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 :)
