two words of English.  (Those two words were probably money and beer, but don’t judge him for that.  That’s basic vocabulary for any Brazilian who’s seen enough American movies, I’ve found.)  Living with him was a woman he introduced as his fiancé, which I thought rather anomalous as they live together and are both at the very least in their late forties.  Her name was baffling and sounds an awful lot like Juicy, but was she nice enough and meant well and has eyes that bulge even worse than her fiancé’s.

 

Their house seemed larger than Glicia’s, but not as comfortable.  Rather than leaving their ceilings high to disperse the heat, they opted for a two-story model with low ceilings, smaller windows, and clearly established doors.  After the open airy flowing horizontal nature of Glicia’s house, it felt slightly claustrophobic.  It lacked both the sleek and intentional interior designing of Glicia’s home and the cozy warm woodenness of the one I left behind in America.  It was not unpleasant, but I felt none of the spark of interest that typically arises when I enter a new Brazilian home for the first time.  It was thoroughly bourgeoisie and had a very… empty nest sort of feel.

 

Immediately upon my arrival the couple began showing me around the house.  The backyard was spacious, and obviously built for group gatherings rather than solitary coffees.  I ignored this disappointing factor for the Chihuahuas, of which there were three.  They were minute and manic little creatures, but eager to please and I found them amusing.  Juicy squealed at them in an insufferable baby voice, and I quickly returned to the kitchen to prevent her from recognizing the expression of disgust that streaked across my features.

 

Fernando offered me a snack, which I gratefully accepted as I had apparently missed their diner hour.  I kept a straight face throughout the ensuing jumble, but not without concentration.  I began making myself a standard ham and cheese sandwich, which Juicy was falling over herself to assist with.  She stared at me in revulsion as I explained that I preferred my ham and cheeses dry, and promptly decided I was just confused and brought out a parade of condiments, from butter to liquid cheese to pepper jelly to ketchup.  A similar pattern of miscommunication soon followed.  I asked for the peach juice and was handed the grape juice, strawberry yogurt, and a bag of milk.  When I attempted to requisition a plate they presented me with a soup bowl.  So on and so forth.

 

I was forced to wonder if they had ever housed an exchange student before, because they were rather dreadful at non-verbal communication.  Their charades were drastically substandard, and they had the tendency to jump to conclusions.  They would offer me something, I would indicate that I didn’t want some at them moment, and they would say, ‘okay, you don’t like it’.  I knew enough to understand them but not enough to correct them, which was frustrating.

 

The snack fiasco over and done with, I was led to my room, which had obviously been someone’s bedroom once but was now nearly stripped of personality.  There was a desk with several matted watercolors stacked on top, and ostentatiously large sound system, and a single framed photo on the bedside table.  The photo was of two teenagers, a boy and a girl, in formal dress and posing in front of several banners.  Neither was very attractive or well dressed, nor did they seem overwhelmingly pleased with their surroundings.  The lighting was poor and the photography mediocre.  It was again a sharp contrast to my previous lodgings, where the only pictures worth framing were those taken by shockingly paid professionals.  The room did contain one thing of interest, and that was the bed.  My bed at Glicia’s house is comfortable enough, but it is a single and really quite narrow.  My bed in the US was a twin, but had both a headboard and a baseboard, which meant I was a bit cramped unless I lay diagonally.  In Fernando’s house however I was the proud occupant of a queen-sized bed, one ideal for sprawling across at odd angles to stare contemplatively at the ceiling.  The sheets pulled across it were hideous and floral and looked like they’d been stolen from the curtain rack at a Salvation Army, but it was nice and firm and had a simple broken wooden rosary hanging from one post, which I thought gave it character.  At least, I think it was broken – it only had 53 beads.  Aren’t they supposed to have 55?  In any case, the bed will be missed.

 

My bedroom was on the second floor, which meant that I was permitted to leave the window open at night if I so wished, a blessing in the ever-increasing heat.  The logic was I suppose that no one could manage to sneak into my window except ninjas and people with ladders, both of which I assume were scarce in that neighborhood.  The view was pleasant, all blue skies, tiled roofs, and picturesque green flora.  When darkness fell and I watched it from my bed, the scene reminded me of a religious Christmas card – palm fronds swaying gently in front of a blue-black sky littered with twinkling stars.  In that half-asleep and nonsensical state that I frequently find myself in just before slipping away, I would occasionally think inanely to myself ‘huh, that’s Jerusalem that is’.  No lies or embellishments, I did. 

