CHUVA !

last tueday, at around 8:47pm Ipatinga, Brasil experienced their first rainfalll in over 3months.


yes, this is blog-worthy


i was sitting in my rooom, trying to read a brasilian magazine that a friend from school gave me and i hear my brother yell from the kitchen:
CHUVA!


"what the heck is chuva?" then i hear it.


IT'S RAINING!! holy cow


i open my window &seee buckets of rain falling and i get so excited. i dont really know why? ha


it only lasted for about 6minutes but it was much needed rain, although we havent had any since. the smell was so fresh to my nose that it was almost foreign, like i havent seen/smelled rain before in my life. ha !


Now, it is offiaically spring, no more "winter"

like you would call their winter, 'winter' ha !


unfortunatley, what comes with spring and summer is ..
polylonges.
the dreaded mosquito.


Currently, i have 9bites on my left leg, 4bites on my right thigh, 3bites on my arm, and theres one circling me as i type this very post. i. hate. polylonges. so. much.


my parents have this sweet "racket-type-zapper" that kills them instantly which we usuually keep very close to us at night when they start to appear. and ooh, do they appear.


i came home one night and my father was like, "yeah me and your mother probably killed over 100 mosquitos while you were out."
my father doesnt lie.
i was only gone for a few hours.


you know in the movies, where they have to create the sound of a bug buzzing in your ear cause sometimes, you cant catch the sound. come in my room at night and just lay in silence, you will hear that buzzzzing noise and it will drive you to the brink of instanity.


it will start buzzing, and my eyes instantly open, then it stopss, almost like it knows that i can hear it now, like the polylonge can see my hand twitching, about to reach for the prized "racket-type-zapper"


what can you do?
embrace the bitess &let the chuva fall.

feeeeling it

i left off my last post saying that, yes, i indeed was missing home. (shocker to all of us) let me explain a little more before everyone has a panic attack and thinks i am not completely enjoying myself.



at the family party, i realized that it was so similar to ours, yet so different. usually, we always eat spinach dip, thanks to momma, the grownups talk about people they knew when they were younger and the children, me riss and natalie, just hang out and make fun of our family :D love ya guyss



well i didnt have that

and i miss it.



i miss hearing harry potter the moment i wake up becuase natalie is obessed. i miss having tea with momma on the backporch. i miss talking about girlie books and movies with risss. i miss seeing dad walk through the backporch with his dirty boots and then get yelled at.

i miss that.



my world has completely changed

for the better



i feel as if my life is spilt into my "old world" and my "new world"

my heart belongs to both brasil &united states that its difficult sometimes.



i have sucha strong bond with all the exchangers. i cried when i had to say goodbye to them, when i knew i would see most within the next month. but that didnt matter because when you spend everyday all day with your best friends, you cantt bare to leave them. i couldnt imagine not hearing grace's jokes, having a headache each day because i heard english, portuguese, danish, french, chinnese, german, and every language in between, i wanted to seee sebastain everyday and call him baby and hear the aussies talk in their gorgeous accents.

i refuse to say goodbye to them, ever.



i am always smiling about the past, laughing at the present, and looking forward to tomorrow..

(that deserves to be written down by someone, mann am i poetic)



i just have to keep reminding myself this:

before i came here, all i could do was think about brasil, talk about brasil, plan about brasil, dream about brasil, jump up and down about brasil, cry over brasil, laugh about brasil.

welll now ariana, its time to live brasil !



so yess i miss you guys back home,

but just because i love you alll so much

be agá

i know, aunt lou & uncle dan, you have been waiting anxiously for the new post. so here it is:

on september 11 (of all days) all the exchange students of district 4520 traveled to BH for orientation and then a week of portuguese classes. basically one fulll week of absolute wonderful-ness.

we arrived early saturday morning and i'm freezing. we're in the mountions and i just wanna bundle up in full-on winter attire but im in the cute litttle brasilian roupas. i can never dress corretly here. im like dad in new york. remember riss & teal. on the hottest day of summer, he wore long pants then the next day, it rained so he wore shorts? ahah of course i remeber what you wore dad ;D

that's besides the point. we all gathered into the living room, and met each other and give kisses and introductions. immediatley, we are all instant friends. we are from all over the world yet we have so much in common, Rotary had a hard time trying to get us to shut up. we went through the rules, that were later broken, and through the basics of being an exchange student. just alot of paperwork.

i sat next to kamilia from Hungary and sophie from Norway and i just remember thinking, "i'm sitting next to people from two places i know nothing about but i know that these people are my friends."

