Brazil!!

It’s nearly midnight and if I stand to look outside of my porthole I will see Brazil slowly vanishing. Kathryn is on her bed across from me, laptop in front of her, hood up on her pink Semester at Sea sweatshirt. I’m exhausted and can’t decide whether or not I should even begin describing the last five days right now. I’ll try.

I never ended up sleeping on the deck like I had planned. The idea of waking up and seeing Brazil immediately sounded romantic and all, but the rain kept us from sleeping outside. Instead Kathryn and I pulled ourselves out of bed at 5:15 am and made our way to the top deck where Carrie already was and watched the sun rise over the distant city of Salvador. It was the first sunrise that I can ever remember seeing. Sam and I attempted to see the sun rise when we were in Maine last summer and woke up at 4:00 am to drive to a lookout point. We waited for nearly two hours before we realized that the clouds were covering the sun and our chance to be one of the few Americans to see the sun rise first that morning.

Kathryn and I spent the day exploring the markets in Salvador. Two other girls, Cynthia and Sheryl, started the day off with us but we lost them at some point. The markets were within a ten minute walk from our ship and were, to go along with the general theme of this semester, overwhelming. There was stand after stand of jewelry, hand-made earrings, necklaces, and it was all so cheap. I was buying earrings for less than $1.50 American dollars. I got really good at bartering too and through my stubbornness was able to lower the prices for nearly everything I bought.

I fell asleep. And it's Sunday now...but I'll resume...

So we basically roamed the city all day. Salvador is split up into two sections, lower city and upper city. You have to ride an elevator to get to the other half of town by foot. It was only like a 5 cent ride but they squeeze as many people as possible into it.

Upper city was beautiful. The buildings surrounded a center square and around each corner there was yet another large center. And the architecture was beautiful. Pretty much every building in upper Salvador was built by the Portugese how ever many years ago…I wish I had done the city orientation because I found myself fascinated by the beauty and wishing I knew more about the city’s history. Although I have never been to Europe I felt like I was walking down the streets of London based upon the buildings that surrounded me. The streets were full of Brazilians walking around, holding out boards of their jewelry. A capoiera group was performing in the main center of upper city, beating their drums, playing their barimbas (it was called something like that), and bending their bodies as they danced around one another.

For lunch Kathryn, Sheryl, Cynthia, and I ate at this buffet which had way too many types of meat for my liking. Kathryn is pretty sure she ate a piece of what we soon realized was cow intestine. I have slowly had a falling out with meat. I still eat it, but if it’s not chicken or fish I’m pretty iffy about it, especially if it’s ground.

Our first night in Brazil was spent attending this welcome reception through Semester at Sea. About three hundred SASers were there and another fifty Brazilian students. They drove us in buses to this old building that had an open, but covered courtyard in the center. My bus was the first to arrive and when we entered the courtyard it sort of felt like a middle-school dance. The Brazilian students were scattered among the tables, talking to one another, but definitely noticing that we had arrived. I sat down at the first table, which was also the table with four cute guys, and the girls I was with followed. I ended up talking to the boys for quite some time; it was really entertaining. Only a couple of them could speak clear English but they translated what the other guys were trying to say to me for them. It was a lot of small talk since you can only go so in depth with a conversation when the language barrier is evident, but I had so much fun talking to them.

So yeah, the welcome reception was awesome. A capoeira group performed for us and taught us their chants so we could join in. For the record, capoeira is a type of dance-I guess you could call it. Or maybe it would be best to refer to it as a type of movement. Two people stand in the center of a circle as everyone else sings and plays instruments. The men in the center basically look as though they are fighting, making aggressive but fluid movements, but barely ever touching one another. They do cartwheels over each other. Stand on their heads and kick their legs, and bend their bodies around one another, ducking and backing out of the way as the other makes an “attack” motion. It’s really cool to watch and definitely a skill that takes years to acquire. Capoeira is part of African culture, I think I learned that Brazilian slaves used it as a means of letting out aggression during times of slavery and it has just been passed down ever since. It seemed to be a big part of Salvador as it is primarily Afro-Brazilians.

Anyway, enough about capoeira. There was also this drum band made up of young children that performed for us. There were about fifteen of them, ranging in ages from like seven to fourteen, and they were really talented! An older singer accompanied them and the kids played their snares and bass drums like experts as they did a routine around the floor. I got a kick out of the Chucks I saw a lot of the little boys wearing.

