Caipirinho com Caipirinha

Last week, several friends and I traveled to a neighboring state, to a mining town called Ouro Preto (“Black Gold”). It was a great trip and I had a lot of fun-the people were nice and had a much more comprehensible accent than the denizens of Rio, the food was good, the town was beautiful, etc. But I don’t want to go into all the little details of my four days there so much as talk about a weird kind of epiphany I had on the last night of the trip.

My friends and I went to a neighboring town 18km away called Mariana. Its only real claim to fame is that it’s 18km away from Ouro Preto, but we wanted to get out and explore a little bit on our last night. We had chosen a soup restaurant out of a guide book and, after much searching, as well as encountering the strangest circus I have ever seen, we finally found the place. The food was decent-nothing to write home about, but I was happy because I finally got to have some soup down here and it was all you can eat.

The meal ended kind of awkwardly for reasons I won’t bother going into and we were all leaving the restaurant in kind of a bad mood. We had just paid the bill and I got up from my chair, regained my balance (I’d had a few drinks), and started making my way toward the door. I hadn’t paid much attention to our waiter during the meal, but the service was good and he had seemed friendly, so I figured I would give him some kind of recognition that we were leaving and that we were thankful for the service. He was at a nearby table, finishing up taking a couple’s order, so I caught his attention, smiled, and gave him a quick thumbs up as I walked by.

Yet something about looking into his eyes and walking out that door was profoundly sad for me. His eyes were framed by thick glasses and though he probably wasn’t older than mid-40’s, his hair was already the gray-white of a bleaching skull. He had deep crow’s feet and leathery skin and just looked so…tired. He smiled and returned my thumbs up and went about his business, but something about him really stuck with me. There was no wedding ring, no sign of real happiness behind the service smile that he gave. This is a man who seemed so alone, working a job as a waiter at a mediocre restaurant in a middle-of-nowhere town. He had probably been there his entire life and would probably die there. And I was never going to see him again.

I still don’t know what exactly made me feel this way, but I couldn’t help but want to just give him a hug. He smiled, but I felt that he really needed it. And then it struck me that it wasn’t just him that I would never see again, it was all of these people. Everyone I walked by in that restaurant, in that town, hell, in all of Brazil, is just another person plodding their way through life like me, trapped inside their own body, just trying to make the most of their day even if their life is going nowhere. 

This is one of those weird wannabe epiphanies that struck me at just the right time in my life. Being here, struggling to speak the language, struggling to adapt to the culture and learn to love music I hate and food that I find bland, has been a deeply alienating experience. All too often I find myself pulling into my own little world, sometimes isolating myself physically, sometimes mentally, but always feeling so alone. But looking into that lonely man’s eyes reminded me that, to some extent, every last one of us is going through the same thing.

I went home the next evening and read David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College commencement speech for the umpteenth time. If you haven’t read it, you can find it here: http://publicnoises.blogspot.com.br/2009/05/david-foster-wallace-kenyon.html

Anyway, I just needed to remind myself that these people are not extras in the movie that is my life-they are individuals who struggle with the same things that I do, day in and day out. It might sound cheesy, but it really meant something to me and I brooded on it for the rest of the night.

Yeah, I’ve been horrible about updating. What can I say. Most of my free time that hasn’t been going out has been spent watching The Wire (which was amazing, by the way).

Rather than talking about specific events I figured I would talk about a general trend that I’ve experienced here in Brazil: Namely, that almost everything is a complete and utter pain in the ass.

Some examples:

-We took our photos for student IDs over a month ago. At Berkeley, they would have just printed out the IDs on the spot and you would be on your way. Last week on Thursday, we got the following email: “Your Student ID Card is already available. You can get it only on Fridays from 9am to 11am and from 2pm to 4pm at DAR, and you should look for Antonio.” Wow, they’re ALREADY here after only a month or so? What a deal! And naturally the most logical time for students to pick up their cards would be at select times on a day when 50% of us don’t have class. I can’t wait to go on a manhunt for Antonio-I’m picturing a man in a bear costume.

-Getting our ‘apostilas’ (workbooks) for our mandatory Portuguese language class was the adventure of a lifetime. The utilitarian approach would be to have students bring in the R$30 that the workbooks cost to class, hand it to their teachers, and receive their workbooks on the spot. Here’s how it worked out on reality:

1) Go to the CCCI (International student office, basically) and sign up on a list saying we want a workbook. As if we have any choice in the matter.

