provas

after having been in school for almost 3months now, i have taken a total (count em) 2 tests! wooah. and both are going to be detailed for all of you below:

first of all, you have to understand the school system here. they typically make 2tests here a week, only on friday. for awhile here, i didnt like fridays at school. before you think i am crazy (what teenageer doesnt like fridays) let me explain:
everyone is stressing about the tests. they study so much that they barely have time for conversation, or to make fun and laugh at their favorite american. which isnt funn.
we have inglês class on friday, just once a week, and NO ONE pays attention which made me mad for a little bit. half of my class has perfect inglês and the other half doesnt speak but a few words. I just wanted to listen to my native language for 40mintues, pleasee! the one class i can actually understand, i cant understand cause everyone elses loud calls to eachother drown out professora.
before i made the tests, i would have to sit and wait by myself for the bus while everyone else made the tests. i just wanted to be included with everyone else, so i wanted to try this "prova" stufff, so i did. and heres how it went:

primeria provas estava inglês:
my class had to read Phantom of the Opera, a condesed version ofcourse, for a test that would be made in groups of two. the week before the test, i read their book in 5mintues cause i was bored during class, completely forgetting everything. so when i come into inglês, i ask the professora if i can make the test and she says ofcourse. so this boy comes over to me, Ricardo, a boy that i havent really talked with much, and he wants to be my partner for the test. i say, yeah sure ofcourse.

when we sit down for the test, everyone is yelling, "HEY thats not fair, he has the Americana. She speaks inglês." guys, dont be jealous of him, i dont remember this book at all hahah
we start making the test and he kinda just throws it on me, you speak inglês, this must be easy for you. "Ricardo, did you read the book?"
well no.
sweet, so when we get everything wrong, cause you didnt read the book and i dont remember anything, youre gonna blame me.
we got our tests back today and we made 4/5 ..haha
a girl by the name of vanessa, who DOESNT speak any inglês, made a 5/5 ..explain yourself now menina.

segunda prova de sociologia:
this past friday, the organizer of the 2nd year came up to me after class and asked if i would like to try and make a test today, either math ou sociologia. considering the fact that the math here looks like a Senior in Law School would be struggling with, i went with Sociologia.

I come in late for the test, everyone already is engrossed with their own material but i can see some smirks on their faces like, "haha she is gonna make this test, boa sorte americana."
there are about 5muilpte choice questions but its nothing like our mulipte choice. these muilpte choice, you had to read a huge paragraph (in portugês) then each A B C D was another paragraph in itself (again, português) lets just say that it took me a good long while to get through those questions.

but i could moreorless understand the questions ( i had my best friend, português dictionario, with me ) if i actually paid attention in class then i would maybe have done better in that part. but Mr.Lutz, i was channeling back to your class, all those months again, trying to remember all the knowledge and insight you gave us.

then came the short answer, now it gets interesting :D
the first one, i literally wrote (in português) I dont speak português. I understand the question but dont know how to respond. Sorry Professor.
Next question i actually tried to answer in português, but i think i just rambled on and on, using the same words over and over. HEY, i tried.
Final question, just to be annoying, i responded in inglês. Sorry professor. Someone was like, but "ariana i dont think he speaks inglês." ..yeah but i speak inglês hahah
After i left the classroom, i guess the teacher let everyone look at my test, everyone laughed at what i wrote! i was embarrassed :( bahh nahh, nothing embarrassses me anymore.
this past week, someone asked me if i understood the material on the test. i said yeah moreorless. they were like, haha i didnt understand ANYTHING! ..welll that makes me feel a little better. haha

this week is the final week of classes then next week is all tests.
after that baby, ITS SUMMER VACATION !!
bring on the sun burn, lazy days, Christmas, travels, New Years, and parties. I am so ready

switching

yesterday, Nov7, i switched families.