 

I’ve never been very good at sleeping, and I will admit that the problem was worsened slightly since my arrival here.  On nights where three am rolled around and I simply could not drift off, I would meander downstairs and watch American movies in Portuguese. I’ve tried time and time again, but I simply cannot figure out how to get subtitles.  Once I even tripped over an episode of Cops, though I was rather amused to find that none of the footage was of crimes in Brazil.  It was all videos from America, primarily the Midwest.  Has anyone ever actually gotten away with a high-speed chase?  And no, the Transporter doesn’t count.  On the second night such as this, part of the way through some film about Leonardo DiCaprio running around Africa with a gun, I spotted a stack of DVDs on a shelf.  Jackpot.  There weren’t a lot of them, perhaps only twenty or so, but it was still a very good find.  There were plenty of the usual suspects – Titanic, Terminator, When Harry Met Sally, The Matrix, etc. – but there were a few excellent surprises as well, things like The Meaning of Life and Shakespeare in Love.  Eric Idle has always been one of my favorite Pythons, but his musical numbers in The Meaning of Life had me laughing so hard my face hurt – and as far as Shakespeare in Love, seeing Captain Barbosa as the playhouse owner and Mr. Weasley as the stuttering tailor was kind of a warm-fuzzy moment for me.  They were just the pick-me-ups I needed after the long languorous awkward days where I lived in dread of someone suggesting we go out for the evening.  At least, they were until the DVD player malfunctioned on Saturday and I didn’t know how to request assistance.  The good things never last. 

 

The daylight hours were more troublesome.  I had no house key, so in order to leave the premises I needed to ask someone to let me out, and I could only go out if I knew for a fact that there would be someone home to let me back in upon my return.  This wasn’t all that easy, as the only person who’s schedule remained consistent was the maid.  There weren’t many things around the house with which to occupy myself, which would have been fine if there was a nice spot to sit and write, but there wasn’t.  The kitchen table tipped, the living room was cramped, and sitting outside meant dealing with the hyper active dogs during the day and the expansive bug population during the evening.  There were ants of every known species in that back yard and I kid you not, bees the size of the biggest June bug you ever saw.  (As I’m writing this, there is a persistent ladybug encroaching on my plate of orange slices). 

 

I spent plenty of time with the cachorros and got into the habit of lingering over lunch for as long as possible.  This was also in part strategic, as I could surreptitiously feed the dogs the food I didn’t want, and the longer I waited the longer the ice cream had to thaw on the counter.  While at Glicia’s house desert was a rare thing, usually consisting of fruit in syrup or bis-a-bis, at Fernando’s house there was always sorvette in the freezer, usually pilled in a trifle dish with layers of briagadeiro. 

 

The third day in I started rereading Hamlet, but I could only keep that up for so many hours.  Every time Ophelia appeared I was reminded of Mrs. Hardison’s SUPA course, which is hardly fair because I didn’t even take it.  Unfortunately I had a fair fist-full of friends who did, and I had to endure the rants of her crazed man-hating interpretations of the text.  In order to take up the extra time I had while my classmates took exams, I decided to read it back to front anyway, including all of the biography, the overview, and a mess of articles in the back about the significance and intention behind Hamlet’s tragedy.  I quite liked the editor, and was surprised to find him witty on subjects typically stale - he was almost catty when it came to discussing anti-Stratfordians, particularly Oxfordians.  I reached the final page of the introduction and glanced down at the signature beneath it.  Sylvan Barnet, Tufts University.  I stared at it for a while and thought mildly ‘of course he is’, and then read the play again.

 

 Beyond this there was little to be done but staring off into space and jossing about with my three closest companions here in Brazil - Mason, Gareth, and Howard Moon.  The first is my notebook.  He only has about ten blank pages left however, and I’m trying to reserve them for the school days where he is my only escape.  My mother attempted to send me some new notebooks, but I’m yet to receive them and they don’t sell composition books in Curvelo, which is a shame because they fit very neatly into my bag.  The second is my GQMF SRL camera.  There wasn’t much to take pictures of, except for the flowers in the back yard, but it was something to do.  The third and most dynamic is my MacBook, most beloved computer of mine.  There is no reliable wi-fi anywhere in Curvelo that I’ve found, so I set about composing character descriptions for Nicole and organizing an outline for the novel I’m writing for my mother.  It was an irksome task, because that story is expanding by the day so I spent a while looking things up in the dictionary.  I’ve always found this amusing, because you never know what words you might learn, and I was pleased to discover that the dictionary on my computer contained not only words, but also phrases and persons of importance (including, apparently, Bill Haley).  On that topic, did you know that the acronym ‘fubar’ (fucked up beyond all reason/recognition/repair) has been in use since the 1940’s?  I had no idea!

 

Tuesday afternoon at least was quite pleasant, as there was no one home but the maid and myself, and for lunch the maid had made these little fried things, like meatballs with cheese in the center.  I ate a bowl of them, and then sat on the back porch working on my Reed application essays and drinking nectar de pessego* and listening to ‘Decatur’ and ‘Charlie Darwin’ on a loop. 

 

One of the odder things about this house was the shoes.  Whenever I opened a cabinet or drawer, no matter what room it was in, there would inevitable be at least one shoe.   Whether it was a strappy silver heel under the kitchen sink or a variety of worn ballet flats crammed in next to the VCR, they were everywhere.  On one memorable occasion I opened the cupboard in the bathroom in search of more shampoo only to discover two tacky porcelain Christmas ornaments, three mismatched flip-flops, and an abused paperback copy of Tamora Pierce’s In The Hands of the Goddess.  Weird.