The final performance was by this amazing band called Sudaka. Apparently they just released their CD in the U.S. I don’t know if it’s because I was in the mood to dance or for lots of bass but I was in love with the music they performed. There was no singing, well there was but it was all prerecorded loops and they played a variety of rhythm instruments around the loop with a guitar being used every once in a while. The strobes were going and all the kids at the reception were dancing to the loud technoish music. Ahhh it was so cool. So yeah let me know if you can find any info about them on the internet, as I’m too cheap to use my internet minutes on looking it up. Dad, I’m sure you’ve already googled them.

I spent the next three days in Lencois (pronounced Len-soyse), which is this tiny town in central Brazil on the outskirts of a national park. The main guide for our trip, Roy, had a really cool story. He’s from New York and headed down to Lencois for Peace Corp. about twenty years ago. He fell in love with the area and convinced Brazil, or the national park service, or something like that, to turn the area into a national park. About ten years ago it became an official park and, in turn, he became the director of it until he stepped down from his position a couple years ago and is now a tour guide.

The park was beautiful. We hiked each day that we were there. On the first day we took a short hike to these water holes where we swam for a while. Afterwards we got a tour through the sand caves nearby which essentially are huge boulders wedged in a way so as to form caves. On day two we did a full-day hike, which wasn’t as hard as I had expected. The trip description had said the hikes would be “strenuous” and in my mind I was picturing climbing a mountain, like in Alaska, so I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that the hike wasn’t very vertical. We were basically jumping from boulder to boulder, making our way up a river. There was a lot of leaping from rock to rock and pulling oneself up onto large boulders. Around lunchtime we reached this amazing waterfall with a huge swimming hole. We spent about an hour there, jumping off the cliff (which terrified me), walking underneath the waterfall, and eating our lunches, which included a mango (it made my day). We left the waterfall and headed back after lunch, going a similar way to get back to town but took a slightly different path which led us to a natural waterslide that was about thirty meters long and ten meters wide. It was huge and there were already a bunch of SAS kids sliding down it when my group arrived. So after changing back into my suit I hiked up the side of the waterslide with Megan, one of the girls I hung out with during my time in Lencois. Three local guys stood at the top and guided me as to where to sit down. Then they basically pushed me for a few seconds before the water picked me up and rushed me down the slide. It was really scary because I was just waiting to hit a sharp rock, but it was surprisingly smooth as I flew down and crashed into the water.

On the last day in Lencois only half of the people on the trip turned out for the hike. A lot of people had gotten trashed the night before and others were too worn out from our previous hike. We drove through the park for about an hour until we got to this huge rock that sat alone in the valley. A cross sat on top of it and Megan and I wondered how on earth that cross got up there. “How would you even climb up there?” I wondered outloud. I couldn’t help but laugh when I found out that we were about to hike up the back side of it. It turned out to be a pretty easy hike for me though and the view up top was amazing.

So yeah, Lencois was definitely a good time and was totally worth the six hour drive to get there. My roommate for the two nights that we were there, Leslie, turned out to be really cool and we spent most of our time together. And our hotel was sweet. Each room came with a hammock that hung outside the door and they served us meals, which were a little too American for our liking, in this huge covered room that had no doors and allowed the warm air from outside to flow in.

The town had tons of little shops, diners, and bars…all of which were open till at least 11 pm. On both nights we ventured into the town, which was unbelievably safe, to have a few drinks. In the spirit of Brazil, I stuck with Caperinas, a lime margarita type drink that’s loaded with vodka. The town was full of SAS kids and it was especially evident at night. About seventy students went on my trip but probably another fifty or so traveled independently and were staying in hostels for a few days. That was probably my only complaint for the entire trip and I’m sure it will be consistent in each country. It’s just really hard to get away from the mobs of American students when we’re in port. It’s most evident at night because there are fewer places to go.

So anyway, we got back to Salvador on Friday at about 8:00 pm and after showering, Leslie, her roommate Casey, and I headed into the city to check out the night life. Don’t worry mom, we didn’t go alone. We traveled to upper city with this guy Adam who doesn’t look intimidating at all, but is super tall, and a bunch of other girls as well. There was sooo much night life! Most of the stores were still open and people walked around outside as groups with guitars played in various locations. A drumband headed down one of the alleys with a group of Brazilians dancing behind them. We jumped in and attempted to dance as well. Eventually we reached the reggae bar we had hoped to find and spent the rest of our night there. After a few drinks I was on the dance floor, as were quite a few other SAS kids, but there were still a lot of locals hanging out. This skinny old man, probably about 70 years ago and dressed from head to toe in flowing white clothing, danced for us and with us practically the entire night. He was hilarious. He was moving around randomly, getting low to the ground, waving his arms, and clapping every once in a while. I made it a point to dance with him.