this is a little early (ive only been here for 2 1/2 months and typically you switch after 4months) but many factors were considered for the switch. my second family, the Pires, have 2children. Amalia has 19 years, and Alessandro has 16years. Amalia studies in BH but will live at home for the hoildays, December-January. Alessandro is in the same class as me but will also go to BH to study after he finishes this year. so if i would stay in the Santos family for the correct amount of time, until December, than being in this family, I wouldnt get to spend alot of time with my siblings :) plus, after the third family, i can go back to the Santos for the remaining two months if i want. ooh i want to. it all makes sense but leaving was not easy.


the morning of the big move was rainy and just a crappy day, which contributed to my mood. i felt sad and tired and anxious and lazy. had little to no motativation to switch. i literally packed my life into 3suitcases within an hour time frame. it was a messss.
i just wanted this whole process to be like taking off a bandage, fast and painlessss. but i knew deeep down, i would cry when i had to say goodbye.
and guess what? i did cry


not because i didnt want to move into this family because i know i already love this family. but because i love the Santos family THAT much.


they have been with me since April when they first emailed me giving me details about Ipatinga, helping me through the frustrating process of the Visa (just thinking of that dang Visa makes me hate the postoffice even more, STILL) they were the first people i met in Brasil, holding up the SEJA BEM VINDA sign and hugging &kissing me when i was in arms reach. i know their whole extended family, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles. its like they are my family too. they held me when i cried and kissed away the nonsense of my worries. they listened to my worthless portuguese and taught me SO MUCH. we laughed over everything and had many conversations, in english and portuguese, about everything. they took me places that could only be described in pictures because words fail. they gave me more love than i could imagine possible, considering i was never actually their daughter. but now, i am their daughter and they are my family.

so i would like to thankyou, Rógerio, Flávia Laura, and Vítor, pai, mãe, iramã, iramoã. Muito Obrigada . know that i could never repay you for everything you have done.

a língua, português

after that last post about the wax, everyone seems to know me a litttle toooooo well.
but i know what youre thinking, "ariana, enough about fabulous vacations, surprise birthday parties and waxes that make you scream. we wanna know about what youre suppose to be doing there: learning portuguese!"

i've been here for a little over 2months now (holy cow) and i can honestly say that it depends each day.
Sometimes I feel like I know ALOT of português, like i can have a conversation with my friends and family and not even have to think or translate, just speak. that in itself, is one of the most beauitful feelings i have ever felt. to think that i know a language that 2months ago, i knew 6words, is astonishing.
you also have to understand how much i love português. its a romance language, along with spanish, italian, and french, all formed by the roots of latin. as Liz Gilbert would say, each word, its like a truffle. like a sweet candy that rolls off your tongue.
for football fans, speaking português is like your favorite team winning the SuperBowl.
for Grandma Hall, speaking português is like you winning the lottery.
I love it that much.

Now, dont let my love for this language fool you, i am no fluent speaker that learned everything she needed to know within a 2month period.
I am waiting for the day that i can have a conversation with Vanessa or Iasmim or any other of classmate that doesnt speak english and not have to grab my dictionary or have Laura translate for me.
I am waiting for the day when a teacher makes a ridiculous comment and the class erupts into laughter, that i can laugh along too and ACTUALLY know what they are laughing at.
I am waitng for the day when i wake up and know that i dreamt in português..
Am i being patient?
Absoletly not.
i wanted all these things the first week I arrived here. Many of you have no idea what its like to sit in a room with 40kids and not understand a thing they are saying. To gather around a table for a meal and just sit and listen, trying to catch atleast what they are talking about. To have people talk to you and you just nodd and smile cause you are tried of saying what? repeat? again &again. To cherish all the conversations that you understand, whether in english or português.
And that is the joy of being an exchange student :D

Sometimes i get really frustrated with my português. why cant i understand this, why cant i understand when they talk to eachother REALLLY quickly, why cantt they understand ME when i try to say a new word and completely butcher it, why cant i just join a conversation without having to think really hard about what to say? ahhh!