2) Receive an email with a form saying that we want our workbook. Print it out in the oh-so-convenient computer lab.

3) Take said receipt to a specific bank and wait 45 minutes in line to pay for the workbook. Get the bank to sign your receipt saying you’ve paid.

4) Take said receipt back to the CCCI and wait in line for your workbook. Originally we were told to take the receipt to our professors, but they switched it up on us after none of the professors had any idea what the receipts were for.

-God have mercy on your soul if you ever need change at the grocery store. For whatever reason, the powers that be have seen fit to promptly remove small bills from the cash registers practically before the money hits the tray. At first I thought this was some kind of anti-theft procedure, but I was wrong: the drawers are always stuffed to bursting with R$50 and R$100 bills, so they’re only removing the bills that might conceivably be used to make change. Literally every single time I go to the store, I’ll pay, for example, R$20 for R$8 with of goods and have to wait 1-5 minutes for a runner to bring over my change. It seems to be store policy to never keep more than about R$3 worth of change in the register at any given time, so this is essentially unavoidable unless you can pay with exact change. And for whatever reason, the amount of your time that is wasted is commensurate with the amount of change you require: even though the runners are, presumably, getting the money from the exact same location, it will take them 3x as long to bring you R$15 worth of change vs. R$5. It’s truly baffling.

-The goddamn ketchup packets never fucking open properly. I’ve encountered precisely two restaurants in this country with ketchup bottles-everyone else uses packages seemingly encased in adamantium and carbon fiber, because nothing short of a machete will open these little fuckers without shooting a geyser of ketchup everywhere and making the restaurant look like a crime scene.

I swear, this country is trying to kill me.

I went to my Thursday evening “Community Development” class like any other day, only to find that class pretty much completely barren. All of the desks (you know, the kind where the chair is attached or whatever) were stacked haphazardly at the back of the room and there were just a couple of other gringos there rather than the normally packed, rambunctious room.

It turns out our ‘assignment’ for that day was to go watch the final day of freshman initiation down in ‘the village’ (for lack of a better word-basically, it’s a bunch of on-campus little huts where freshmen hang out according to department and throw bigass parties). Here in Brazil, rather than having people getting initiated/hazed when they join a particular club/organization, freshmen undergo hazing when they enter their department. So for the first few weeks of school, they go around doing things like dressing in weird outfits, painting themselves and walking around the city asking for money, etc. to try to raise the most money/gain the most support for their major. It’s an interesting system.

Anyway, I met up with a few other international students and we went down to the village. I had some carnaval flashbacks-there were people dressed in Batman costumes, a couple of cute girls who were Alice from Alice in Wonderland, and even a guy in full riot gear (he wasn’t an actual cop, I’m sure-I had a beer with him later). Two DJs were seated up in one of the huts and a crowd had gathered around the freshman as they…’performed’, for lack of a better word. Each department was wearing different colors (I was repping red for Social Services, the department under which Community Development falls). Basically, all of the freshmen covered each other in paint while everyone else shouted and hooted and shot water from water guns at them. Then, there was some kind of dance competition (my department did a decent job with Thriller). Then a relay race, then an oath, and then they were officially initiated and the party began.

The after-party was awesome. Beers for R$1 (55 cents, more or less) being sold out of the huts (keep in mind, again, that these are on-campus and all of these activities are furnished/encouraged by the administration). I met a lot of cool new Brazilian people and got to practice my Portuguese a lot. I almost left early to go see The Artist at some nearby theater but I’m really glad I didn’t. All in all, one of my funnest nights so far here.

I’ve been terrible about updating. I apologize. Sometimes it’s hard to convince myself to sit down and recount the things that just happened to me and they end up just slipping away.

Anyway, I’ll keep it short and sweet. Life is good-my classes have started but I’m only taking 14 units and my schedule allows me to have Mondays and Wednesdays off. So much beach time! My classes are pretty easy: Portuguese, Radio Communication, and Community Development. The last one is basically half gringos/half Brazilians and consists of us just sitting around talking about our experiences. Not a bad way to meet people, and there’s minimal effort involved.

Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day and it was pretty good up until I got robbed at knifepoint. After leaving the bar at 5:55 (there was a cover if you stayed after 6), I met up with some friends at a pizza place for dinner. During dinner I got a text from a Brazilian friend to meet up not too far away, so I excused myself a bit early to find him. I was walking along the beach surrounded by people-the sun had just set and as it was a Saturday evening, lots of people were out and about.

