Now let me see if I can remember...ah yes, that´s right, the word of the last two days is festa (party). You know you´ve come to the right place when not only are classes canceled in order to attend a party, but school also makes a field trip out of it! But that wasn´t even the first party of the last few days, so let me backtrack a bit and I´ll go in order.
Wednesday´s class was a regular one, and when I say ´´regular one,´´ don´t think that I have to ´´get through´´ classes in order to enjoy the rest of my day. Classes here are fun (school? fun? imagine!), because in my class, we spend most of the time talking, going off on tangents, watching videos of musicians (samba, bossa-nova, etc.) -- both the YouTube kinds and documentary-types -- and then when we make mistakes, Rômulo points them out...and boy does he ever! In fact, Wednesday turned out to be *the* day we all knew (or at least, *I* knew) would come at some point. But these things are comical, so while there´s always a moment of, ´´oh, that´s embarrassing, but wait, that´s funny, so I´m not embarrassed´´ (there´s a difference), it´s a learning experience (see? always learning). Anyway, so this is how it went down...
So, we were talking about grammar (not a rare topic of conversation in class), and I wanted to write down a few keywords in my notebook. Since I majored in Spanish and Italian in college, I´m already conditioned to spelling the homonyms across the languages as they should be spelled (for instance, ´´when´´ in Spanish is cuando and in Italian is quando). Easy enough. Since I´m still in the early stages of acquiring a Portuguese vocabulary, and at the earlier stages I was always more interested in learning Portuguese words than how to say the actual letters, I wanted to ask Rômulo if the words he had just said were to be spelled with a ´´q´´ or a ´´c.´´ However, I only got as far as asking about ´´q,´´ which, as it turned out, I never *really* learned how the actual letter is pronounced. Since I didn´t realize that, however, I naturally reverted to Spanish (where that letter is pronounced as [koo]). Now, before I go any further, I must tell you that Rômulo (who is super nice and a good teacher) gets embarrassed easily, so when I asked if ´´when´´ is spelled with a ´´koo´´ he didn´t know how to react. I guess I wouldn´t either if someone asked if the word ´´when´´ is spelled with an asshole. So, after a brief pause -- clearly to register what I had just said -- a smile appeared on his face that indicated that I had said something I shouldn´t have but that he didn´t have it in him to tell me exactly what it was. He then answered that it wasn´t, so I crossed out everything I had written in my notebook (there were two ´´q´´-words I had put down), and started to rewrite them with ´´c´´s. Then he writes the words on the board with ´´q´´s and in the meantime, he starts trying to explain my mistake without coming out and directly telling me what I said (even after I said just to tell me!). Eventually, I figured it out, and I said, so I was right! And he said, well, yes, but that´s not how to say ´´q´´...so I crossed out the new ´´c´´-words and rewrote them again with ´´q´´s. Well, gotta learn somehow.
Samba class turned out to be canceled at the last minute, so a group of us hit the beach instead, but since we had made plans for later, we couldn´t spend the whole rest of the day there.
Wednesday night kicked off a festival in Salvador called Festival de Verão (Summer Festival). It lasts from Wednesday to Sunday, and basically, it consists of lots of bands every night playing from 7-something until who-even-knows. A bunch of us got tickets on Tuesday, and we went on Wednesday night. The place where the concert was is not close (and is even farther in rush hour), so we ended up getting there just before the third band. The bands that play are all big names in Brasil, so we saw people like Ivete Sangalo, Gilberto Gil, Capital Inicial, etc. Manu Chao played on a sidestage on Thursday, but we only got tickets for Wednesday. They said that 50,000-plus people were in attendance, and everyone was singing and dancing and rocking out until all hours. We even ran into Taty (our dance teacher) there! We ended up being a group of six who went, although two groups of people from the school (us and the Swisses) ended up going. Our group was a mix of old students (like myself and Greg) and new ones: Arina (Romanian girl from my class who lives in Australia), Jaime (Barcelona, Spain -- a tourguide who works in Italy), Sheberon (from Sweden -- she works on a ship that goes between Oslo and Copenhagen), and Favian (from Martinique, but lives in Paris -- not sure what she does, but I know she speaks French). All in all, we had a really fun time, and we ended up leaving during the penultimate group (around 3-something).