You better believe that I am coming back with many many MANY português phrases that i will be saying, and you will be tooo :) some of these phrases make NO sense in english, there is no translation. like everyone says, vei, meaning "dude" but vei is short for old. why are you calling each other old?
or minha filha or meu fihlo, my son/daughter. why are you calling eachother your daughter? you cant even have kids yet.
or my personal favorite: Nossa Senhora. Translation in the dictionary is Our Lady but its used like Ohmygosh. Our Lady..huh?

my love of português, a beauitful langauge that someone back home should start studying so that we can tlak to eachother :) overrules how frustarting it is to communicate in the land of Ipatinga ;D

biqíni aww

CAUSTION:
this post is not for the average reader. anything said or described is meant for your laughs &your enterinment. judgement is not permitted.

in my journey in becoming everything brasileria, an important and essential part is the bikinni wax. afterall, its called the "brasileria bikinni wax" so heres what happened:

before i went to the beach, me and Clare (aussie exchange) went to get our nails done..and then a wax. the nails part was alll fun &such. then the women looked at me and said, you first? (this whole dialogue was in portuguese but i dont feeel like translating back &forth)
me? but uhh, i was.. you ..welll yeah? i'm nervouss.

we go into this back room with this flabby door, i wouldnt even consider it a dooor and im even surprised she decided to close it. in the room, is a table that you would seee at the doctors office, with wax paper and alll. the women motions for me to take off my shorts and i start to but then she immediatley INSISTS that she does for it for me, "i just got my nails done" (they were clearly dry) the embarrassing part of that was she had a hard time getting my shorts off because i was sweating, its brasil, and everything was sticking to me. ha

i sit down on the table, she grabs my underpants and hikes them up. revealing everything.
woah there. wasnt expecting that.
i immediatley start laughing at this whole thing. what in the world am i doing here? she looks at me, with wax in her hand, and asks, "are you modest?"
i am not brasileria, so yes i am modest.

she starts putting the wax on the one side and its HOT! burning hott. after awhile, it starts to cool and actually feeel good. as sooon as it starts to feeel good, she RIPS it offf my skin, without warning.
thankyouu.
she continues to wax the other side, asking me questions and i am trying to have a conversation in portuguese but my soft screams interupt the conversation every so often.

she puts the wax away and i think she is done. i think i can put my pants back on and feeel human again, feeel like the modest american again.
she comes back with tweezers.

OHMYGOSH no no.. meu deus ..NO NO nossa senhora!! NO NO ..abalsoltey not ..why?! you are not getting next to me ..please no NO NÃO!!

i am going to pulll up my underpants, grab my pants and walk out of here with the rest of my diginity and not look back until i am home with huge sweatpants on and curl into a balll.

ofcourse that doesnt happen. i sit through the pain and silently curse everything in that rooom.
finally its over and i can finally pull up my pants (thankyou Lord) and leave. Clare is next and she seees in my face that it was NOT a good experince. i tell her no, its not worth it. dont do this to yourself. she said she heard me yelling a few rooms over. i thougth i wasnt being that loud.
Clare returns literally 5minutes later (was that how long i was in there cause it definatly felt like 17 long hours of pain)
she said it didnt hurt that bad. i hate you clare

lets just say that i am not going backk there for a lonnnnnnnnnng time..
well i mean, maybe ;D

parabéns!

i arrived home on my birthday after a week of pure bliss in Cabo Frio and various other towns. we had a long nights travel and when we arrived home, we went back to bed, sleeeping until 10in the morning.

i didnt except to do much on my birthday. it was a sunday and we did just travel 8hours on a bus, so i thought it would be a typical sunday: go to the clube, play some tennis, swim then maybe go out to dinner to celebrate my turning of age.

my parents didnt have that in mind.

i woke up and literally fell into the shower because i think Dondora waxed my floors while i was gone. when i went into the kitchen to eat breakfast, i opened the fridge and found piles of meat for a bbq, a beauitful huge cake and lots of food.
whats going on?

