Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I promised my sisters that I'd write two blog posts a month up till the end of 2013. So, this here is the final one, before I head away on holiday tomorrow. Look at this, dearest sisters of mine, I win! Barely, but whatever. Normally when it gets to the end of a year my reaction is something along the lines of 'whooaaah, what happened to that year, I swear it's only June'. This year has been a little different. Every time I hear something about looking forward to 2014, or have to write the date with a 2013 in it I do a little doubletake- you mean it's not 2014 yet? It's been a long year, and I'm ready for it to be over. Not because it's been terrible, but because new years have so much potential and so much that could happen and no evidence at all that it won't. Maybe I'll travel (in fact, pretty much guaranteed :) and I do have to get home somehow). Maybe I'll become a pirate and sail the seven seas (somewhat less likely, but let's not rule it out) Maybe I'll work out exactly what I want to do with my life (ha. haha. nope)

I haven't really been up to much lately. Last wednesday was my last day of school- we pretty much just watched a movie, said goodbye and left- none of the drama that the last day has in New Zealand. It was a bit of  surreal feeling day for me. I knew that really that ought to be the end of school forever for me, but no, I'll be back for another 3 months next year. Since then I have taken full adantage of the opportunity to do nothing at all. Midday naps, walks to the pool, reading books, that kind of thing. It's nice, but getting a little boring to be honest. And doesn't involve enough Portuguese-speaking- if I continue at this rate I'll have forgotten everything I ever learned by the end of the holidays. But that's a problem for another, less lazy day.

Goodbye my dears, Merry christmas and happy new year. When I get back I promise to write all about what a Brazilian christmas is like.

Some reflecting

Well, I’m now 4 months into this exchange thing, with only 6 months to go (actually slightly more than that now, because this took me ages to write). Not yet halfway, but I still think saying ‘only’ is appropriate. 6 months really isn’t that long. I feel like it must be about time for some reflections on my experience so far. An exchange is a strange creature. On the one hand it’s a massive adventure, living on the other side of the world, experiencing new and sometimes exciting things. On the other hand, it’s just normal life. A somewhat different normal life, yes, but it’s still going to school, and coming home, and sleeping a lot, and eating food because that’s a thing you have to do and all kinds of mundane normalness. But on the third hand, there’s nothing normal about it. It’s not normal to be this far away from anyone I’ve ever meet before in my life. It’s not normal to arrive somewhere knowing only the most basic of words. It still feels like not quite real life. While I’m gaining a lot, from this amazing opportunity to travel and live a different life, I’m also very aware of the things that I’m losing. I know it’s time to withdraw more from home, so I can not think about everything that I’m missing, but that’s easier said than done.

In the last 4 months I have cried more than I have in a long long time. And that’s coming from someone who cries a lot anyway. Sometimes from sadness, more often from frustration, or just plain my eyes decide to leak without any consultation with the rest of me. I guess I could say that every tear represents a thing that I’ve learned, but that would be too cheesy, even for me, so I’ll leave that thought there. But I am learning a lot. Or at least I hope I am. Everyone always says that the hardest things are the things that you learn the most from. Some days I wonder it we’re just telling ourselves that so that we can pretend the hard things mean something.

Life so far away from everything I used to know can get lonely sometimes. More than sometimes, in fact. On the good days I forget to feel lonely, but it comes crashing back on the bad days. The advice is always that I need to start inviting people out to do stuff. Invite someone to have coffee! I know that it’s good advice, and the alternative is to just be lonely and make nothing of my year here, but it’s not easy inviting someone when I feel so boring. Yes, I can speak Portuguese. To an extent. To a very mundane and repetitive extent. I don’t want to inflict myself on people, but I know that I need to.

This is all sounding a bit negative, but I promise it isn’t all bad. My Portuguese is vastly improving, for one thing. It’s still very much lacking in nuance (I can say ‘shut up’ but saying ‘excuse I’m very tired can you please take your conversation somewhere else’ is more of a challenge) and sometimes it strikes me as odd that the people I’m talking to understand my words better than I do, and I don’t always control exactly what they mean. Despite that, I can communicate, and no longer have to carry my dictionary around everywhere, so that’s getting better. I’ve some pretty exciting travel coming up over the holidays too, so hopefully I’ll get around to posting about that. Life goes on.