I hear someone behind me yell out “Hey dude!” (in Portuguese) and turn around to take a look. As soon as I do, I feel someone’s hand shoot into my left pocket, where I keep my phone/keys. I instinctively grab the hand and turn around to see who’s messing with me. Turns out, it’s a kid, no older than 14, with a medium-sized kitchen knife. Not, like, a bear skinning knife or anything, but more than enough to make me not want any trouble. I let go, he grabbed my phone and ran around the corner with his friends, and I stood there in disbelief (partially that I just got robbed by a kid no older than my little sister, partially because nobody showed any signs of recognition/trying to help me).

I actually ended up grabbing a chair at a nearby beach restaurant and staking out the area for a little while to see if they came back, but they didn’t. Oh well. I went home and decided to just call it a night.

Friday night me and a few of the guys went to a bar across the street from where a couple of them live. After a table-breakingly large meal and a few beers, we were debating what to do. One of the guys in our program, Jarrett, was celebrating his birthday that night, but attending would have entailed bussing to Ipanema to meet up with everyone, then bussing to Lapa (which all of us officially hate at this point). So, we decided to do our own thing and go chill on the beach instead.

We picked a nice spot right at the water’s edge and one of the guys, who I’ll call Lars, started to roll us a post-meal pick-me-up. We discussed the possibility of multi-generational space travel while he worked (wouldn’t it be crazy to be born and die on a spaceship bound for some distant galaxy?) and when Lars finished he laid on his stomach, struggling with a lighter given the heavy winds on the beach.

Suddenly, one of the other guys in the group says those fateful words: “Uh, guys, we’ve got cops.” Lars proceeds to bury the shit out of the finished joint as well as the baggie from whence it came and he and I struggle to light cigarettes as a cover-up.

The cops walk up and immediately grab Lars’s hands and smell them. Thank god Brazilian weed (also known as maconha) is really terrible-California stuff would have left some noticeable resin/odor on his hands. After that, one of them, the shorter and more aggressive officer, proceeds to pat us all down while the other guy kicks through the sand searching for evidence. He finds the cigarette pack with a bit of maconha left in it, but not the joint (which ended up saving us-the cigarette pack is purely circumstantial, the joint is tougher to explain). They proceeded to seat us in a row, collect our IDs (of course, Lars had forgotten his), and berate us for about 10 minutes about the illegality of what they thought we were doing. They painted pictures of front-page headlines about us getting caught and deported (which I had a hard time not smiling at-the deporting part is totally legitimate, but front page news? Really?) and said that they knew we were from California and what that meant.

Then, one by one, they pulled us from the row and started questioning us individually. They took the first guy away and one of our group, in English mentioned the Prisoner’s Dilemma and that we would all be better off if nobody said anything. I concurred and noted that at this point all they had done was found something illegal buried in the sand where we happened to be sitting-there was nothing to tie us to it.

The individual interrogations went on for probably 20 minutes or so and while each of us got taken away, those that were left sitting didn’t say a word. We all just started out at the ocean. I felt pretty confident that they didn’t have anything on us so I just kind of zoned out and thought about my plans for the weekend. When the officers tried to speak to me, I played ‘dumb gringo’ and acted like I didn’t understand anything they said and just kept repeating no.

Eventually they sat us all back down one more time. They gave us one more opportunity to confess (saying, of course, that we wouldn’t get in trouble if we said something-like I believe that bullshit). When nobody fessed up, they got mad and threw our cigarettes and lighters in the ocean and told us that they didn’t want to see us on the beach again that night. We marched away and as soon as we were out of earshot we started laughing our asses of-we had verifiable evidence of their crime of littering and they had nothing on us.

In retrospect, if they had been able to pin anything on us, they probably would have just shaken us down and taken all of our money. They threatened to take us to the police station for drug tests (mine would have been clean anyway, so fuck it), but in reality, cops in Rio are some of the lowest-paid in the country and are well-known to shake people down, especially tourists, when the crime is relatively minor.

I seriously considered not posting this story on Tumblr and who knows, I may come to regret it later. In my defense, screw it, I’m in college in Brazil and I was found guilty of nothing. Future employers, if you find this, be merciful.

So this is on top of the apartment across the street. WTF.

I have witnessed all manner of costume, the likes of which put Halloween in the United States to shame. Men dressed as cows; THOUSANDS of crossdressers; naked women covered in body paint; full-body condoms; and of course, the classic image of carnaval, the nearly-naked-woman-with-so-many-feathers-a-species-probably-went-extinct. 