I also danced with the one Brazilian boys at the bar that I definitely found cute. He was wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt and a Rastafarian type hat and kissed my cheeks when he introduced himself. Our dancing basically consisted of him doing some type of step and me trying to imitate him and failing numerous times. At one point we were skanking together in circles though which made my day and made me think of how much I miss skanking with Kari. We left the bar around midnight, since a bunch of us had to get up in the morning, but I heard a rumor that later on that night Antoinne, one of the guys who went on the Venezuela trip with me, got his head smashed into a wall while he was waiting to use the bathroom. I ran into him this morning and we didn’t talk long but he said it wasn’t that bad and he was just a little bruised. Pretty scary all the same. There are a lot of stories traveling around the ship, apparently some girls got mugged the first day we were in Salvador in broad daylight, but the guy was caught and the camera that was stolen was returned.

My last day in Brazil wasn’t much to write home about. I had to do an FDP, which is basically a field program that’s required for a class. I spent my day on the “Coastal Environments Near Salvador” excursion and learned nothing. It was a pretty big disappointment. I’m in Geohazards and nothing we learned applied to any of my classes. On top of that, I couldn’t even hear what our guide was saying most of the time. So yeah, I’ve already decided that I’m not attending the other required FDP in Cape Town, because I got nothing out of it and it took up an entire day….Oooh but hold up, there was one cool part of the day. We went to Praia de Forte, this beach up north, and got to walk on exposed coral reef because it was low tide. I don’t totally agree with the idea of walking on the reef because there are soooo many habitats within the reef and I felt like we were disturbing them. But I did see crabs, sea slugs, and tiny tropical fish, which was really cool. I got down on my haunches at one point and stared at the reef and within one tiny section I could see dozens of baby crabs walking about and larger ones peeking their heads out of crevices to see if I was still there. Without a doubt, the highlight of my day.

So yeah, back on the ship. There’s so much more I could type into my blog but I don’t want to bore anyone more than I already have and I kinda like keeping it to myself.

Last night Kathryn and I stayed up talking about what we do and don’t want in a guy and then after being as picky as possible, laughed at the fact that we were single.

This morning at breakfast Archbishop Desmond Tutu was sitting at table near me. He’ll be on the ship with us for the next week, taking over several global studies lectures, until we reach South Africa. It’s a pretty big deal and Carrie has been picking which dining room we eat in based upon where Desmond is most likely to be.

Oh and during global studies today I noticed a girl wearing a Wahlert High School shirt so I approached her as soon as class was over and as I had hoped she’s from Dubuque. She knew all the Galena Wahlert kids, including my Brenda Houy and is best friends with Abbie Hillard. She was listing all these names of people that I haven’t heard in such a long time: Cole Newcomer, Brad Walsh, Dayna Lapidus, even Alicia Fleege. We were both pretty excited to meet someone else from our area.

I applied for the position of Executive Producer for Sea TV, the student channel aboard the ship. It’s the first time they’ve ever had a student-produced TV station. Anyway, I have my interview tomorrow and I doubt I’ll get it, but as long as I get to host a show here and there I’ll be happy. Although I’m pretty psyched that I get an interview. The daily Dean’s Memo said that over forty people applied and only eight are being interviewed. So even if I don’t make it I at least know I made it somewhat far.

Tonight is our “sea social.” The rooms on the ship are broken up into sections known as seas and so my sea, the Aegean Sea, is supposed to dress up and hang out in the faculty lounge tonight I guess. We’re allowed to order drinks if we want but Kathryn and I already decided to play it cheap and stay sober.

I have so much to do. I have three papers due soon, deadlines are very vague for some of my classes, and I haven’t even started my readings for tomorrow.

Oh and get this, in the next week we will lose five hours as we cross the Atlantic! Tonight marks the beginning of it all and we have to set our clocks forward an hour. Just what I need…less sleep.

K I’m done rambling.

But in case I don’t blog before the 21^st…everyone needs to make sure to wish my mom, Kimberly Sue Kelly a happy 55^th birthday on Wednesday!! Whoohoo! Drop her a line…annies.mim@hotmail.com

Hope all is well.