This blog post is dedicated to Maggie, because she told me I should blog again. However, I probably can't just leave it at that, so now I have to find something to write about. So I clicked through the photos on my camera that haven't been shared, and realised I could tell you about last weekend. It wasn't terribly exciting or anything, just a pleasant weekend.

Friday was a public holiday, I think because of Brazil becoming a republic (is there a word for that? Republicising?), so there was no school or anything, and my family went to visit relatives in Planalto, an even smaller town about an hours drive away. There isn't actually all that much to say. It was just a lovely weekend spent outside in the sun (living in an apartment gives me a newfound appreciation of just sitting outside) reading books and chatting with people and swimmming in Eliandra's sister's backyard pool. Oh and the 15th birthday of a cousin (15th birthdays are a big deal here)

Sitting in the car on the way home, watching the world flick past my window it struck me again what a beautiful country this is. Sometimes it's a neglected, broken sort of beauty, but it's beautiful all the same. New Zealand will always be my home where I belong, but Brazil is the perfect place for an adventure.

Hello my lovelies, it's been a while. So I'm going to try to make this an extra long post to make up for it. It is yet to be seen whether that will actually happen, but I have good intentions.

So, what have I been up to? The day before yesterday I travelled to Porto Alegre (the state capital) with a group from my school, to visit a big art festival thing and a book fair. It was about a 7 hour bus ride away, so we slept on the bus two nights in a row so that we could spend the whole day in Porto Alegre. I say slept, but that's a bit of an exaggeration. It was a nice bus, as buses go, but no bus is ever going to be an ideal sleepng place, especially not with 40 teenagers on it. (There is a time and place for a screaming competition. On a bus at 3 in the morning is not it. Just in case anyone was wondering.) The day was spent wandering around art galleries and the book fair, which was nice, but exhausting. It was cool to see some conceptual sculpturey stuff (i've missed talking pretentiously about art :p ), though nothing particularly stood out. By the end of the day the more important question became 'is this a work of art or a convenient place to sit?' But Porto Alegre is a beautiful city, and at the end of the day we visited a mall and i watched Thor 2, which was fab, so no loss there.

 Pretty mueseums

 And parks with art in

 We were allowed to take photos of the art throughout, but I finding taking photos in a gallery weird and somehow disrespectful, so this is the only one I got. And now thinking about it, it was a kinetic sculpture, what I hoped to achieve by taking a still photo of it I don't know. But I really liked it.

Yarn bombing! (I am so annoyed at this photo. Or more accurately, I am so annoyed at blogger, which will not let me rotate, however hard I try, and forced me to create a google+ account in the attempt to rotate it and then that still didn't work. So I give up in despair and you'll all just have to rotate your heads intead.) EDIT Hey look, it fixed itself. Now it's just weirdly squidged. You can't win...

Then on wednesday evening we had our school halloween/day of the dead party. For this we had to decorate altar thingies celebrating famous dead people. So this is my groups one for Elvis Presley.

My only actual contribution was the skull, but it was fun.

In which Sophie was wearing makeup, an unheard of, and probably unrepeatable event. Sorry, it's a terrible photo, but I thought there should be some evidence.

Other than that life has just generally been plodding along like life tends to do. There a good days and boring days and bad days, and I suppose I'm learning stuff, though I wouldn't necessarily be able to identify what. I feel like now that I've been here for 3 months i should do some kind of post about where I'm at, and how I've grown a person and whatever, but I don't know if that's simple enough for me to articulate it in a simple blogpost, and I have my doubts about what should be on the internet and what shouldn't. That's all for now I guess. Sorry it wasn't all that long after all.

