mais vs mas

my brother told me i should fica so i ficou.

que mais? i can blend in a little here, being dark and all. only benefit is not being asked for change by other pretas (black women). being darkdark also means i get honked at a lot whilst jogging down the street, but i pretend not to notice. mais, sou americana. there's another preta americana and we're tight. i'm excited about most of the other people in the group, all chill people. i can't wait until we're all a little closer though, because right now we're still in the "one big happy family" stage where there's no one to gossip with/confide in forrealsforreals. i feel lame caring about those trivial college group dynamics, but shit. i'm in college, we're a group, and trivial stuff happens.

it's hot. here, i take it bathtubs are a luxury. the bathrooms are generally a showerhead over a lower part of the tiled floor, next to the toilet (which gets soaked). you're to throw the toilet paper into a trash can because otherwise it'll fuck up the sewer system. generally i remember, but sometimes i remember when i sit down and forget by the time i'm down. at the hotel, i had to find a stick to fish out such instances. fun, no?

the food is muito bem (very good). lots of bread. we also ate a lot of pasta at the hotel, but that may have been just. i trust a lot more stuff to be grown locally or more naturally or whatever (but to be honest, i don1t really know).

i feel like i'm going to be tired all the time, which is not good. brasil seems like a great place to take lots of naps, but the stuff i'm going to be doing here is not for the half-asleep. i need to be awake and en pointe for working with various social movement groups, field research, learning portuguese -- all on top of getting along with my family, missing eos estados unidos, and possible anything (anyone!) else. dealing with all that "i am so privileged and lucky and grateful" baggage, which is nothing new, just more in my face. it's not easy to think that i am fighting to lose my privilege, but we do what we must. right? of course right. so enough to this selfish thinking. i am so spoiled.


what else?
counterstrike is popular here. also, basketball and street ball. my brother had a dvd of american basketball and asked me where monte du was. i had no idea where he was talking about, until i saw a sign in the background of the clip that said mountain dew. nos americanos somos tudo o mundo.

that's it for now. gotta go. tchau