 

Late Wednesday afternoon saw me sprawled on my beloved bed one last time, watching Brazil play the Czech Republic in futebal and trying to increase me surface area as much as possible so that my sweat might dry faster.  When Fernando came home from work I turned off the game (still 0-0, but there had been some near misses) to lug my suitcase downstairs and have a pre-dinner snack with my hosts before my departure.  I had learned that pre-dinner snacks at Fernando’s were rather better than the dinners themselves, and that Juicy, despite the many and varied ways in which she taxed my patience, made the very best banana smoothies that went excellently with coconut-topped sweet bread from the Bel Pao on the corner.  It was as good a way to end my stay as any.

 

 

Though certain previously mentioned elements will indeed be missed, I maintain that remaining in that house would have proved dangerous to my health.  Beyond the obvious reasons, namely the stress induced by restraining myself from strangling Juicy on a daily basis and the sheer aggravation of being awoken from any and all naps by three teething Chihuahuas, there was a palm tree fairly close to my bedroom window.  This tree was so close and so sturdy looking that I was quite confident that I could, if I tried, jump to it from my window and shimmy down it.  It became more tempting every time I looked at it, if for no other reason than I was curious to see if I could do it without tumbling twenty feet to, though probably not my death, my rather intense pain.  I blame Chanel, for being an aspiring ninja, and Dan, for watching too many action and kung fu movies while I was home.  Even though I can now no longer leave my window open at night, it is probably better this way.  It would be very impressive if I hurt myself jumping out of Glicia’s house.  My window is about four feet off the ground.  Tops. 

 

 

In other news, Glicia’s backyard looks like a plane hit.  They say the pool should be finished before the end of November. 

 

*Nectar de pessego is essentially peach juice.  Do they sell it in the U.S.?  I don’t recall ever seeing it in anything but condensed form, and it really is quite good. 

On Friday we drove to Belo Horizonte for, as usual, a party.  My cousin Diogo was graduating from University, and while I was all for celebrating his accomplishments, I wasn’t overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the event.  I’m not as much of a homebody as I seem, but when it comes to parties I prefer either being among friends or strangers.  Acquaintances, as all of these people would be, make my skin itch.  You’ve met them at least once, so you’re expected to remember their name and how they’re related to everyone else around you, and you’ve already used up all your stranger-to-stranger conversational topics.  You know, things like preferences, jobs, interests, current living situations, and the like.  Likewise you don’t know them well enough to strike up an important conversation, inquire about their loved ones, or say something funny.  I’m rather conscious about keeping my sense of humor on a tight leash until I get to know people here.  There aren’t a huge number of people willing to talk to me on a regular basis, and I do my best not to needlessly alienate them.  I’m not entirely sure it’s working. 

 

As usual I was the first one finished getting ready, which is both good and bad.  On the one hand it gave me time to sit at the little kitchen table and stare out at the city at dusk, a lovely sight indeed.  On the other hand, it gave me time to think.

 

 

At the Inbound orientation we received tips about how to avoid alcohol and drugs.  Don’t, the man suggested, tell them it’s against Rotary rules.  That will only increase their motivation because no matter where you are in the world, forbidden = fun to the general adolescent population.  Instead they proposed that we should inform our peers that such substances and practices are against our respective religions, because they would respect that.  

 

Glaring at my shoes and wishing earnestly that I had some point been gifted a perception manipulator, or at the very least the ability to teleport, I wondered if anyone would believe me if I told them small talk, suffering pitting glances, and dancing were all heinous abominations in my Holy Book, each entitling the perpetrator to an eternity of more compounding creative divine punishments than Dante could shake a stick at.  I doubted it, and turned my attentions to attempting to contract Ebola through sheer force of will.

 

I tried to look on the bright side despite my gloomy mood.  If nothing else, my blasphemously plain shoes mercifully covered my toenails which, on top of never having had a pedicure once in their unglamorous existence, still bore the evidence of Eunice’s misguided attempts to live up to her racial stereotype and do people’s nails.  It was also remotely comforting that Amanda’s dress looked like something my Odyssey of the Mind team would have made by taking a piece of black fabric that was probably once a bed sheet and stitching in odd places to form some semblance of an ill-fitting garment two inches away from a public indecency charge.  My family retained their color scheme of black gray and more black, but this time I didn’t fit in as well, my dress being white and gray with some green and gold in the flowers                                                                                              along the hem.  If I was my 11^th grade English teacher that would probably be symbolic, but I’m not so it wasn’t.  Presently resigned to my fate of a family party full of people I had nothing to say to, I got in the car and hoped for the best.

 

It turns out my guesses fell pretty wide of the mark.  Instead of arriving at some banquet hall rented out by my aunt, we parked in front of a very upscale club.  It was not in fact a family party, but rather a celebration thrown by all of the students that had graduated from the International Relations program, of which there were about 50.  Tickets for entry cost about $60, but that didn’t stop my aunt, the mother of the cousin graduating, from buying 48 of them to distribute to her sisters and brothers and their children.  Diogo must be a pretty popular guy, because ten of his close friends braved the charge to come along as well.

 

Apparently the dress code was ‘black tie’, but those instructions certainly did not make it as far as me.  It was a shame too, because I actually brought a dress with me that would have suited the occasion.  Instead though I stood in a slightly poufy dress that I bought for $16 at a farmer’s market in Woodstock and watched my two little cousins, 10 and 13 respectively, adjust their cufflinks.  Marina noted to me that seeming such young boys in full suits made her feel like she was with the Mafia, but it made me feel like I was at a funeral or the opera, so I didn’t comment.