It seems almost obligatory to begin a blog post with an apology for how long it has been since the last one. I'd promise to do better next time, but I won't, so there's no point. And because I don't know how to write this thing, have a list. Things:

• I went to the Iguaçu Falls. It was pretty cool. That was an understatement. They were amazing and powerful and beautiful and all the other cliches you can think of. I also encountered the I think uniquely Brazilian approach to distances- 7 hours drive away, sounds like a daytrip... The kind of day trip that starts at 3am and doesn't finish til 11.30pm. And that was fairly close really.

• I've been feeling really annoying, when I have to ask someone to repeat something three times, and I still don't know how I'm supposed to respond. I usually know what they're talking about, but not well enough to actually have a conversation. I long to be able to talk...
• I'm also frustrated with myself for how much of my life I live in English, despite this being my amazing opportunity to learn Portuguese. I read in english (though I am working on that one- halfway through Harry Potter One, althought it's hard to tell whether I'm actually reading, or just looking at the words and remembering what they ought to say), the internet is in english, my internal monologue is very very english. But at the same time it's such a relief to be able to read english and not have to think.
• I'm stressing probably too much over making decisions for Uni and stuff. I know this is ages away, but I like to plan ahead, and I can't decide. Chemical engineering at Canturbury or arts/science double degree at Vic, if anyone feels like having an opinion/advicings please do.
• And finally, enough about me, Neil Gaiman is fab. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

Sophie has feelings

I wrote this yesterday, but I wasn’t sure whether to post it or not. Because while it is true, it sounds worse than it really is. Life is never so terrible that there’s nothing to be happy about. The sun is shining. I just spent a fairly lovely weekend visiting host grandparents. But I can’t shake the melancholy feeling. So here you go.

At the AFS pre-departure camp in New Zealand before I left, they talked to us about expectations, and how important it is not to be too fixed on your own expectations of the exchange, or host families or host countries, because chances are it’s not going to work out quite like you thought. At the time I nodded and smiled and thought to myself, yep, I’m alright, while I was okay with the not living by the beach, or in a big city or anything like that, I had huge expectations of myself. I knew that learning a language would be hard, but I assumed that I would be fine. I thought the language barrier was easily surmountable. I somehow expected that simply because I was in a different country I would become a different person. A more confident person, able to be friends with everyone, able to talk without knowing how. I knew I’d miss people in New Zealand, but I didn’t really know what homesickness was. When I pictured myself two months into the exchange, I had a very different picture from the reality. I thought by now I would be able to speak Portuguese. Not fluently, of course, but decently. I knew I’d miss people, but I thought that it would be okay after a couple of months. I thought there would be less time spent alone and tired and not really feeling like doing anything.

Perhaps the worst bit is I ought to be happy. I have an amazing opportunity, that so few people get, and I should be happy about it. I have an incredibly loving host family, and everyone at school is friendly and helpful, so I ought to be happy. I chose to do this, and paid for it, and everyone back in New Zealand expects me to be having an amazing time, so why am I not? The whole world is conspiring to tell me I ought to be happy, and like a petulant child I insist on being sad anyway.

Semana Farroupilha

It seems that it is only when I sit down with nothing in particular to say that I am actually able to write anything. I don't know how to write about actual things. This past week has been Semana Farroupilha, which is, in short, a week long street party to celebrate a war that we lost. Any excuse for a party. But then, thinking about it, in New Zealand we have a day off in June, to celebrate the birthday of a queen we don't really care about who was born in April. There is no precedent for these things making sense. So anyway, some history. Rio Grande so Sul, where I live, is the southernmost state of Brazil, and is very keen on differentiating itself from the rest of the country. So keen that in the 19th century they had a revolution and declared independence, which lasted all of 7 years, the war of farroupilhas. This history is irrelevant, the point is, this part of Brazil has a very distinct culture and we just spent the week celebrating it.

With accordion playing. (the songs never seem to quite scan right. This may be a general problem that folk music has)

And little house things (casinhas I think) set up all around the park for the week. I think the deal with these was they are set up by the local council (thing, whatever, i don't actually know what it's called) and then you could rent one for the week. So we shared one with my host dad's work colleagues. There were people around all the time, but we ate there about 6 times during the week. Lots of churrasco (see the picture below) which is a kind of barbaque and incredibly yum. Not a good place for a vegetarian.