I have purchased beer from 10 year old kids in a favela. I have witnessed my friend Patrick haggle with those same children and teach them basic math when they were unable to make change. I have seen 12 year old children drunk in the streets. I have seen toddlers, strapped to parents’ chests, being utilized as battering rams to maneuver through crowds. I have also seen people with fake toddlers strapped to their chests for the same purpose.

I have had a dance-off with a hairy man in a dress and high-heels in the middle of the street, him constantly shouting “Isso! Isso!” (that’s it! that’s it!) as we busted out our moves. I have had numerous gay men compliment me on my samba skills, but virtually no women.

I have witnessed probably the most bombastic, gaudy, amazing spectacle of my life: the carnaval parade in the Sambódromo. We went a few hours beforehand, and, after visiting a few scalpers (some of whom wanted R$320 per ticket-we told them to fuck off), were able to get tickets for R$30 a pop in the cheap section at the end of the parade. We saw a few of the floats as we walked the catwalk connecting Central Rio to the gated area around the Sambódromo, but nothing we saw could have prepared us. As we walked in the gates and through a metal detector (which I highly suspect didn’t actually work), I was handed two programs and eight condoms. The program itself was covered in PSA’s begging people to use condoms if they hook up during carnaval, including the very first page and the back cover.

Cue condoms being used to make condom balloons to bounce/float around the crowd in anticipation of the parade. After mastering the standard, one-condom blimp design our group moved up to the advanced four-condom dick-shaped design. Not particularly aerodynamic, but it was a definite crowd-pleaser. I can’t even fathom how many condom balloons were floated around our section that night; probably well into the triple digits. Paper airplanes, made from the condom ads in the programs, were also quite popular.

Around…ehhh, maybe 9ish?…the parade started. I suppose this is the place to note: I can IN NO WAY do justice to just how beautiful and incredible this parade is. The costumes, the floats, the colors, everything was so colorful and detailed it would take reams to describe how amazing it is. Just let me say that this put every parade I’ve ever seen or even imagined to absolute and utter shame, and that I’ll do my best to get a DVD of all 14 samba schools’ parades to bring back to the United States.

Since it’s so hard for me to go into any real detail about costumes and floats, I’ll describe some of the generalities/overall trends in the parade. At the beginning, I was under the impression that there would be 3-4 schools and that they had a total of 80 minutes to work their way down the nearly half-mile stretch of the Sambódromo. In fact, as the first school was about halfway through their routine and their second or third float was passing, I believed that each float represented the beginning of the next school.

Nope. EACH of the 7 schools that went on my night had 80 minutes for their parade, meaning the entire spectacle lasted all night, past sunrise (we left during the last school, as the sky was turning from black to gray). Each school starts off their parade with a 2-3 minute fireworks show and then they proceed to inch their way down the strip towards the finishline. Their parade must be between 65 and 83 minutes long, with most of them landing right around 80 minutes. Some of them fell a bit behind during the parade and basically had to sprint their last few hundred dancers past the finish line. My favorite groups had all of their dancers halt just past the finish line and continue to dance (and even shoot confetti cannons) once the music ended/their time was officially up. Generally it was around the 30 minute mark before I could even see the parade in real life (vs. on the jumbo-tron) because our seats, the cheap ones, were set back behind the rest of the bleachers closer to the starting line. Nearly every parade included at least one stray dog making its way into the parade path at some point, which I found funny.

Anyway, each school had 5-6 floats that were absolutely ASTOUNDING. The schools all had some kind of theme which was portrayed through the floats. Some were more obvious than others-I really struggled with one of the school’s “International Foods” theme, while Beija-Flor, the undisputed champions of the last decade with three 1st place finishes in the last five years, had a great “Inequality and Slavery in Brazil” theme. I still think my favorite float might have been the very first one we saw/one of the ones we noticed on our walk into the Sambódromo. It was basically this massive chrome monstrosity, featuring huge shiny deities, 30 foot high crystals, and gigantic rotating crystalline gears. Another highlight was Beija-Flor’s basilisk float: a large mound covered in spears with a snake/basilisk thing wearing a glowing war helmet protruding. The snake slowly extends further out of the mound, only to have its body burst apart, the midsection having been comprised of dancers holding shell fragments over themselves like Spartan shields. Cue interpretive dance as the snake head/neck roll along in front of the mound, then the dancers reform the body and (somewhat clumsily) retract back into the mound. Around the 80% mark of the parade, at the border between our section and the nicer seats, there is a little peninsula for photographers suspended perhaps 50 feet above the middle of the parade area. One of the schools in particular, Porto da Pedra, REALLY pushed the limits of their float height with this press box-one of the floats had a little feathery frill on top damaged as it was crushed under the cement overhang and one of the dancers on top of a float had to duck to avoid getting hit/knocked off. After this I was really excited for another accident when I noticed Beija-Flor’s ship float was too tall to clear it, but like the bosses they are, they had planned ahead and collapsed a mast to make room at the last possible second, to much cheering from the crowd.

