Time to hit the books!

Badum, ching! Nope, I´m not trying get myself a laugh at a stand-up show with an audience of one; rather, I´m just trying to convey the sound that my tambourine makes! But I´ll get to that later...

A recap of the week this far starts with Monday. Lots of new kids started at the school -- some Americans, some Swiss, some ´´other.´´ One really annoying part of the program is that everyone who comes to study at my school stays for different lengths of time, which means each person comes with a different agenda. The Swiss kids who started the same day I did, for instance... they generally stick together, speaking Swiss-German and going to the beach. They go out in big groups and go to touristy places, and though sometimes they stumble on lesser-known, more local joints, it seems that before they leave, a lot of them want to do the beach tour of Brazil. To some of their credit, some of them have other goals. For example, Sabina, the girl in my class, is going to volunteer in São Paulo for six months, doing humanitarian work. Another of the ´´Swisses,´´ Claude, works at McDonald´s in the flipping burgers department. He took three months of vacation to come learn Portuguese, and apparently this kind of stint is not new for him. When he wanted to learn Spanish, he went to Mexico for three months. When he wanted an introduction to English, he went abroad for three months for that, too. Never have I met anyone who works at McDonald´s who lives his/her life like that. Then there´s this other guy, Marvin, who was born in Brazil and was given up for adoption very young. He was adopted by a Swiss family and his goal in coming here is apparently to spend a few weeks at school learning Portuguese and is then going to Rio de Janeiro to search for his birth mother. Everyone comes with a different goal in mind, and though sometimes that makes it difficult to coordinate schedules and get to know people because people are always coming and going, people have to fulfill their raison d´être at the same time, and that´s ok, too.

So, anyway, we didn´t get any new students in my class -- in fact, last Friday was the last day of class for the Norwegian guy, so on Monday, it was down to two, just me and Sabina (until Tuesday, when a Romanian-born girl who now lives in Australia and spent time living in Italy joined our class). After Monday´s class, a bunch of us went to lunch, and then Veronica and I hit the beach with one of the new guys at school, Salvador (USA). While we were at the beach, I went swimming and some Bahian kids (kidskids) befriended me in the water. They were fascinated by the fact that my eyes are blue and that I´m learning Portuguese, so they kept asking me to say things in Portuguese (by repeating after them). They said I can speak Portuguese well, which I considered a compliment, considering the fact that when I was walking home last week, one of the women I met on the street told me that everything about me seemed Brazilian until I started speaking. I think I like those kids better.

At night, I went to the movies with Auana and Eliene. We saw a Brazilian movie called ´´Meu nome não é Johnny´´ (My name isn´t Johnny), and though Brazil doesn´t ever dub movies (always a plus when you want to hear the original language), since this movie is Brazilian, the movie was in Portuguese without subtitles. I understood more than I thought I would, but I still have a ways to go in terms of slang expressions and jokes and whatnot. Fortunately, Auana leaned over a few times and explained some expressions to me.

Tuesday, I had class and then after lunch I had my first percussion class, out in Pelourinho. I had thought it would be a drum lesson, with a certain teacher, but then a different teacher showed up and it ended up being with the tambourine. Once he started playing the tambourine for real, though, I decided to continue with the class because with the tambourine, you can get the drumming sound and the tambourine sound all out of that portable little instrument. My teacher (his name is Gótico) gave me homework, but since I don´t have my own tambourine yet, he told me to practice on a book. So, it looks like all that practice in gradeschool of tapping on my books might finally come in handy!

Afterwards, I met up with Antonia, who, for those of you who don´t know (and even for those of you who do), is like part of the family (American extended family, not host family). She hails from Salvador, in fact, and though she lives in New York, she happens to be in Salvador this week. It´s funny -- I´ve known her practically all my life, and I never thought I´d be in Salvador and experience it with her. It´s all one of life´s surprises...

The weather here continues to be beachy..it always feels like I´m missing out when I don´t have the chance to go, but there´s just too much else to do that the beach just has to be the default activity for now (and it´s not a bad default, I can assure you that much). Even so, the sun still accompanies me from place to place.

Right, so that´s it for now. Time to hit the books! Literally...

abraços,
missy :)
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