This is what the whole park looked like. Lots of people wandering around in their traditional outfits (including me, whoo! But I don't have any good photos of that, I will try to get one some time. Suffice to say I adore my gaucha pants (bombachas) and I see no reason to confine the wearing of them to this one week.

More churrasco, almost done now...

And there were concerts of traditional music and dancing

She probably won't thank me for saying this, but I think that Larissa and her dance partner are the cutest thing that ever existed. 

And finally a parade with people riding horses down the street.

Looking back at my photos there are a lot of things i failed to capture. Like there are no good photos of what the traditional costume actually is. There was also a lot more sitting around in the casinhas chatting (not my favourite, being as my chatting abilities are not exactly scintillating) and wandering around the park and a fair amount of drinking and playing cards (playing cards appears to be a manly thing to do here). It kind of reminded me of going camping over christmas in New Zealand, with barbaques and beer and sitting around in deck chairs. About the same amount of rain too.

Mum suggested I blog again, so here I go with the bloggings. This week is Semana Farroupilha (get your googling skills out if you like folks), so there's been lots of exciting cultural stuff happening, but I am waiting to blog about that until it's finished, because I like completeness. Have a teaser photo:

So today's blog post is just going to be random things that I've been up to, whatever happens to pop into my head. First, today is Larissa's birthday. Happy Birthday to my beautiful little sister!

Other things. I found a cafe with amazing hot chocolates the other day. It was like really really good hot chocolate custard. That sounds a bit weird, but it was amazing (especially after my other two cafe experiences in Brazil- one that was so sweet it was undrinkable and had fake jam in it, and the other was kind of beige coloured and as far as I could tell contained no hint of chocolate). To go along with that, it's weird the things that you do regularly and you never think about how you do them, because that's just what you do. Like we just take it as given that you go to a cafe, and you order your drink or whatever and then you pay and go sit down. But in Brazil you don't pay until you leave (that was a bit awkward the first time). Also most restaurants are buffets, where they weigh your plate and charge you based on that. The food is amazing, but I have no photos, because I always have that moment where I wonder if it would be awkward to pull my camera out, and decide that yes, it would. 

I've also been going for runs quite a bit, in a vain attempt to conteract the effect of the aforementioned hot chocolates. And the brigadeiros, which are pretty much just condensed milk and cocoa. And the pastels (kind of pie-ish things). Yeah, you get the idea. Maybe I should just talk about food. Food is good. 

What else... I've now posted enough letters that the people in the post office know me. I guess that's a good thing? If you want a letter message me your address :)

Basically life is pretty normal. I wouldn't say I'm full of ecstatic joy, I'm just content. This is my life, and I could carry on this way for a while. I read books, I sit through school half comprehending, I smile at people in lieu of actual conversation, I live. 

It's only September!!!

Independence Day

This Saturday was Independence day in Brazil, so there was a big parade of all the schools. I'm not really feeling like writing much in the way of words, so the pictures can tell the story.

I was feeling restless and disatisfied yesterday, so I wrote this. I don't really know where it's going, but I thought I'd share anyway. Will blog about actual Brazil things soon.

I’m just a teenage girl living in Brazil, struggling day by day just to communicate, and yet I want to change the world. I want to be big and strong and make sweeping changes to the way the world works, and yet I can’t. I can’t even say no to buying bottled water. It makes me feel so trapped and frustrated. There’s so much wrong with the world, do I even need to list the ways, and yet what can I do? There are so many people who could change the world, but they don’t, and it’s really hard not to see them as evil because of that. I’m watching a world that WE are destroying. It’s not destroying itself, this is our fault. It’s not ‘their’ fault, we are collectively as humanity to blame. And so I accept my share of the blame, but I don’t know how to be my share of the solution. I know that I am in a priviledged position compared to so much of the world, and so I must be more than just my share of the solution. I must take reposnibility for those who can’t and for those you won’t . But I am still just me. Little me. Waiting for my life to start. Waiting for the bit where I am able to change the world. I know it’s not going to come just through waiting, but right now I feel awfully small, and I need someone bigger to do it for me. Even if that bigger person is Sophie-of-the-future. If Sophie-of-the-future is going to change the world (not ambitious or anything) what can Sophie-of-the-present do to make that possible? I really don’t know. Right now I’m going nowhere, just waiting. 