Each school has, on average, 3,000-3,500 dancers participating in the parade. I asked my host mom and she says that the costumes, which the dancers pay for themselves, cost anywhere from R$50 for the simple ones up to R$4000 for the really nice feathery ones that the best (and hottest) dancers wear. As I learned from watching the second night on TV, the schools are initially led by their drum corps, perhaps 200-300 musicians, who duck into an alcove at the halfway point and then rejoin the parade at the very back, immediately in front of the truck bearing the school’s banner that marks the end of their parade. Each school has a song for their parade, and that same song is utilized throughout the entire 80-minute spectacle. This can be a good or a bad thing. The second school, Portela, had an extremely catchy song that practically all 75,000 people at the Sambódromo were singing by the end of their parade, which I think was a major factor in their victory this year (also, they did the “walk past the finish line but keep dancing once the music ends” thing, which earned them major crowd points). Other songs were less engaging and became tiresome after hearing like 50 repetitions.

There are 10 criteria upon which the schools are judged, ranging from overall dancing ability to costume and float design to theme cohesion to the abilities of the “flag couple”, the two best dancers in the school who wear incredibly elaborate costumes and dance a kind of ballroom dance while bearing the school’s flag. My two favorites were Portela and Porto da Pedra. I guess that means my tastes are somewhat validated, as Portela went on to win it all and will now spend the next year touring the world performing the parade in various countries.

Anyway, so that’s the Sambódromo. It was fucking amazing and definitely the highlight of my carnaval. To anyone who wants to come to Brazil for carnaval, I would highly recommend making a trip to see the parade during one of the two nights where the “special group” (ie. the good schools) performs-it is worth every penny.

And finally, my overall carnaval impressions: I know my initial post was rather negative, but what can I say, I had just had my phone stolen during the single most agoraphobic event of my life. The bloco, almost 100 years old, is called Bola Preta (“Black Ball”) and was comprised of 2.2 million people occupying just a few city blocks. It was too fucking big for its own good and almost nobody I know who went to it (and it seems like pretty much every gringo I know got sucked into that Charybdis at some point) seemed to enjoy themselves. However, if you find smaller blocos, the ones where you can actually move and dance and hear the music, carnaval is a ton of fun. There were assholes, sure, but overall it was good-spirited drinking and dancing and partying. I’m relatively introverted so 4 days of absolutely nonstop partying was utterly draining, but I’m glad I did it and I definitely plan on making the trip down again in the future. Basically what I learned is: planning, planning, planning. Take everything you need for the day with you when you go out in the morning and don’t plan on coming back until sunrise. You will be consuming inhuman quantities of beer all day and there will be moments when it gets uncomfortable or tiring. Don’t be afraid to retreat and recoup your strength for a couple hours by relaxing on the beach or just perusing the streets in between blocos. If you go to a bloco and it’s too crowded, don’t be afraid to just leave and find a better one. I was told by multiple Brazilians that the blocos in the downtown/central part of the city were the best, but in general I found them overcrowded and unpleasant and largely stuck to the more-relaxed, less-crowded, closer-to-home parties in Southern Rio. Carnaval, like any big event, has its ups and downs, but overall it was a great experience and one I will definitely take part in again.

First off: there will be a blog post about the 11 days of travelling I did in southern Brazil. I was going to do it in the couple days I had after getting back but before carnaval, but I just got lazy. There are more pressing things to address right now.

So yesterday was day #1 (of 4, for the uninitiated) of carnaval, and my impressions so far: Ehh. I’m still going to go out and party my brains out for the next 3 days but at this point I definitely prefer standard, non-carnaval Rio to ‘let’s make an excuse to be drunk assholes’ Rio.

The image of carnaval that gets all the attention is the samba parade at the Sambodrome. This is where you see the people in massive sequin’d and feather’d costumes, hundred foot tall glowing floats, thousands of brightly dressed people dancing in beautiful patterns, etc. If you can afford the ticket, that’s cool. For the other 99.9% of the population, carnaval consists of wearing costumes and going to blocos, which are, in theory, samba parties in the street throughout the city.