 

I had previously wondered in the passing about the makeup my Brazilian family wore.  They put it on every day, but changed something when they went out at night.  Having never studied it in depth or dedicated it to further thought I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but standing in the foyer of this building chatting with my cousins, it seemed quite obvious.  When the Dinizs wanted to get dressed up, they applied about as much eye shadow as Dr. Frankenfurter*.  Usually gray.  The effect was… interesting.

 

The stairs that brought us up were fairly plain, but what we found at the top was anything but.  To solidify the fact that this was in fact the International Relations program, woman in various exotic costumes stood at the entrance to lead parties to their seats.  A geisha all in pink directed us to the left, and I took in the room.  On either side of the main area were two slightly raised portions with railings.  All three sections were covered with classy glass-top tables surrounded by gleaming steel chairs with white cushions.  In the center of each table was a tall glass vase perhaps three and a half feet in height filled with a variety of flowers in green and white, though large glorious trumpeting lilies were in predominance.  Across the ceiling hung gracefully drooping white gossamer fabric and curtains of the same material lined the two sidewalls, each one decorated with a flag from a different country.  I thought it interesting that there was no U.S. flag while Marina was slightly miffed at the Canadian flag, which had been modernized slightly, bearing a leaf with far sharper angles than usual. 

 

At various intervals around the walls were long low white-draped tables with crystal platters of finger foods, and there were two separate bars.  Snappily dressed waiters gracefully maneuvered around the gusts, toting trays of aperitifs, beer, and occasionally coke and water for those very few guests who were below drinking age.  (Drinking age was a pretty loose consideration here.  I believe the only person present they would have denied was Gustavo, and he’s in 7^th grade.)  Considering the amount that my family went about drinking that evening, $60 per ticket was probably a bargain.

 

As we approached our table we were greeted by a torrent of familiar faces and began the usual ritual of kissing everyone who got close enough and exclaiming over everyone’s appearance.  The uncles were well and truly happy to see Marcelo, Marina’s father, because he had recognized that two open bars were not enough for this cherished occasion and started unloading a grocery bag full of Red Label whiskey.  He had lined up about eight bottles when he paused for a moment, and I assumed he was finished, but instead he pulled up from the floor the coup de gras – a 4.5 liter bottle perched in a tipper.  (For those of you not accustomed to buying your liqueur in bulk, a tipper is a simple mechanism in which you place the bottle to help you pour it.  Instead of picking up the bottle to pour, you just tip it and it swings.  Very convenient.)  The aunts were pretty excited by this development as well and dispatched their husbands to the bar for tumblers and ice.  I found myself wondering how Chris felt about Red Label, and wondering if I could fit something like that in my suitcase.  It looked heavy.

 

Soon enough the man of the hour arrived and groups began coalescing for pictures.  One of my favorites was the one taken of the Diniz siblings.  Glicia, my host mother, has five or six sisters and two brothers.  While the girls are quite commanding and opinionated, the boys are quite calm and have learned to go with the flow.  I have a special appreciation for my uncle Leo (which is short for Leonardo, which makes me laugh) because even though he looks a tad like Grima Wormtongue** (not in a creepy way), he remembers my name and, unlike the rest of his family, is never drunk at the end of the party.  I was slightly curious about his friend, because there was one guy he always hung out with at these occasions.

 

I had come to call this man ‘The Dane’ in my head, because though I have only met about three natively Danish people I my life, he fit the imagine in my head, the paradigm of Danishness.  He showed no indications of speaking a language other than Portuguese and his skin was juuuuuust dark enough for him to be a born Brazilian, but I never caught his name so The Dane he shall remain.  I casually asked Marina about him.  She lives in Belo Horizonte so she sees the family far more often than I, and she was generally more attentive about the whole who was related to who and how sort of thing.  She hadn’t been told how he fit in to the family, but said what I was thinking, which was that he always arrived, spent time with, and left, with Leo.  This evening they shared the same champagne flute, got something for the other if they picked up a dessert from a tray, and were rarely further than four feet apart.  I thought my suspicions were fairly well justified.  Honestly though, it’s quite difficult to tell if two people are together in Brazil.  Someone could eat half a chocolate, feed it to the person next to them and follow it with a kiss, and you would be asking ‘So are they brother and sister or cousins?’.  If it’s not said outright you don’t know and opinions about homosexuality are all over the board down here, so it’s not the kind of thing you can ask about without overwhelming heaps of proof.

 

 It may seem like a strange thing to key in on in the midst of uproarious festivities, but not so much to me.  I haven’t had to endure so many gay jokes since middle school, and even then I could tell people off for it.  Here, I can’t risk troding on the toes of those few people willing to talk to me.  I like my uncle and his friend a lot, they’re very sweet to me, and I would feel a lot better if I knew for sure they were together.  Like I wasn’t the only person in the state who was bothered by the scathing comments and the ignorant jibes.  It’s none of my business, but it would be a huge relief.

