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.

Bem Vindo to Brasil!!

I have lots I want to say- everything i see i want to tell someone about. But I will start with a story. This was my welcome to Brazil. I flew in to Chapecó, which is a couple of hours drive from Frederico Westpahlen, where I live (I don´t yet know how to shorten that. Maybe is just Frederico), so we has to drive, obviously. Along the way, we encountered an accident, which was blocking the whole road. Which led to this:

Two lanes of cars trying to pass each other on a one lane farming track thing. The best bit was that all the drivers had their windows open, and they were going so slow that they all had a little chat as they drove past. This is Brazil.

Heyhey, just popping in to say I´m alive. Just about. 4ish hours of sleep in the last 50 hours isn´t doing me any favours, but that´s alright. I got to my host families house a couple of hours ago, and they are the fabbest of fab :) I will write proper and post photos later.

A notice to all Russians

Hey random Russians who keep stalking my blog, what's that all about? But hi, i guess...

Goodbye

Well, I guess this is goodbye.

Today has been a day of 'lasts'. Last day of school. Last supper (I have no intention to die tomorrow, just to be clear). Last access path (HA!). And tomorrow there'll be more. Last breakfast. Last shower. Last car ride. Last hug. Last wave goodbye. But somehow all the 'lasts' are okay (jk I'm actually not okay and I'm going to cry but there is productivity out of being out of your box. Because otherwise how would I win Sophie wins if I couldn't?)


Because after the weird void that is the plane rides (and hours and hours in airports), tomorrow will be a day of firsts. This is an end, but it is a beginning, the most exciting beginning (Maggie says apart from being born. I don't recall that being very exciting, but who am I to contradict the Maggie). Goodbye my dears. I will miss you all more than anything.

PS Write me letters!!! Please? Don't forget I exist!