I say in theory because there is little to no actual dancing involved. What it really is is ushering yourself around the city, hemorrhaging money on public transportation so you can stand immobile in a different crowd of sweaty people and pay double what you normally would for beer. I’ve been to like 5 or 6 blocos so far (would have been more but for a stolen phone) and they’ve all been so cripplingly overcrowded that if you are lucky, you can stand still for more than 5 seconds without getting groped/shoved by a bunch of sweaty people. At half of these ‘samba’ parties I haven’t even been able to hear the music because the crowd of people is so large.

There have definitely been some very fun moments, eg. Patrick teaching some 8-10 year old favela kids math (god bless his heart) because they didn’t know how to make change for our beers. There have also been some truly awful moments, eg. getting sucked into a crowd so dense that I was trapped (as in like no escape no matter how much I struggled-the people on the sidewalk blocking me into the street literally pushed me back into the mob and laughed at one point) for over an hour, legitimately fearing for my safety due to trampling at several points and getting my phone robbed at some point (god only knows when-there was never, at any point, less than 4 different people touching me). Honestly, that last incident has made me slightly agoraphobic and I went to a surprise party at a friend’s host family’s house rather than going to more blocos.

So yeah. I have not given up on carnaval yet, but at this point I…wish it wasn’t carnaval. I’ve got three more days to make it work. I’m sure all the gringos who see it romanticized in, like, every film that ever even mentions Brazil think it’s great, but I can and have done all of the drinking/dancing/partying in the streets many times over before now, when I was actually able to move freely and not just get grabbed and stomped and elbowed for hours at a time. I suppose it’s cool for bragging rights to say ‘I was in a 2.3 million person street party’ (which is an actual FB status I just saw from a friend, which prompted me to write this post), but what that translates to in real terms is ‘I was in a party large enough that, realistically, I would have no idea whether it is 2.3 thousand or 2.3 million people, paying double what I would normally pay for alcohol, unable to hear music, unable to move, unable to breath’. I liked Rio better when dance parties included actual dancing and not this fucking illusion of being about music.

This blog post is essentially my way of stalling before returning to my studies before my second written test (of two) tomorrow, so it may not be my best-written. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting that I actually still have class on Thursday as well; I keep thinking “Finally, just slog through this test and you’re in the clear!” and then I remember my oral final coming up. Sigh, so it goes. 

Friday evening I took the bus from my apartment headed for the adjacent community (barrio) of Botafogo. Unfortunately, I jumped the gun when exiting the bus and ended up at the very eastern edge of Botafogo when I actually wanted to be at the very western edge, bordering Humaita. No big deal, I figured. I have a good natural compass and I like walking, it shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll use Christ the Redeemer for directions (a sure-fire way to make long-distance treks in this city).

Cue rounding a building only to see that everything above like 30 feet, including Jesus, was utterly obscured by fog/clouds. I pounded pavement through Botafogo in a light rain that, in classic Rio fashion, turned into an eschatonical downpour in about three seconds flat. Fortunately, right as things really started to get wet (my shoes were already soaked through at this point, damn puddles), I happened to walk by an umbrella vendor on the sidewalk who sold me a cheap, crappy (broke within minutes, but not unusably so) umbrella for a fairly reasonable price-the fool! supply and demand would have prompted me to pay at least double what he charged. So I trudged on through the apocalyptic storm and, out of nowhere, bumped into Michael, one of the people I was meeting up with to go to the bar. We rendezvoused with our other comrades and completed our walk to the bar of my dreams: Botequim Informal.

Basically, Brazil is a beer wasteland. Pretty much the only thing available, unless you are rich and can afford a hefty non-swill premium, is shitty lager beer that is imperceptibly better than Bud Light/Miller Light/what have you. Real bilgewater-y stuff. But not here. This place has cheap, delicious beers on tap. Still nothing dark, mind you. I haven’t seen an ale since I got here. But Jesus, they had some good lagers. Over the course of the next few hours more and more people joined our group until we were about a dozen strong. By midnight I had had enough (drinks, that is) and decided to head home so I could catch the bus destined for the nearby city of Petrópolis, which departed at 6:50 the next morning (seriously, who at our school’s tour planning department would commit such an atrocity?).