Hey, so, I thought it must be about blogging time again. I got back yesterday from a rather loooong 4 days of more sitting in buses than anything else. Actually it was the AFS orientation in Porto Alegre, but the buses have consumed all of my head space so I can't think about anything else. There's only so much bus one person can take, and 17 hours over one weekend is a wee little bit too much. Brazil is a big place, with terrible roads...

So anyway, orientation. It was just so nice to have the opportunity to chat with other exchange students. In english... The orientation sessions themselves were nothing to write home about, but oh how wonderful it is to be able to talk and be understood and understand people and ah, sigh. I've missed that. Also helpful for my self esteem was that when people spoke Portuguese they mostly talked slowly and simply, so I understood everything. I begin to think maybe this learning Portuguese thing isn't impossible after all. (Though my newfound confidence was somewhat shattered by eing asked to write about the history of New Zealand today, and realising I don't know the past tense. So I wrote history in present tense. Very badly)

Look at the pretty!

I think going to Porto Alegre was a reminder that I needed that Frederico does not represent the whole of Brazil. Just like I would hope we wouldn't judge New Zealand based on a month spent living in Levin. There's a whole lot more to Brazil than the tiny sliver I have experienced. Also I didn't realise how much I missed the sea until I saw it again. New Zealand is a beautiful place... But so is Brazil. 

I'm sure I had way more that I wanted to blog about, but now it's all vamooshed from my head. It's amazing how normal this life in Brazil is becoming. Blah, I have no idea what I wanted to say. So I will just post this anyway. Enjoy the nothing, my lovelies

Birthday

I haven't been planning this blogpost in my head, so I don't know how articulate it's going to come out, but I'll do my best. Also I am typing ridiculously slow because my hands are cold- it was 2 degrees outside this morning! Yep, that would be sunny warm Brazil for you :) But it's supposed to get up to 25 degrees this weekend, so it balances out. Anyway birthday... I realised at some point yesterday that I'm never really going to be 'eighteen'. Instead, for the next year I will be 'dezoito'. I don't know why it makes a difference, but it does.

So yesterday... I woke up really early to skype someone, and then my internet wasn't working, so that was a good start to the day. The morning was a bit of a nothing morning re
ally. It rained, I mooched around. Blah. Just for fun, this was the day's paper. Basically the first 5 pages said "It rained".

First class at school was supposed to be PE, but it was too wet, so we sat in the classroom and played boardgames instead (why isn't this a thing in New Zealand?!) The game in the photo was kinda like charades and catchphrase at the same time, but with songs. I didn't know any of the songs, but it was fun to watch anyway. Also some people were playing Canasta, but it wasn't the same as I'm used to- intead of canastas of the same number they were making runs in each suit. Twas weird. 

The rest of school was pretty nothingish for me. The class were working on projects that they've been doing for some time, a kind of 'Integrated studies' class. So I went on the computer and applied for a student allowance. Yep, that's my big 18 year old thing. I'm an adult, but most of things I'm allowed to do now aren't really relevant. But I had to do something to prove I'm 18, right?

Then after school Eliandra collected me and took me to buy my birthday present, and we drove home. To find this:

I've never had a suprise party before! So thank you, everyone, it was awesome, and you are fab. A birthday that could have been just a day of missing home turned into a fantastic day. I feel like I say this every day, but I only wish I could speak more Portuguese- sitting around chatting is really not my forte at the moment...