 

In the wall opposite of the door was set a stage where a live band had been accompanying a curvaceous woman in a black glittering tango dress and her enthusiastic male counterpart, but soon after the pictures were finished a serious looking man in a black suit took the microphone and the dance floor cleared.  One by one he called the graduates to the stage where they lined up with their mothers or fathers on their arm.  As each name was called a cheer would go up, and of course it was soon a competition.  Diego had a whole slew of rowdy half-drunk friends and cousins on his side though, and when he was announced a chorus of shouts, whistles, and clanking tumblers exploded behind me, effectively trouncing the opposition.  Champagne glasses were topped off and pressed into reluctant hands (mine and Marina’s) and toasts were made, all while the graduating students led their parents in a celebratory dance. 

 

A girl came around and began tossing out party favors better suited to a rave than this classy establishment, but for some reason they didn’t seem so very out of place.  Without batting an eye we wrapped ourselves in glittering feather boas, donned pink plastic sunglasses, and pulled on glow-in-the-dark ties.  A variety of sparkling headbands were distributed as well.  Each had two springs on top, though what odd thing was perched atop them altered from person to person, from tassels to plastic strawberries.  If you remember there was a DJ at a previous party who looked uncannily like my cousin Justin.  He’s a friend of Diego’s and at most of the parties, but I’ve never caught his name, so I call him Brazilian Justin - or Brustin, if you will.  His headband was topped with fuzzy golden orbs, which bobbled and shook whenever he danced - which was the entire time.  Several more friends arrived with a cardboard box full of Red Bull, which was liberally added to the next round of whiskey.

 

The music selection played was frankly bizarre, as though someone had just started pulling names out of a hat.  Brazilians are, in general, enthusiastic and fun-loving people roiling with energy.  They are for the most part very skilled dancers, which was why I found their reaction to hits of the 80’s somewhat odd.  While Americans, and apparently Canadians, would move with abandon to the beat the Brazilians seemed almost reserved.  Their movements weren’t hesitant, just subtle and unpracticed, like they weren’t at all used to this sort of thing and were not comfortable moving at the tempo the music dictated.  It was the reverse of Eunice at prom.  While that had been one awkward girl bobbing mutedly from side to side surrounded by furiously gyrating adolescents, here Marina and I quickly realized we would have to lay off what we were accustomed to before we stared making a scene.  They seemed to recognize and enjoy the music, but even when the YMCA inevitably came around few people really had their hands in the air.  Odd.  They were happy though, and the cousins had a grand time attempting to set Gustavo up with a relative of one of the other students, a young girl that was the only other preadolescent in attendance.  Diogo crowd surfed at least twice.

 

My family had slowly receded from the dance floor to hang around our dining table and top up their drinks.  Gustavo, thoroughly bored with this grown-up party, had borrowed The Dane’s iphone to play games and was at this point sitting quietly drinking Red Bull from a champagne flute and giving digital bowling every once of his focus.  A commotion started up at the entrance of the room, and a line of men began marching in.  They were obviously a reproduction of a Carnival-attired Samba school, with bizarre red helmets and broad-shouldered and heavily sequined mantles.  Even Rassilon*** would have been impressed.  They played all varying sizes and shapes of drums and when they lined up next to the dance floor struck up a rousing samba.  Without hesitation Leo and The Dane grabbed me and several other cousins and hurried in to dance.  I have no tremendous skill at samba but I have been practicing, and I will have it known that some time after this event one of my aunts informed me that I had a lot of swing.

 

I don’t know about that, but I did try.  And it was trying.  The samba never actually ended, it would just seamlessly alter in speed and rhythm without pause.  I danced so long and hard I had a stitch, and then proceeded to dance through it.  One by one the cousins fell back and eventually even Leo insisted he needed a drink.  Several moments after this thinning of our ranks I watched The Dane making faces over my shoulder towards the table where our family was recuperating.  As it will be attested I fail explosively at body language interpretation, but his face was very obviously asking someone to come back to the dance.  I had one guess as to who it was.  He apparently didn’t like whatever response he received, because a playful smile shifted over his features that said ‘Don’t make me come up there’.  A minute later Leo rejoined the strenuous exercise, his bangs sticking to the sweat on his forehead.  His face said ‘See I’m here.  Happy now?’ and The Dane’s responded ‘Yes, very’.  Leo rolled his eyes but fifteen minutes later dragged the two of us, who were the only members of our group still dancing, back to the sanctuary of the table. 

 

The night carried on much like that with plenty more dancing and a good deal of alcohol still to be had (though by the middle of the evening the whiskey was finished and vodka was introduced to take its place).  Around four in the morning Henrique rounded up Glicia and I and deposited us near the entrance so that we could leave once he found Amanda.  Thoughtfully the caterers had placed another long table near the door, this one hosting trays of bonbons and a lovely tall coffee urn that looked to me quite like a sterling silver hookah.  Amanda was eventually dragged from the dance floor and we trudged down the stairs, feet sore and bodies aching, and were shortly followed by the rest of the family.  As I aided Glicia across the street (the rough and crumbling cobbles of Belo Horizonte are a death trap for people in heels) I turned back to watch the uncles coalesce around an SUV, apparently keen on carpooling.  I noticed Leo and The Dane waving goodbye to this group and moving to their own car, which was parked several feet away and smiled in spite of myself.  It was a good party.