Didn’t happen. I woke up at 5:30, took one look at the clock, and immediately reset it for noon. Napped/read all afternoon (finally making some progress in Infinite Jest…nearly at page 350) and headed out to meet up with people around 10.

We went back to my favorite little dive bar in Ipanema, the one where you can get a cup full of tequila for R$10. Cue tequila. Afterwards, we migrated literally next door to Blue Agave (again) and had a caipirinha or two there. I got a text from my Norwegian friend Patrick that he and a number of other gringos were at the nearby park. Jesus, he wasn’t kidding. All told, there were like 40 people from the program there. We stumbled our way to Emporio, the rock bar, and basically just drank out in the streets since there were far too many of us to actually go inside. I’m unfocused and not feeling writing a whole long account right now, but it was ridiculously fun. I talked to tons of people in my program I don’t frequently hang out with, got a chance to use a bunch of new jokes I had learned with an audience (moderate success), and met a couple of cute Brazilian girls. All of a sudden I was being whisked away into a van to go back to Copa with everyone else that lives there. Cue “Take on Me” singalong (the last song we heard as we left the bar).

A couple of drunken capoeira fights with my friends later, we parted ways and I walked home. Drunchies caught hold of me and I stopped at an all-night burger place to get some food, only to immediately have more people from my program (none of whom I had seen that night, as they had been at Lapa) come up and eat with me. All in all, probably the most fun night I’ve had thus far in Brazil (though the distracted nature of my writing right now probably isn’t communicating that).

Rested all day Sunday, didn’t really do much except go out to dinner with friends. I’ve had a nasty cough the last couple of days so I skipped capoeira on Monday and both of my classes yesterday. Only thing of note was going to a place called Uruguaiana yesterday. It’s basically a massive flea market in downtown (Centro) Rio. 3 massive tents packed to the brim with stores; an agoraphobic’s nightmare. No breathing room, no moving room, sweat on sweat on piles of stolen cell phones. Seriously, stolen cell phones everywhere. From Guyana, from Suriname, from your back pocket if you don’t constantly do the pocket check as you explore their wares. They warned us at our orientation not to buy a phone there because it was probably stolen, and now I believe it. Probably 40% of the stands there were selling phones and a number of models that were being marketed as ‘New’ that I glanced at had notable scratches on the screens, significant button wear, etc. Three of us purchased cheap hiking backpacks for our upcoming trip to the Pantanal (the largest wetlands in the world!). This was followed by what I feel reasonably safe calling the best meal (or really deal) of my life. Not in terms of sheer quality (dear God no, my life isn’t so sad that said that my ultimate meal was had at a black market), but in terms of satisfying the three corners of the college food triangle (satiation, satisfaction, and price): For R$5 (~$2.80USD) I got a massive, wrist-crushing cheeseburger with everything on it (tomato/lettuce/egg/ham/dried noodles) and a gigantic cup of açaí. Anywhere in Zona Sul (Ipanema/Copacabana/Leblon…the touristy area where I live) you would have gotten one of those components for that price and it would have been grossly inferior. Seriously, what a deal.

Now back to my studying; two more days, two more quizzes, and then I have the whole month of February to travel.

My last week has been a sine wave of overzealous drinking and comatose relaxation, so I suppose I don’t have an excuse for using some of my downtime to write an update. What can I say, I was generally reading/sleeping whenever I wasn’t up to anything in particular.

Anyway, I had a three day weekend this past weekend. This past Friday was a ‘feriado’ (municipal holiday) due to it being the day of the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro (São Sebastião). Thus, my weekend started Thursday night. After going to a kilo buffet, we hit up one of the two bars on my block (not the one where I got face-raped by the fat drunk woman; the other, nicer one that has open-mic nights every Friday and Saturday). It was a pretty nice bar with good, cheap drinks and a variety of food options. Really only two things of note occurred though:

1) I made one of the girls I was with cry. To make a long story short, one of the guys in my core group is Sven, a really chill German guy. I didn’t catch the beginning of their conversation as I was sitting a couple seats away, but I did tune in just in time to hear this girl (let’s call her…ehh…Latisha) say something along the lines of, “Yeah, whenever I think of Germany I always think, ‘Oh yeah, the country with the Nazis.’” Sven at this point is helpless; as I understand it, the Germans have had it repeatedly beaten into their brain that nationalism is associated with fascism and thus through both circumstance and sociological conditioning he is rendered unable to defend his country. Cue a short rant on my part in which I say that Germans are still really sensitive about being tied to that blight on their otherwise rich history. At some point in this rant I describe Latisha as ‘ignorant’, and cue the fucking waterworks. I’m still not sure if the tears were genuine or deviously conceived to make me the villain, but she fucking rocked them and everyone told me to shut the fuck up. Whatever, I could have chosen many far worse words than ‘ignorant’ to describe someone with such a hurtful, tenuous grasp on history.