Adventures in Bureaucracy

Promising title, right? But really, it's all been a bit of a mess. Last weekend I travelled to Três de Maio (another small town about 2 hours drive away) for my 'Survival Orientation", and stayed at the house of another exchange student from Italy. The actual orientation part was fine- it was mostly just chatting about Brazil and cultural differences and whatnot. In English. I feel somewhat guilty about being so happy to speak english- i'm supposed to be learning Portuguese, right? But at the moment it is just such a relief to be able to speak and be understood, and understand what is happening around me. I don't much like things that I'm not good at, and speaking Portuguese falls firmly into that category. This is a bit of a problem.
But then the AFS people left, and I was left in a house full of strangers, which wold be bad enough at the best of times, but made 100 times worse by not really being able to communicate with them. For the whole of Sunday. Which was incredibly boring, and boring at the moment translates to homesick. I begin to wonder if perhaps I was just not cut out for this exchange thing, but it's a bit late now.
Then on Monday we drove to Santo Angelo, to register with the Polícia Federal. Apparently this is a thing you have to when you arrive in Brazil. It mostly involved sitting around while people glared at my passport and talked very fast in Portuguese. Then they tok my fingerprints and I signed a thing, and off I happily went, little did I know... Blah blah blah, long drive back to Frederico. The next day we got a phone call saying that something was wrong, and I'd have to go back. So I was all worried that they'd decided I was far too dangerous to be allowed in the country or something, but it turns out no, they just took my fingerprints wrong. It wasn't even my fault! Brazil... Anyway, I got home on Wednesday evening, tired and stressed already, to be tols that I needed to pack and I was getting a bus to Cruz Alta in 10 minutes, to then be driven to Santo Angelo with some other AFS people, to redo the whole thing. Which prompted a bit of a meltdown at the bus station. Catching a bus, by myself, at night, to somewhere I've never been before, to be met by a complete stranger is not my idea of fun. I realised at some point during this trip that before leaving for Brazil, the furthest I had travelled on my own was Lower Hutt. And I managed to get on the wrong train. An encouraging thought that... But I pulled myself together on the bus, and have decided that I rather like buses at night after all. There's something nice about staring out at the moon and getting lost in my own thoughts for a couple of hours. I arrived and was met by the local AFS president, and slept at her house, and that was all fine, if a little weird. I seem to spend far too much time awkwardly hanging around other peoples houses.
In the morning I was driven along with two other exchange students to Santo Angelo. Meeting Sydnie and Madaleana was perhaps one of my highlights so far. People who I can chat with! In English! I've never been all that chatty with strangers, and I'm still not, but it was so nice just to be able to.
Blah blah blah, back to the police, took my fingerprints, it took 2 minutes and felt like a waste of my time. Afterwards we visited a cathedral, which was pretty, so as a reward for managing to read this far, have some photos.

Also lemon meringue pie :) As beautiful as it may have been, there is something sad in not having my favourite people there to share it with. Not being able to turn to my sisters and sigh. Not being able to make a stupid face at a friend, or laugh at pink cathedrals.

Then there was lots more hanging around, and a long bus ride home. Somehow, to tell the story makes it sound like nothing, but at the time it was the most stressful thing that could possibly happen and I just wanted to go home. Whether that meant Brazil home or New Zealand home I didn't really know, but somewhere where I didn't have to navigate strange cities and talk to strange people.

There you go Mum, that's the longer story. Congratulations to anyone who made it to the end.

Love Sophie

Happy day

Awesome things about today:

• I had chemistry and I understood the whole lesson and it was very exciting. So exciting that I took a photo of my book, because I'm proud...
  
  Look at all that beautiful portuguese. I didn't actually understand every word (or even most of the words really) that the teacher said, especially when he started talking about Michelle Obama, but he had a powerpoint, and i worked out what all the notes meant, and it was awesome. I think I can like chemistry.
• This morning I went for a run, and then sat on my bed in the sun writing letters. All just small things to occupy time, but they were nice small things (letters will be posted tomorrow, but i have no idea how long the post takes to get to New Zealand)
• When I got home from school there was a letter from my mum! Muito happy making :)
• And my host mum had made amazing hot chocolate, so we sat around and drank hot chocolate and ate Brazilian doughnutty things, and that was really lovely. I just wish I was able to speak more, to be able to tell my host family how much I love them.

