oi! i am currently in an internet cafe down the street from my host family's house in o barrio de cristo redentor, fortaleza, ceará, brasil. i still don't know how to do all the symbols for all the letters, the hats and the goatees (is that how you spell that?) and whathave you for portugues. i only know what i knew for spanish. and the placement of the ' key is going to continue to trip me up (it traded places with the ~ and now all my contractions are approximations.)
here, night does not fall here. there is no gentle tumble into twilight into obscuridade. night plumments. you do a triple take -- the sky is bright; look again, the trees are silohuetted; look again, it's black. this is what being so close to the equator does. plus also, constant tempatures in the 70s-80s. nice to borderline not so nice, but generally pretty good.
i have spent a few days in this convent-turned-conference center of a compound with the other american SIT students, which was nice, but we thought we were locked in for the first few days and despaired rapunzel style until we found out we could actually wander the neighborhood. now i am with my family. i have a mom, a sister, two brothers, and a sister-in-law. the siblings are all around my age, which is cool. apparently, jazz and shawnrey stayed with my family's relatives who live upstairs, so they know people i know. wee.
we haven't had class yet. i will be in the second level of portuguese (yay spanish background!) and also have a cds class, which i've forgotten what it abbreivates. quite possibly Culture, Developement and Social justice. the program itself so far has been incredibly down and well-structured in terms of acclimating us with the community and social justice issues. i mean, down. it's exciting, but also a lot of pressure. i can be a very introspective introverted (redudant?) person, so sometimes i get in my head all selfish like and have all of the regular selfdoubts about not feeling completely comfortable with the family or missing my friend and fam back home or wanting to spend all of my time with the americans and just being a tourist. but i know that is not my greater purpose here. and it hasn't really been that difficult so far, although it is just the very begining.
i will suck it up and be the best i can be. and so far, i get along well with my family. we trade info about music, movies and food. i translated the chorus of the black eyed peas song "pump it" for them ("pump it (louder)" becomes "enche (com bomba)"). yay cultural echanged
fortaleza on the whole looks like the poorer parts of some cities i've been in, only more walls and dirt roads. american influence is evident eveyrwhere -- clothes, music, words. the stores say stuff like "lanche - sanduiche, salgodas, self-service."
my computer froze in the middle of that, which meant my time was up, so i paid for more (another hour?), but i don't want to be here for that much longer. i will finish up here for now and let my cousin play or something.
paz e amor (peace and love)
vocabulary!
abacaxí - pineapple
ficar - to stay, to hook up
ligar - to be in contact with
legal - cool
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