2) We ordered nachos and there was NO CHEESE. It was just a tray of chips with guac, sour cream, and salsa. The guac was tasty, but still, come on.

Anyway, we left the bar and ambled through the streets not knowing what to do. Eventually we went to the beach where one of the guys in our group knew of a girl with a sister who has been living in Brasil, and thus, rolled with a large group of Brasilians. We ended up getting free beer from this guy who works one of the umbrella stands in Copacabana/is apparently some kind of pimp, which is cool (the beer part, not the pimping). I got to talking to a couple of Brasilian guys (unfortunately in English…what can I say, their English was far better than my Portuguese). Our group dissolved and by the time it was around 2:30 or so it was just me, the guy who got us in touch with this group in the first place, the two Brasilian guys, and a couple others. We stopped by McDonald’s for some McFlurry’s (surprisingly overpriced) and then went back to one of the Brasilian guy’s places. We ended up watching deleted scenes from ‘Alien’ (one of my all-time favorite movies), then I went home and crashed.

Oh, and some of the people at the beach had weed, so I got to smoke for the first time since leaving for Brasil. It was total schwag, as is all the weed here, but damn did it do the job after a nice 3-week sobriety break.

Friday morning I spent the day at the beach with one of my new Brasilian friends, Pedro. We met up with some of his coworkers and it was an all-around chill afternoon. Friday evening featured another capoeira party. Afterwards I caught the bus back to Ipanema and, with perfect timing, met up with a huge group of people going to a rock bar. Basically, we were ‘that group’, the mob of drunk gringos singing along to every song because we knew all the words (the DJ moved from the 60s to the 90s and honored our requests with surprising speed and diligence). All-in-all, a very fun night.

Saturday during the day, I’m fairly certain I just slept in super late and saved my energy for that night. We went to Ipanema again. First up was a dive bar…in fact, I don’t even know if it can be called that. It’s basically an 80 square foot shop with a counter and a pile of beer. But everyone at the counter when we got there was some kind of old alcoholic, so you know it’s gotta be a good place. Some of the girls in our group requested a shot and got literally a CUP FULL OF TEQUILA, so I know I’ll be going back there soon. When they closed at 12, we went pretty much next door to a kind of ‘Southern’ (United States, that is)-themed bar, featuring surfing on the TVs and ridiculously strong, cheap drinks. Again, this was another place I can see myself becoming a regular. The bartenders (bartendresses?) were extremely cute and liberal with the booze. Around 1:30 or so there was a parting of the ways; half of the people wanted to go to Lapa (samba central) and half were going to a favela party. I was out of money, but I got someone to spot me some cash so I opted for the favela party.

One of the guys in my group promised there would be a bank along the way but of course he was full of shit and acted like a complete bag of trash when I called him out on it, so I took more of his money. Like 12 of us piled into a little VW bus at the bottom of the hill into the favela and winded up the streets to the very top, where the party was. It was interesting-favelas aren’t the war-torn drug hotspots they’re made out to be in films, or at least not on the surface. The last few years, especially with the Olympics/World Cup coming up, there has been a drastic increase in police presence in the favelas, so I saw a cop car or a foot patrol of officers every block or two. We got to the top, paid our entrance fee (they asked if I was on the list and I gave some generic name like ‘João’ [Brasilian equivalent of John] and got the discounted price) and entered.

There was a reggaeton band playing there, and they were pretty damn good. Lots of people dancing, an incredible view of nighttime Rio, all-in-all a great time. I bumped into a few more people that I knew from the program, but the douchey guys that got me there in the first place insisted on staying until like 5:30 and I was tired by around 4:00/4:30 so I headed out with some other people instead. Walked down the hill through the favela (a LONG walk at night when it’s your first time in a favela) and then continued walking the remaining 3.5 miles back to Copacabana because I had drank all my bus money. Got home at sunrise.

Anyway, there’s the verbose highlights of my weekend. I’ve missed a lot of school this week due to laziness (yesterday was a beach/Infinite Jest day) or registering with the federal police (allowed me to miss an entire day of class today, boo-yah), but I haven’t been on the ball with blog updates. So it goes.