Today there was no school, for as yet unknown reasons (there probably was a perfectly logical reason, I just didn't understand enough to know what it is). Which was pretty boring really. But then this afternoon, Larissa told me to put my coat on, and we got in the car, and drove off. Again with the not understanding enough to know why. Maybe 10 minutes drive out of town, we got to this teeny tiny beautiful chapel (the photo of the outside doesn't do it justice), with an amazing view back on the city. After mass we wandered around the gardens, and it was just so peaceful and beautiful and exactly what I needed. I only wish it was closer so I could walk there more often. The priest spoke english, so I talked to him a bit, and he was lovely (so lovely that I almost forgive him for "Oh New Zealand. Where in Australia is that?") I didn't take many photos- it seemed somehow innapropriate in such a peaceful place. Sometimes small things make an average day good.

A new normal

It's been a week now, and I'm beginning to create something resembling normality. I still miss New Zealand an awful lot, but it doesn't hurt anymore. It feels odd to have a new routine, so different from my old one, in only a week. In the mornings I have no school, so my mornings tend to be fairly lazy. I get up whenever I happen to wake up, I read, I sit on the computer for far longer than I should, some days I go into town with my host mum, or something like that. I was supposed to have a Portuguese lesson today, but that got postponed til tomorrow, so now I have yet more time to kill. Then I have lunch, whihc is almost always rice, and usually some kind of meat/bean thing. The food is all really good, though I miss New Zealand dairy.All the milk here is UHT treated, and it's not as good. After lunch I go to school, which is the highlight of my day. The classes themselves are less than scintillating, but people are so lovely, and at least sometimes the language barrier gets to be hilarious, rather than just frustrating. I haven't yet worked out how the timetable works- there are bells that go at random times, but we seem to ignore 90% of them, and we just sit in one classroom while the teachers change, so I son't have to know what class I have next. So far my favourite classes have been art, because I understood it, and sociology, because I'm looking forward to being able to understand it. Maths was really frustrating- the work ought to have been way to easy, but I got things wrong anyway, because I translated the question wrong. That's one subject that I'm not looking forward to when my language improves. It's weird, but I miss doing calculus.

This is my school uniform. Except it's not actually a uniform, in that not everyone wears it, and it's not always the same. As far as i can tell the uniform consists of anything that is navy and white with the logo on, and you wear it when you happen to feel like. Rather different from East...

Yep, that's about me for now. I don't really know what people are interested in, so ask me questions and I will blog about them :)

Love you all
Sophie

Yesterday I found an actual bookshop with books in! I can't even begin to explain how exciting this is. It actually had multiple (gasp!) shelves of books. Hiding in the back of a restaurant... It's funny the things that give you culture shock that are so totally unexpected. It didn't have any english books, but just the proof that people in Brazil do read was such a relief.

10 things

Some people have been getting quite depressing emails from me, so I have decided to write a list of things I am grateful for in Brazil, for them and also for me, to remind myself. So, i´m aiming for 10, here goes:

1. My host family! This kinda had to be number one. They are so loving and supportive and kind and work so hard at communicating with me and I would be a complete wreck without them. 
2. The weather. Yep, it's not deep and meaningful, but the weather is amazing. Like a series of perfect spring days. We get lots of rain, but it's pretty much all at night (also thunder and lightning most nights, which is fun). I'm pretty sure i'm in the perfect place weatherwise- any further north and it gets way hotter, so this is amazing. I appreciate still being able to wear jeans, but never being cold. 
3. People at school- they're way friendlier than in New Zealand (sorry, dear New Zealanders, don't be too offended). Everyone's a bit younger than me, but so far it hasn't mattered yet. They do this thing where they have a hurried conference, and then someone will turn to me and say something in english, which is really nice of them. (I have mixed feelings about being spoken english to, I feel like I shouldn't, but i have to remind myself that it's been less than a week, i'm allowed to not understand)
4. Art class. Which wasn't actually art, but art history, but it was awesome because the teacher had a powerpoint and pictures and they were talking about impressionism, so i understood most of it (not the actual words, but the the gist of what it was about)
5. All the people in New Zealand who listen to me being depressed and who love me a lot, and help to make it be okay. I love you guys!
6. Skype and facebook and email and all things like that. They make this bearable.
7. Knowing that if I decide to come home early, that's okay. It's not ideal, but it's okay. That's still a choice that I can make.
8. The english school that lent me books in english! I can't explain how good it feels to come home from a day of being overwhelmed and not understanding anything, and be able to read Jane Austen, who is just the same as always.
9. I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to do this. So many people in the world don't get to, and it has the potential to be amazing (it also has the potential to be crap, but we're focussing on the positive here)
10. that God is not bound by time and space, so even when i feel alone, i can know that i am not. 