i went outside to find Dondora working. Dondora is never here on Sunday.
whats going on?

outside there were tables and chairs, fancy china and a man starting up a bbq.
whats going on?

i asked my parents "what was going on?!" and they causally said that some people were coming over for lunch and i should probably go change. I looked down at what i was wearing: the clothes i had on yesterday for the bus ride here. ..yeah i think i should change.

it occured to me that maybe they were throwing me a birthday party but how? we werent home all week and i couldnt have invited my friends. my sneaky little parents planned this all by themselves without me finding out. cleverr

i realized that everyone who came to my party, they are my "family" here: all my host families, my rotary counslor, my friends from school and my bffff exchangerrrs. i hadnt even known these people 2months ago but now, they are my "familia brasileria," the people that i can run to whenever i need to, my bestfriends. at that moment, i felt so loved, so accepted, so.. happy! i never would have thought that i would feeel this way with total strangers, but they arent strangers, they are my family.

the party wasnt anything big or grande. it was just a small bbq where we ate way too many sweets and laughed way too much. but it was one of the most special days here in brasil :))))

férias III

okay so i promise to finish up talking abot Cabo Frio today, Vanessa wants me to start talking about her ;D ahah te amo

quinta-feria(wednesday): my mother invited me to walk with her along the beach to the forte. This forte was used to protect the brasilerian people hundreds of years ago from any enemy that portugal didnt want there. the unique thing about the forte was that it was able to see both the harbor and the ocean. i could actually feel the history breathing in the walls. its one of the oldest fortes in brasil so when you enter, the walls are so thick everything is silent; the sea, the people, you have to whisper.

afterwards we hit the beach, getting more sunburn, more tanlines. :D (enivous yet?)
after lunchtime, my mother, grandmother and i traveled to the nearby city of buizos. its a big tourist town, many many hostels. (while we were at the beach, i heard alot of spanish, argentinaian people travel to brasil because of our beaches ofcourse. my momma&i were walking back and this man said something to me. i kinda understood what he said but i knew it wasnt portuguese. my mother said that he was hitting on me, "the most beauitful girl on the beach" i would have been more flattered if i wasnt the only girl under the age of 30. thankyou) hahah

buizos was beauitful. absolutley beauitful. i think i liked buizos more than cabo frio (undecided) i loved it because it was such a calm relaxing city. the waves just rolled onto shore, without making a sound, as if they wanted to go unnoticed. we walked throughout the many shops and almost every store, you would walk to the back and it would have a balconey leading to the sea.
you know when a place just clicks with you? when you feeel like you could spend days there, not for any reason whatsoever, just because, well that was buizos to me.

Quina-feria(Thursday):
more beach, more sun, more lounging around doing nothing.
i cant remember anything special about thursday, but i remember eating alot of icecream, which seems to be a pattern here. and i hung out with my cousin, Daniel :)
Daniel is..not shy..at all. we became really close, really quickly. he was like my baby brother. we talked alot about nothing, about everything. he thought it was hilarious how i would pronounce some brasilerian names and i thought it was hilarious on how he would pronounce some american names. i probably asked him to say all your names and ohmygosh, you would have laughed sooo hard! they make every name sound ..sound "delicious" it sounds sexy and romantic and ..ohh how i love portuguese.

sexta-feria(friday):
friday was the last day at the beach so we soaked in as much sun as possible.
afterwards, me and Daniel went on a boat ride! a little tour around Cabo Frio and the surrounding islands. Risss, remember when you were in Chile and thought that once you got out into the open water, it would be calm? yeah me tooo! until we got further out, and the waves just got more and more angry. the boat would hit a wave, tilt upwards, i would go flying everywhere, water would splash up. it was ridiculously funn.
the boat anchored by a nearby island and we were allowed to jump in the water and swimm for awhile. the color of the water!! ahhhh, a deeeep, beauitful, OCEAN blue. i would have beeen so excited for this opportunity except that the wind was slicing my checkbones and i wouldnt take offf my two jackets if someone paided me to. but ofcourse, Daniel jumped in, the only person.