 

 

 

 

* Dr Frankenfurter is the lascivious transvestite played by Tim Curry in the cult classic film The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

** Grima Wormtongue is a villain from The Lord of The Rings.  He was the advisor to the king of Rohan, and poisoned the man’s mind with lies and manipulation until he was exiled from the kingdom.  To put it in the simplest of terms, he was a major creeper.

 

***Rassilon was the first of the Time Lords, a fictional extratarrestrial race of people from the British Sci-fi series Doctor Who. Time Lords traditionally wore over-the-top high collared red sequined coats and helmets.  Like so.

First of all, sorry about the hiatus.  The internet is kind of temperamental here, and I was out of town from Friday to Monday.  I'll warn you that things like that might happen some times.  When I get into a car, I usually only know where I'm going about 20% of the time, so forgive me for the dry spells, because they are entirely unintentional and frankly unavoidable. 

On Thursday I was told to pack my bag, because a Rotarian would be bringing me to Belo Horizonte for a Rotary-related thing, and would later pick me up on Monday.  Those are literally all the details I received, but that's not terribly out of the norm for Rotary.  In my experience they either give you the a location and time two hours before you're supposed to be somewhere, or they send you a full itinerary two weeks ahead of time with every minute accounted for.  Going with the flow is the name of the game here, so I just settled for packing for every eventuality.  It is an effective method, albeit a heavy one.

On Friday morning they picked me up at 7 o'clock sharp, approximately 10 minutes after I had been woken up.  Breakfast was a ham and cheese sandwich hastily made on my way out the door.  That is one interesting cultural phenomenon to note: the ham and cheese sandwich.  It's the stand-buy here, almost like the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the States.  When in doubt, ham and cheese.  The cheese is bland and I'm not much of a ham fiend, but they're fast and filling and go well with the Coke Brazilians persist on drinking at every given opportunity. 

I don't mind long car rides terribly, but two hours crammed in the back seat with two other people is far from my favorite way to spend a friday, particularly when it's hot as all get-out and the car I'm riding in has no air conditioning and the shock absorption abilities of the average card table.  Luckily though I was to be spending Friday night at my host-aunt's house, which at least meant it would be a location I had been before and with people I had met.  My host aunt is a bit of a ditz, but her pre-adolescent sons are pretty funny and her husband is very friendly and goofy, and is polite about correcting my Portuguese.  They're hosting a Canadian exchange student, and though we don't have a lot in common we find each other tolerable company and it's nice to be able to discuss your experiences as an outsider with someone who is going through the same thing.  Also, she's in the habit of offering me maple sugar candy, which I appreciate. 

That night we went to the local sports club.  It was sort of like the CYC, but far bigger and almost entirely open-air instead of being a multi-floored building.  They have at least three pools, and a water slide.  Nice.  Evening had come around so it was pleasantly cool, so I was comfortable even in my confusion.  My host cousin Gustavo was in a game of futesal (spelling, I'm not sure of) that we had gone to watch.  From what I understand futesal is a sort of toned-down version of futeball.  It's mostly school children that play it.  The ball is smaller, there are fewer people on the field at a time, and some of the rules are adjusted.  It was odd, but fun.  One thing I found surprising was that if children were on a sports team for this athletic club, they could go to the associated private school for free.  This sounds at first like a great idea, but I imagine it puts quite a bit of pressure on the children, especially as they get older and the teams become more competitive.  I personally would be somewhat tense if I knew the only thing standing between my parents and the preposterous bill of private education was my ability to kick a ball, but perhaps that's just me.  

On Saturday, after an exciting breakfast of bread, Marina (the Canadian exchange student) and I were hustled down town to where Rotary had prepared a bus.  We donned our Rotary jackets to stave off the typical questions of where we were from, and fell into easy conversation with the other students assembling there.  By the time we boarded the bus there were about 48 of us, from all around the district.  About a fifth of us were from the U.S. which was a bit disappointing, but the remainder was a pretty good mix of nations.  From Mexico to Iceland to Taiwan to South Africa and back to Canada, who had four students in attendance. 

We were brought to a large fazenda about an hour away, were we would eat and sleep for the remainder of the weekend.  Next to the road was a shaded airy building were we ate lunch.  Further along the dirt road behind it were simple but pretty one-story buildings.  There were a lot of us, so there were beds in every available space, including the kitchenette.  My bed was tucked between a jacuzzi and a wall which made access a tad difficult, but I had a swell view and felt no reason for complaint.

Saturday was a jumble of excited socializing and information dispensation.  We were once again taught the rules for proper conduct and endured a lesson on the geography and history of Brazil, but it was well worth it, because once we were finished we were told that a Capoeira school had been invited to come to give us a demonstration.  For those of you who are unaware, Capoeira is a martial art / dance that was developed in Brazil.  It was illegal for slaves to learn how to fight, for obvious reasons, so when they escaped and formed communities deep in the woods, they taught each other this technique, which is fighting style that could be excused as dancing.  It takes amazing strength, control, and intuition for your opponents' movement.  The only American movie I've ever seen it in was Ocean's Twelve.  If you've ever seen it, it's the workout that the French thief does, and also the technique he uses to get past the detection lasers at the museum.  But anyway.  It's extremely impressive to watch, and I highly recommend you look into it if you've never seen it. 