from our district:
4 aussies: olivia, emma, billie and clare
4 americans: ariana, grace, carly and lorenica
2 boys from taiwan: mike &leo
2 germans: iben & theresa
1 hungarian: kamilia
1 from norway: sophie
1 french girl: lucie
1 mexcian: andrea
1 danish boy: sebastain
these are my best friends

so the rest of the day, we all hung out, ate (ofcourse) and took heaps of pictures. saturday, i had a little "american sleepover" with carly. it was so nice to talk about american stufff, trash talk boys and ofcourse our love for brasil. love you carly :)

sunday morning, we woke up early (im so disgusted hat my body just naturally wakes up at 6am cause of school) and went to a market called feria hippie with my exchanger family.we got there at the busyest time of day but still, it was back to back people, could barely move let along breath kinda market. it was awesome. made my first brasilian purchase: a huge ring and earings, very south american ;D

after, we all headed on a bus (city buses are awful) and went to a park for lunch in which we spent 90 realis (45dollars) for junk food. we are teenagers afteralll :) we kinda just ran around the park, got called foreigners from passing cars and bought a kite ! overall successfull day.

my tia (auntie christina) picked me up because i was staying at her house for the week. her daughters, caroline and larissa, are EXCELLENT gymnastic "players". the best of brasil. they are in portugal as we speak, for competition and then in october, going to France. so lucky. and the sweetest girls tooooo. minha primas

monday was beginning of portuguese classes which i was nervously excited for. turns out, the class was really basic, really boring and i didnt really learn all that much. it didnt help that we all talked the whole time and just wanted to hang out with each other, not speak portuguese. better off learning a language by just hearing it, not in a classroom congating verbs.

after class, carly's cousin, luisa, took me sebastain and her to luisa's university. it was a huge university with heaps to see and i instantly thought of university back home and about my future and what i wanna do with my life after brasil. then i got flustered and i dont wanna talk about it.

tuesday we signed up for a dance class and i discovered i do not have two left feet. IN FACT, i have the brasilain rythem inside me. it was incrediably fun to learn sumba and feel so sexy trying to keep your feet in check. tuesday was also carly's birthday (shes 19!) we allll went out which was horriably awesome. enough said.

fast forward to friday where my parents traveled to BH to spend the weekend. it was weird seeing them after a week apart. i look to them as my parents and was excited to see them and tell them about my week. how strange to call them mae & paí

we would stay at my grandmothers house for the weekend. we had dinner friday night and my grandmother speaks not a word of english so ofcourse my ears would be trying very hard to listen and understand the conversation.

exactly a month ago, i sat at this very same table, with these very same people and had a very similiar conversation. but this time was different. this time i UNDERSTOOD. i am getting to the point where i can UNDERSTAND. and it is an amazing thing. i can ask some questions and sometimes join the conversation but my vocab is still very basic. but i am trying my very hardest :D

saturday i made brigaderio with avó (grandmum) which is a classic brasilain sweet. basically, a ball of chocolate rolled in sprinkles. at first, its sooooooo sweet. but i cant get enough of it ahhhh
then i went to a movie with my irmaõ & primero. im embarrassed to say that i thought my cousin was cute until i learned he was quartorze. nosssa. anyways, we returned to casa de avó and i saw my first glimpse of how crazy brasilians get when watching fútbol. my entire family, aunts cousins all, are gathered around the tv, anxiously watching while biting their fingernails. i got more amusement watching their reactions then actually watching the game.

sunday we went to the center of BH and took more amazing photos. there was a jazz concert going on and we stayed for awhile to listen. natalie, someone played the clarinet beauitfully and i thought of you :D later on was my festa de tia so what did i do all afternoon sunday? i ate and i ate and i ate. my stomach is really upset with how much i ate. but at the party i realized how much i wanted to see my own family...

thats for a later post :)

marlièria :)

for the brasilian hoilday, my family and i traveled to a small farm town called marlèria, about an hour away from ipatinga.

our adventure to marlèria began on a dirt road. no seriously, we drove on a dirt road for about half an hour. im getting car sick in the backseat while my brother is sleeping like a precious angel. sweet.

anyway, we get to the hotel, and it reminds me of in "the parent trap" where lindsay lohan's father lives in calif, so freaking beatuiful. more of a big cottage than a hotel. it's around 7ish when we arrive so i'm getting a little hungry for our "dinner" which is basically our lunch. we settle into our rooms and these "maids" come around with cheese and rolls. i'm thinking, "ohmygosh, this is dinner? im going to be eating crackers and a grape this whole weekend."
then my father turns to me and says, "remember this moment ariana, because this is the last time you will be hungry this entire trip." he was right. i turn around and there is a FEAST behind me, more food than we have at christmas at grandma judy's house. like double. so i eat plate after plate of brasilian delicious-ness.

the following morning, we spent the day by the pool, just hanging out and i got my first brasilian sunburn. woo-hooo! after lunch my family said we would go on a little hike with the owner of the hotel, see some beauitful sights and he would show us some constellations.