Random thoughts

Such a lot has been happening in just a few days, so i´m just going to write a list of random thoughts, as much for me to process as anything else.

• In Brazil they eat ice cream in a cone with a spoon! I´m still not over this. What´s the point of the cone if you have a spoon? My whole childhood has been a lie.
• Why is it that some things are standard between countries, and others aren´t? Like road signs always seem to be white writing on green, but every country has different pluggy-in-thingies (there´s got to be a better word for that).The people who are secretly controlling the world are doing a terrible job of it, obviously.
• Even though it has only been a few days, my eyes have been opened to just what the protests a couple of months ago were about. We may complain about our schools in New Zealand not having enough money, but really, we´re pretty well off. Our classrooms are pretty nice looking, our desks are in good repair, our textbooks are fairly new. My school in Brazil doesn´t have that kind of money. There´s one projector in the whole school (it´s a fairly small school, but still...) Although the thing where the teacher can never make it work until someone comes and rescues them is universal. The desks have obviously been used by generations before us. It´s just different.
• Add to that the state of the roads- i haven´t seen any roadworks, but i´ve seen plenty of need for them. Everywhere the roads are cracked and broken. I´m not saying this as a criticism of Brazil, i´m saying because i now understand. How does this country have the money to build stadiums? And when your child goes to a school with 50 year old textbooks (I didn´t actually look at the dates, but whatever), then how could you not protest.
• I watched some football (are you proud of me?). I´m not going to take sides in the Rugby/Football discussion, but it was fun. My host family are going to take me to a game at the stadium some time soon I think, which is exciting. I do think soccer players are a bit silly- they run into each other and then make aggrieved faces and try to blame the other person. But I guess that´s all part of the game.]
• This learning Portuguese this is hard work. I was doing okay with my family (okay as in usually managing to get my point across, with the help of mime and a dictionary), but I got to school and it all drained out my ears. But I am already more confident. Especially with saying ´eu não sei´ and ´eu não entendo´
• Jetlag sucks! Thanks to the people who talked to me in the middle of the night for making it more bearable :)
• school is overwhelming. Way too much happening all at the same time. And today was not even so bad- all we actually did was watch a movie about the search for Osama Bin Laden (it was yucky, I didn´t like it). But one of the girls I was sitting with asked the teacher to put on english subtitles for me, so that was nice.

That´s about all for now. I´ll be back later my dears :)

Now i need to tell you all how amazing my host family is, and just generally stuff. When we arrived at the house, this is what greeted me:

(That´s Larissa, by the way). You might not be able to see, but that´s the think outside the box pic i put on my blog the other day. And everything has little labels with the portuguese names on to help me learn. So lovely!

More photos... Look at my towel!!! My host mum made it for me :) My host family are really lovely, and they are trying so hard to communicate, but it is still hard. Everything i want to say is a challenge. Either i just say individual words until i get my point across, or i have to use google translate. I think my host family have been hearing some of my questions as worries, and i don´t know how to say that i´m just curious, not worried. Right at the moment everything is hard. Much as i love my host family, i miss New Zealand. I have been constantly on the verge of tears, despite not actually being sad, because i´m only barely coping. The hardest thing is in the middle of the night, when there is nothing to distract me, and i just want to be home. But Brazil is amazing, and it will get better. I love you all.