Night settled and just like in America, we were split into groups to develop skits to illustrate our rights and responsibilities.  Probably the funniest was the group that set out to remind us that we should never wear provocative clothing, even to bed.  (I was mildly curious about who they thought was watching us in our sleep, but had sense enough not to ask.)  At first a family sat around watching an imaginary television.  Deciding he was tired, the exchange student said goodnight to his family and retired to his bedroom, where he got ready for bed by taking off his shirt and shimmying out of his shorts, revealing a bikini top and boxer shorts.  What he didn't realize was that his host sisters were peeking into his room and took the opportunity to take pictures with their phones.  When host-dad figured out was going on, he stormed in and banished the exchange boy from the house, smacking him across the face and throwing his clothes behind him.  I laughed at the time, but winced at each of the gay jokes that it prompted.

That is one thing that I will say was disheartening about the whole experience.  For some reason I imagined that students willing to leave behind all that they had once known to brave a new culture and accept it for better or for worse would be rather open minded about differences in the world.  My assumptions have proved faulty on a number of occasions.  I don't mean to say that any of them are flagrantly racist (at least, not as racist as Eunice) or aggressively homophobic, but the small jabs are numerous and frequent.  I hear a lot of that kind of thing from the Brazilians I go to school with, but I had honestly hoped my fellow adventurers would be better.  So much for that.

Not many of us had expected there to be a pool so only about 7 had swim suits, but most of us jumped in anyway.  Those who did not jump were thrown.  It was rather chilly now that the sun had been down for a while, but we were in high spirits.  Several people even began a rousing chorus of 'O Canada'.  We figured once we dredged ourselves from the pool it would be about time to head to bed, but this was Brazil, so of course it wasn't.  Instead, we hurried up the hill to pull on dry clothes and eat dinner, which was quickly followed by a large impromptu samba lesson.  The teachers were several chaps from Rotex (students who had gone on exchange and had now returned) and one exchange girl from India, who was really quite good.  Another exchange student insisted it was because it was a part of her culture.  I for one never realized that Samba was an integral element of Indian culture.  Here I was thinking that her skill had something to do with the fact that she'd been taking dance lessons since she was four.  I guess I'm just ignorant like that.  My own skill was nothing to brag about, but I will say that I was not the worst of us, which was a fair achievement for me.

The next day we were bussed out earlier than I would have liked to a middle-of-nowhere town with treacherous dirt roads and tumble down buildings.  For some reason someone had thought this would make a good spot for  museum.  The museum itself was very cool.  It was actually a large botanical garden, with trails that led to galleries spaced throughout.  The art in the galleries was very contemporary, and consisted primarily of installations and sculptures.  It reminded me very much of Mass MOCA.  One of my favorite installations was a large rectangular concrete building.  Inside the walls were plain, except for several large blank canvases that appeared to have been randomly placed.  Placed at even intervals around the perimeter of the floor were eight sets of five speakers on stands.  Each speaker was amplifying a different wordlessly singing voice, and they came together to form a resounding heavenly chorus.  It was quite moving, and the whole thing brought me back to reading The Late Hector Kipling last summer.  (An excellent satire of the contemporary art industry, written by the fabulous and strange David Thewlis.  I'll warn you though, it's for mature audiences only.)

We oohed and ahed, and held up well against the punishing heat.  The bus ride back to Belo Horizonte was exhausting because we were held up for about half an hour at once point by road construction, and it really was quite hot.  The girl from Iceland sat behind me, and at the request of another girl began reciting a bedtime story in Icelandic.  It was beautiful, even if the only part I understood was the sound effects.  There appeared to be a cow involved somehow. 

Over the course of the weekend Marina had been increasingly distressed with how little Americans seemed to know about Canada, and when I explained that students in the U.S. typically learned very little about our neighbor to the north, she took it upon herself to spend Sunday night, my last night in Belo Horizonte, giving me a crash course in all things Canada, from the slang to the provinces to the government issues (Let Quebec break off, it’ll never make it on its own!) to historical facts to the best thing to order at Tim Horton’s to clips of the most famous Hockey commentator.  It was honestly pretty embarrassing how little of it I knew, especially since I knew a fair bit more than any of the other American students.  This says more about them then it does about me, since I knew next to nothing.  It’s truly distressing how little public schools teach about world affairs.  No wonder we have such a hard time not making an embarrassment of ourselves when we go overseas - or over boarders, in the cases of Canada and Mexico. 

Throughout the entire weekend people had listed what it was that they missed the most about their home countries while I had drawn a blank.  Certainly I missed certain people, knowledge of my surroundings, talking, and the ability to do as I pleased in my own home without worrying what my host family thought about it but the others seemed primarily concerned with objects of locations that they had left behind.  I’ve thought of something though.  Today in class, hot and tired and wincing at the friction of dry skin against dry clothes, I realized that I missed cranberry juice.  I find this suitably ironic, since I once despised cranberry juice and would only drink it under duress.  Drinks here are sour or sweet, but I’m yet to find something to match the bitter tartness of cranberries.  Unlike the peanut butter and Aero bars my compatriots receive from home, it’s hardly a practical thing to ship.  The bottle could crack and it is rather heavy, and therefore expensive.  I’ll make do without it just fine, but from time to time I may pause to remember it with fondness.