It seems that this week is great training for Carnaval, considering we had to meet at school at 7am to participate in a festival called the Lavagem de Bonfim. The Lavagem de Bonfim is considered the second largest event of Bahia, losing only to Carnaval. Newspaper articles reported that more than 1 million people were in attendance. Fortunately, I can say I was one of them. Running on only one and a half hours of ´´head-hit-the-pillow-and-alarm-clock-goes-off-seemingly-30-seconds-later´´ sleep, I met up with everyone at the school and caught the bus to Pelourinho to start the procession with the masses. Everyone is supposed to wear white for Bonfim, and already when we got there, the beers were flowing, the fried food was a-fryin´, and the heat was definitely first in line at the event. (And I must say, my 9am burger was delicious!...by the way, this coming from a non-meat eater (usually) is really noteworthy. It kind of looked like a Hot Pocket.) Our school gave out these silly looking yellow hats to wear, and though many people didn´t wear them (like me), some did, and it made it easy to find the group when necessary. We walked a good portion of the way in the direction of the church, but not the whole way (it´s an 8km walk), and though it would have been an interesting sight to see at the end of the course, there were SO many people and if we walked there, it would be impossible to get back (buses would be too crowded, which would mean we´d likely have to walk a good ways back). The school took us to this one stopping point and then we watched as other people passed by. Trucks and mini-floats drove by with people following closely behind, dancing to the music, and anyone could participate. Basically, the point is: dance with the procession, or dance alongside it. Out of 1 million-plus participants, though, you can bet I was surprised when I ran into Auana and Eliene! That was fun!... Another funny thing to happen was that at one point, this teacher at our school asked if any of us wanted to help out a photographer who works for the Bahian government. He was taking photos of the festival to be used in magazines, on billboards, and in publicity to encourage people to come to Bahia, so he was looking for volunteers to be photographed (us mixed with native Bahians) to appear in those ads. A few people agreed (myself included), and honestly, I´m not sure if it even came to pass. That guy kind of disappeared after awhile (he had a real photographer´s camera, so he didn´t seem too sketchy), but he didn´t specifically put us anywhere to take pictures. So, maybe he took pictures, maybe he didn´t. So, if you see me in a magazine encouraging people to come to Bahia, save me a copy! I´d love to see it...Anyway, by 11 or so, the teachers were heading out, so we could stay or go. Many of us left, but instead of taking a quick route home, we walked back against the current to see more parade , and then by the time I got home around noon, I was more than ready for my two-hour nap (my two-hour nap...). Little did I know that there was another Bonfim celebration outside my window somewhere, so I fell asleep to the sweet sounds of drums and yelling (ah, yes -- nothing like it).
Later on in the day, I was hanging out in my neighborhood and waiting at the bus stop, when two guys came up and asked for directions -- kind of in Portuguese, kind of not. I asked if that guy (the one who asked) was Italian, and he said yes, so we talked for a few minutes in Italian. I wasn´t exactly sure how to get where he wanted to go, so I took his map and went and asked a local in Portuguese how to get there. Then, I brought the map back and relayed the message to him, and when that guy went to ask the bus driver something, I started talking to his friend (a Spaniard). Going back and forth among Italian-Spanish-Portuguese is *not* easy after trying so hard to put Italian and Spanish aside for a few months. Looks like my internal on-off switch is a little rusty.
But anyway, time to get going...moral of the past few days is: It´s nice when school cancels class to take you to parties! Let this be the beginning of a beautiful friendship...Anyone else want to study Portuguese?
In the meantime, happy dancing to all and to all a good ---- zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
missy :)
http://andsmilestogobeforeisleep.blogspot.com
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