a little hike, it was 14km! the whole time, up hill. for you americans who are reading this, you can figure out what 14km is in miles because my legs are still aching for me to go check.
i was struggling bigtime. i honestly didnt think i was gonna make it. BUT the view was incrediable. when it got dark out, because it gets dark around 6ish here cause of winter, i looked up in the sky and i have never seen a sight so amazing. words are failing me right now because seriously everywhere i looked, stars after stars after stars. sooooooo beauitful. the owner pointed out mars and i was in ashtonishment.

the next day, we drove to the top of one of the surrounding mountains and you could see all of marlièria. gorgeous !
we then drove to a national park where there was this beauitful lake. because they havent had rain in 3months (yeah, 3months!) the water was very shallow but we got in our bikkins and cooled off.
**note of brasilians: almost every lady wears bikkinis and men litttttttle littttle shorts. i saw one little girl in a one piece the whole weekend. even if you dont have a "bikkini body", you are showing off what you got.

monday was a lazy morning by the pool. until we went on another 14km hike. it was a different walk but still very difficult because again, it was up hill. again, was still beauitful
the owner of the hotel turned to me and calmly said, "ariana, you are in charge of this flashlight (since it was getting dark) if you see an onca (jaguar) just point the flashlight in his eyes and it will be leave us alone."
JAGUAR?!! QUE? SERIO?!
if i see an onca, i will not calmly flash the light.
i will fumble for it. drop it. break it. it's game over. so not funny. we didnt see an onca, luckily.

tuesday was our last day in paradise but before we left my father wanted to take me to this waterfall. "just a short walk ariana" it was only 3-4km (which now appears short to me)
but he forgot to tell me we were going into the mini-amazon.
there was no path, we made our own. we got lost for about a good hour, just me and him.
i'm panicking. amazon = Anaconda's. my thoughts are going crazy:
"ohmygosh, i'm gonna slip and fall into an Anaconda nest"
"ohmygosh, i'm going to grab onto a branch and it's actually gonna be an Anaconda"
"ohmygosh, i'm gonna accidentally kill a baby Anaconda and the mother is gonna eat me alive"
little did i know that Anconda's shouldnt have been my mind, but in fact KILLER ANTS! we finally get to the waterfall, step down, my father screams, then i scream. i look down and see an ant the size of my thumb nail, getting angry and crawling all over my leg! (kristi jones, i know youre struggling to read this) after we saw the falls and took some amazing pictures, we make our way back to "our path" and my father is like "ohh, look, where the ants attacked us"
thousands, thousands ! of killer ants going nuts.
i got nausous and almost lost my breakfast. get me outtta here

we made our way back, safely, watching out for both killer ants and anacondas. two extremes.
back at the hotel, we packed our things and unfortunatley, had to leave paradise...
maerlièria was a wonderful place and i reallllly enjoyed itt :D

Dondora

this post is dedicated to Dondora my maid.

now before your jaw drops and youre like, "holy cow ariana, you have a maid?!?"
you should first let your jaw drop and be like, "holy cow ariana, you have a maid!!" because yes, it is a amazing and yes, i am completely lovin' it. :D


it is completely normal in south america for families to have a maid so here it isnt really jaw-dropping material. but for me, it is and i am still not accustomed to it. we treat her as family, since she has been here for about 15 years. Unfortunatley, she doesnt speak english so the language barrier is defiantly there. luckily for her, i am learning portuguese and the art of hand &body language. Dondora is around "grandmother age" and is of Indian descent.

Everyday, i come home from school, always flustered with the portuguese and i walk into my room and my mood completely changes. It is spotless. I mean, you wouldnt find a pen out of place in my room. and i have to admitt, i dont leave it in this spotless condition (i know what youre thinking mommma, "ariana, i told you to clean up after yourself" but when you have half an hour in the morning at 6am, and your eyes are barely open, you are not concerned with making the bed)

one day, i dropped my ring after i hit the sneeze on my alarm clock and it fell off the table. i couldnt find it but i was like whatever, its just some cheap-o ring. i come home, its sitting on my desk. Dondora could find it.

Dondora prepares our meals, mostly lunch (almoço) they make my stomach rumble at school just thinking about them. Walking into the kitchen, i can always expect my nose to be in heaven and also to see rice, beans, salada and fresh juice. Dondora makes fresh juice by hand EVERYDAY and it is indescribable. but the rest of our almoço is always different, and i am never disappointed.

the one day, i came home and didnt see rice &beans on the table and almost panicked. "we are not having rice today? ohmygosh" then i saw it was still on the stove, being warmed. i knew then, that i was becoming brasilian.

her talants are also in laundry. i put my dirty clothes in the bin and somewhere along the line, magic happens, and they return on my bed some time later, as if they were just bought. one day, i saw her ironing my white tank top with extra care as if it were silk! (if you dont know, white tank tops are essential and are worn under everything, not needing to be ironed) i am gonna find her ironing my socks one day, she is that dedicated.

if i havent already clearly stated this, Dondora is amazing