 

Well, Swine Flu definitely has Brazil in a dither.  School already started a week late after winter holidays here, and now next week will be canceled as well.  For a while Curvelo was one of the few cities in the state without any cases, but the first girl to get it here was dead two days later, and people are pretty tense about it.  At the Rotary meeting this Monday they invited two awkward medical students to come and explain the facts of the disease, which was sensible of them considering the rumors that one hears.  I didn´t mind in the slightest, because there is one Rotarian that they use to communicate important things to me because his english is the best, and he looks unnervingly like Peter Pettigrew*, and has this strange soft voice and a peculiar manner.  It´s pretty bad - every time he leaves the room I want to go "No, stop him!  It´s him, he´s the traitor, it´s been him this whole time!"  When the students finished their presentation the Rotarians turned to the more pressing matters of dinging a bell, clapping for the flag (really, they didn´t say a pledge of allegiance or anything, they just stood up, faced the flag, and clapped politely), eating dinner, and setting up the wide-screen T.V. so they could watch a really racist novella set in India.  (It wouldn´t last two seconds in America - they´d be swamped in law suits for just the intro sequence.)  All this means for me is a week off school and a week without seeing the Pettigrew doppelganger, which is fine by me.


The 7th is Brazilian Independence Day, so there was a small celebration at school today.  Some soldiers showed up, primped and pressed with their little green berets.  They passed out little pamphlets, with little comics in them about how important and brave soldiers are.  The cover was the best.  It depicted two soldiers, smiling with two indian children with black hair and loin clothes.  I´m not sure what the message was supposed to be, but it´s now on the magnet board in my room.  A song was played, and the soldiers all sang - I wonder what the song was, because if it was the national anthem then that´s fantastic.  It sounded like an upbeat number from Fantasia, and the flag bearer (who looked quite a bit like a young Barak Obama) defintly looked as though he was trying to remember the words.  I applauded him for his effort.  The best part was the students themselves.  This school has a band of sorts, but not like we have in the States.  Everyone plays a drum, of any shape or size.  They played this great pounding parade samba - I adore that music.


Brazil is heating up fast.  Summer is months away, and already I´m sleeping with just a sheet most nights.  I´ve been careful not to spend too much time in the sun, but my face is slightly burnt already - just from walking to and from school, which is only ten minutes either way.  A storm is brewing up outside, which should cool it down for a day or two.  I love thunder storms here - there´s something very other-worldly about them.  It makes you want to go stand in them and watch trees get pulled up by their roots.


A whole batch of American students came over on the same plane, and one girl put a whole list of names together and started a thread on facebook last week to discuss Brazilian life so far.  It started off very peppy and excited, with a lot of "I love this!" and "That is so beautiful"s and such, but it has now trailed off slightly, with students starting to discuss their frustrations, downfalls, weight gain, and homesickness.  I admit, homesickness has yet to really hit me.  I´m sure it will, but my reactions can be kind of odd and misplaced at times.  The days before I left the country, it seemed as though everyone around me was far more excited than I was.  Not to say that I wasn´t very happy to be going, but in my mind I was considering both the good and the bad that was to come, and kept a pretty even head.  If there was a sale on genuine ginger beer or Terry Pratchett books tomorrow, or it started raining right now, I´d be ecstatic.  The world is made of all sorts.  Once in a while something will pop up, and I´ll think of one person in particular.  The song "Honey Pie" will come up on itunes, and I´ll think of when Chris and Tom used to just hang about the house in the afternoon while they made evening plans.  I´ll think up a truly terrible pun, and wish I could turn around and tell it to Nicole.  I´ll watch the movie True Romance, and be slightly disappointed to note that Tim isn´t there to discuss the wonder that is Gary Oldman.  Just this evening I found a brown spider the size of a half-dollar on my bedroom floor, and as I got closer to take a picture I thought of Chanel, who for all her toughness and bravado was always completely unnerved by arachnids.  Good times, yes indeed, but times here are good as well.


Rachel mentioned recently that she thinks these entries need an editor.  Certainly they do, and I apologize for that, but I try to take as little time on the computer as possible.  I appreciate your understanding.

Note to Nicole and Tess:  You remember the movie Pathology, the really strange terrible one with Milo What´s-His-Name in it?  It exists.  As in, it exists somewhere other than the strange pocket dimension that is Impoco´s Movie Rental.  A girl in my class was showing me a stack of pirated DVDs she had bought from a street vendor and was planning to watch over the weekend, and there it was, Portuguese dubbing and all.  The make matters worse (better?), one of the other movies was called Deception.  It´s a dreadfully written, oversexed film staring both Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor.  I borrowed it from her for a lark, and nearly died laughing.  Wishing you were here.



*For those of you who don´t know, Peter Pettigrew is a character from J.K. Rowling´s Harry Potter series.  Though he appeared to be working for the Light, but in fact was a spy for the badins´.  He betrayed his best friend to the enemy which resulted in the death of his friend and his friend´s wife, and then he faked his own death to frame another friend for the crime.  A rather nasty fellow, I believe you´ll agree.