Sabado(Saturday):
we rose REALLY early to travel back to Juiz de Fora so that we could catch our bus home later that night. the car ride was long and ofcourse i felt carsick (getting carsick is like me eating, it happens alot)
we had a gorgeous lunch with my mother's family. my uncles, my mother's brothers, have both been to the States, and we got to talking about food back home. They both said, and i have heard this often, that American food is spicy! Is it spicy? Or are we so used to it that we dont notice when we put lots of pepper and herds and seasonings. I havent heard of many people liking pepper here. Its salt. how unusual..

our vacation ended at 9 that night when we had to depart and catch our bus. i knew that when i would arrive in Ipatinga, at 5am, I would offically have 18years :D

férias II

and we are up to Segunda(monday):
it was raining. i was borderline depressed during the morning. i mean commonn, we're at one of the most beautiful beaches in Brasil, and mother-nature decides to literally "rain on my parade"?

but the Girls (me, my mother, grandmother, and Aunt Bia, Daniel's Mom) went to "Rua de Biquíni"
We are hunting for a bikkini for ariana.

By this point, i know what a typical brasileria bikkini looks like: top is basically the same but the bottoms are a litttle more, how should i say.. more revealing. we walk through the streeet, past countless stores, and i havent gained enough courage to actually try one on. After about twenty minutes, i am like "ariana, just try one on and see what it looks like. you wouldnt know until you put it on."
i pick one up, not really that cute, but i have to start somewhere.
i look like a beached whale.
my buttt is hanging out, i look fat, i cant even get the top on.
i am not coming out of this dresssing room.
i am going to find myself a big-girl one-piece and just keep my clothes on while at the beach
really frustrated at this point.

during the rest of the day, somehow i start warming up to the idea of my buttt hanging out..not completely. calm down everyone. but usually, the biquíni has just a little bit. ..just a litttle bit showing offf. i'm only in brasil once.
i end up finding a really cute floral suit with just the right amount of me being "exposed" i will not be wearing this in Estados Unidos.. hahah

that Monday night, we went to a restuarant that was literally on the beach. we all had delicious seafood, ahh sooo delicious.
we got to talking about politics (a subject i know little about) Brasil just had an election (discuss more on a seperate post) so there is much debate. My Uncle got to talking about the USA and asking my opinion on the War in Iraq (i tried my hardest to represet America well) he said something very interesting that got me thinking.
He said that whoever we elect next, whether it be Obama again or some other leader, it will effect the entire world.
whoever YOU choose as the president will effect these people as well.
The United States has that much power at this current moment, that our leaders have a lot of say in International affairs.
Just something for all of you to ponder...

Terça(Tuesday):
I woke up, went to the kitchen and heard, "Ariana, its sunny outside!"
THANKYOU BRASIL!
I put my biquíni on and we are off to the beach.
the beach has hundreds, i might even be bold and say thousands of people. its not a very wide beach either so whoever your nieghbor is, you will get to know them very welll.
beaches sell everything here. icecream, wooden spoons, bikinnis, bracelets, pizza, coconut juice, sunglasses, bbq meat. and more. crazynesss. and the merchants, they get really annoying, reallly fast cause they get in your face and just want your money.

the water is freezing. Look at the name of the beach: Cabo Frio.
literal translation: Cape Cold.
Cabo Frio has THE coldest water in Brasil because it gets the southern water from the poles. Its not uncommon to see peguins surfing in the water. I saw three while i was there!! The one was really close to shore, basically at kneee height, and if he reaches shore, he will die. :(

the good/bad thing about Cabo Frio is that it was alotalot wind.
Good: it cools you off
Bad: you dont notice when you start to fry.
I went home the first day and looked at my chest. I hadnt rubbed in my sunscreeen good enough therefore i had fingerprint marks on my chest. Thankyou Brasilerian Sun

enough for now, more later :)