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.