Onde é fica a toalete?

So finally we are learning Portuguese!   It ´s so nice to be able to somewhat communicate with people instead of just defaulting to Spanish and/or “Ummm…”

I think our teacher, Fabían, might be somewhat frustrated with me because I am an impatient learner.   (Well, really just impatient in general.)   I want to know everything all at once and I ask a *ton* of questions.   I ´m that annoying kid in class who raises their hand all the time to ask seemingly impertinent questions (What!?   I ´m curious!).   My friend Cara always told me, “Jema, questions are for office hours.”   I think because Portuguese is so similar to Spanish, I tend to get ahead of the material.   If we were talking about life cycles of butterflies instead of Portuguese, Fabían would be telling us about caterpillars and I would be asking how long a butterfly lives after it hatches out of it ´s cocoon… that sort of thing.   So, I am trying to choose my questions wisely.

Today Brazil ´s international soccer team is playing in the world cup.   Just like the rest of the world, this country is soccer-crazy.   (They call it futebol/football.)   It ´s kind of weird how almost every other country you go to is NUTS about soccer.   The British are soccer maniacs.   Argentinians are even crazier.   People routinely get KILLED at soccer games – like fans from opposing teams going bananas on eachother.   Referees and players often get seriously injured by fans jumping out of the stands and attacking them for a bad call or a bad play.   One soccer player got killed in a bar in some South American country a few years ago because he accidently scored  the winning  goal for the other team.   And this happened in a city like New York or Chicago or Minneapolis – so don ´t be thinking this is just some backwards third-world country.   Anyway, so our teacher told us that after 3 p.m. today (which will be 11am (pac.), noon (mtn.) for you guys), the whole country basically shuts down and no one does anything but watch the soccer game.   Should be interesting!

Although we ´ve been studying like crazy for the past two days (Monday and Tuesday – or segunda-feira é tercer-feira), Sunday was relaxing.   Well… kind of.   We practiced our 45 min. walk to school, but it took us about an hour and a half because we got lost.   We thought we were *really* lost, but turns out we just kept walking in circles around the same neighborhood.   Two reasons this happened.   #1 – the streets on the map aren ´t always for people.   Sometimes it ´s cars only.   Also, the elevation of the streets aren ´t shown.   So we come to an intersection heading south.   But if you want to keep going south, you have to jump off a bridge onto the road forty feet below.   So, you must improvise – find a way around.   But, you must do this without asking for help or getting directions, because you don ´t know how to ask or to understand what is said.   #2 reason is that in other countries (maybe this is only true for latin and south america, but it is *very* true here) they aren ´t near as uptight about organizing things.   Sometimes a restaurant or hotel ´s address is simply the street it ´s on, or the nearest cross street.   Like Washtington and 3rd.   Or just Washington.   Except the names are wildly unfamiliar, like Avenida Joaquim Eugenia de Lima (yes, that ´s just one street)  and Avenida Luis R. Brigadero.   And there is no 1st, 2nd, 3rd street.   The only time the streets have numbers is when they ´re named after an important day.   Like 4th of July Street or December 25th Avenue.   And another part of the second reason we got lost is because the streets don ´t have the same name all the way through.   Same in México, Argentina, Perú, etc.   So for example, if you have a street in the U.S. that ´s five miles long, the whole street, start to finish, is the same name.   Let ´s say Palm Drive.   Not here.   Instead, it would be Palm Drive for the first 10-20 blocks, then it would be called Kendrick Ave., then it would be called Pearl Street, and then it would be called, Constitution Drive, and then it would be called Lancaster Blvd.   So, when we were walking back and forth, up and down, and in circles for twenty mintues looking for Rua dos Ingleses, we actually crossed it several times.   Only at that point it was called Avenida Luis B Parreto.   AHHHHCK!     Nonetheless, we found the school and moved on to the Liberdade (Japanese part of the city) to get some delicious and long-anticipated Yakisoba.   We also spent awhile walking around this great outdoor market – lots of unique and beautiful crafts… kind of like the Eugene/Portland Saturday markets, and nothing like a flea market.

Edificio Copan again – view from the ground up!

A couple more things I have noticed about São Paulo…

First of all, sex is everywhere.   Seriously.   I mean, I know it ´s everywhere in any big city, but here they don ´t have laws about keeping the naughty stuff under wraps and out of the view of children and easily offended folk.   So everytime we walk past a sex theater or a sex shop, I always do a double-take at the big, naked butts being thrust in your face and the nipple-pasties everywhere.   Also, in the neighborhood we ´re staying in, there are TONS of street vendors.   It ´s like a constant flea market everyday.   It reminds me of the heiniously busy streets/alleyways of Bejing that I ´ve seen on T.V.   They just lay a blanket down on the sidewalk and spread out their fare… earrings, toys, CDs, belts, knives, shoes, and often DVDs with loud, lewd pictures of naked folk on the cover.   It ´s quite shocking.   Also, about the neighborhood we ´re staying in… it ´s kind of funny.   We go to school in the yuppie neighborhood, but we ´re staying in the Centro, which is more of a mixture of classes.   Everyone in the yuppie neighborhood gets this wide-eyed look when we tell them where we ´re staying, and they tell us to be *very* careful and that it ´s *very* dangerous.   (Mom, Grandmas, etc. DON ´T WORRY!)   It ´s funny because it ´s not really dangerous at all.   I mean, it ´s just as dangerous as any city.   But it ´s not like a ghetto or something.   There are always lots of people walking around, and there are plenty of men in suits, and nicely dressed women carrying their purses lax… at their sides, etc.   The reason the people in the yuppie neighborhood think it ´s dangerous is the same reason peope from Manhattan (in New York) think the Bronx is dangerous.

Also about São Paulo – I ´ve never been in a city that ´s such a melting pot of cultures.   Sure New York has a big mixture of people, but it ´s still a dominant-white, upper/middle class  culture, if not a dominant white city.   But here, everywhere we go, be it yuppie neighborhood, centro, Japanese neighborhood, or anywhere in between, everywhere I look it ´s like one of those quintessential American commercials full of purposeful ethnic and gender diversity.   It ´s impressive and really nice.   Usually in  a foreign city  I can tell people are staring at me or noticing me, but here I feel like I fit in because there is no mold.

Okay… final city observation: gasoline is *so* expensive here!   We think we ´ve got it bad in the U.S. at $2.50-$3/gal (by the way, how are gas prices now that summer has arrived?).   Here it ´s $R2.40 a liter, which is $R9.60 a gallon, so  after the exchange it ´s USD $4.80 a gallon.   Holy crap.

Something I am excited about is the architechture we are going to get to see on this trip.   Brazil has a really famous architecht named Oscar Neimeyer (something like that… I ´ll have to look up the spelling of the last name).   So far we have seen only one of his buildings, but it definitely lives up to the hub-bub.   It was called Edificio Copan and it was a giant skyscraper about 2x ´s as wide as it was tall, and 10x ´s as wide as it was… deep (?), and looked like a huge flag billowing in the wind.   Or, if you ´re a nerd like me, it looked like a cross section of a sin/cos wave.

I know I ´ve already yammered plenty, but I still have more I want to write about.   Time for lunch and study, though   – will write more later!