A grand explore among other things ^_^

Well this past weekend was quite low key but enjoyable none the less ^-^, I do tend to get excited about the oddest things anymore though, recently it was the weather this weekend.In the past few weeks it has been in the 90s and constantly sunny, but over the weekend it finally became cloudy, cool and rained all saturday ^-^, I was ecstatic as melancholy weather puts me in the most artistic and inspired moods.I spent most of saturday curled up with my computer and copious cups of tea finishing up my blog updates, writing letters and sketching fashion designs. That evening I went to meet some people from school at a friend's house for an enjoyable evening of games and a movie.I had to put up with them watching a posivitely dreadful horror film for a bit until everyone grew too disgusted with it and abandonded it in favor of more pleasurable pursuits, namely mimica ( charades but for movie scenes ) and dessert ^-^.Alyssa and I attempted to act out some scenes but unfortunately my cultural references being slightly from the norm, we had a bit of difficulty coming up with ideas, and after they failed to recognize the famous riding scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail we gave up all together, as the only thing I could think of ended up being asian and when you mention asian film they think of Jackie Chan and Jet Li ( shudders) instead of Zhang Yimou, Gong Li,and Wong Kar Wai ^_^.

This afternoon after what seemed to be ages of cajoling I finally convinced Alyssa to come on an explore of Lins with me.We got rather a late start but we still managed to spend a fair amount of time wandering about central Lins while Alyssa got some photos developed.We found the town park/square which is tiny but very pretty and proceeded to take most of our photos there.Which has the unintended consequence of making Lins appear far nicer than it actually is ^_^.I also made it to a grocery store ( probably boring Alyssa to tears in the process but she was a good sport ) and spent a long time wandering around trying to figure out what is available here and plot things to cook ^-^, all the whilst bemoaning the prices as anything of very good quality is usually imported and therefor absurdly priced.I spent several minutes agonizing over whether or not to purchase a few hundred grams of camembert but in the end sadly decided against it due to the exorbitant price T_T. I am positively dying for want of good french cheese,bread,lovely fresh vegetables, wine,mochi, and Japanese food here as all these things are either impossible to come by where I live or exceptionally expensive ,and rather to my dismay I've become slightly stingy now that I no longer have a job T_T.I did procure some ingredients for biscotti and I do hope I will be able to make some before I leave on saturday for my Rotary inbound orientation. All in all it was quite good fun and I plan to entice Alyssa out again soon so we can work on getting to know some of the other areas around Lins ^_^.
I'm not sure what these steps were supposed to lead up to, it was almost like a gazebo without a roof ^^
Looking down at Lins from the park
random street around Lins
Some sort of official looking government building I chanced upon
At Estella's for pizza ( I'm getting so sick of Brasiliand pizza !!) and games
Shops and parks in dear little Lins ( have you noticed how often I emphasize that this place is miniscule?^^)

The main catholic church here in Lins ( or as Alyssa put it " it looks like a disney castle or does that not make sense?")
hmmm... all the park benches were hideous concrete with advertisements painted on them ( very classy )

An odd week and a lovely weekend in winter

My fifth week here was rather interesting as my host parents left on tuesday without really telling where they were going or when they would be back , in fact I didn't even know that they went somewhere for the week until they never showed, but it wasn't that big of a deal as my host grandmother had come for a visit so I wasn't entirely alone for the duration of the week.I did miss school one day as a result of Tania not telling me that she had arranged for people to pick me up.I just rather wish my host family would make more of an effort to communicate things with me, but evidently that's simply not how they do things.I went on a short trip with that was arranged by my school to another city nearby for shopping and a play.I did finally manage to make it to a bookstore but was so aghast at the prices that even though I desperately wanted books I didn't purchase anything T_T.We then proceeded to the theatre at which I experienced the positively worst theatrical production I have ever witnessed, from the cast of only five men ( attired in drag most of the time), bad popular american music mixed with fragments of gregorian chant blasting through a terrible sound system as their concept of a soundtrack,atrocius costuming consisting mainly of spandex and feathers ( and not much of that either, both the main characters barely wore anything), acting that was uninspired to say the least, and a pathectically redundant plot.It was quite the experience to say the least and was made even more diverting by the fact that most of the audience actually seemed to enjoy themselves and think it was decent ^_^.Even though it was ten on a school night and we still had an hour and a half drive home ,nearly everyone on our bus decided that we simply had to make a forty minutes detour to McDonalds.I didn't mind terribly as I was more bemused than anything at the lust for bad american fast food, but Alyssa was quite traumatized as it meant that she would get less than six hours of sleep that night. Everyone kept asking us if we were sure we didn't want any thing from McDonalds ^^, and I had to explain to them that I really didn't want to break my record of not eating there for seven years ^_^.My weekend was quite fun ( if not very exciting ) and I spent essentially all of friday,saturday,and sunday with Alyssa and her family at their ranch and apartment.I did finally get to bake for the first time in a month and I was ecstatic to say the least as this is the longest I have been without cooking or baking in the past two years . I am accustomed to cooking or baking things four or five times a week so not being able to or not having a well equipted kitchen has been a little trying for me here.I made chocolate orange walnut cookies for Alyssa's family and it was quite the most makeshift affair as we didn't have measuring spoons or cups,cookie sheets, cooling racks,the right leavening agent,spatulas, zesters,proper ingredients, and our oven only had three settings ^_^, but at least they turned out well enough that everyone liked them ^^.Alyssa's little ten year old host brother did insist on tryig to help me though and was most mischevious in the process.I spent half my time running around the table trying to wrest away the ingredients that he had snitched from me and attempting to explain to him that when you zest oranges without the proper tools it is inevitable that you are going to lose a good deal of zest ^^.I also fell completely and unrepentantly in love with hammocks during the course of that weekend and in fact spent most of my time swinging in them and scheming as to how I could accquire one for myself ^_^.
They insisted on posing with my cookies, so evidently this photo is somewhat of an advertisement for my cooking

On the steps of their ranch house, I really do like this one much more than my host family's as even though it's smaller it's much more beautifully designed and located
Me with my two culinary students

I was quite surprised and delighted to see that mulberry ( amore in portuguese ) trees are quite common here. So here are the girls trying to pick mulberries and getting covered in juice ^^ .
Lounging at the pool, while I dashed about trying to find something to put the cookies on to cool
Another solo shot Alyssa insisted on taking of me with my cookie dough
Outside the theatre with random people from my school
Waiting for the play to start
The lovely Ana Paula, I really do adore Alyssa's family and they really have been most kind to me.They also brew loose leaf tisane which is quite enough to make me appove of them ^_^
Trekking down to take pictures
A bit of the lovely river chockful of piranhas. Charming isn't it :p?

Epic photo sessions and karaoke

So on Saturday of my fourth weekend I was invited to the birthday party of one of my classmates ( who has actually never said a word to me ) and I asked/dragged Alyssa along with me, as she wasn't doing anything.Getting to the party was the usual complicated ordeal of Tania talking with three girls from my class and giving them all the impression they were supposed to take me with them, and then informing me that Igor was driving me there, without telling everyone else that they no longer had to come and collect me.Sometimes my host mother just makes everything ten times more complicated than it needs to be.So I met up with Alyssa and some girls from my class and friends of theirs and then we had to have an epic hour long session of taking photos.Aishh... the amount of group photos some of those girls must have ended up with is probably staggering.Somehow it went from that to karaoke and they all insisted that Alyssa and I sing in english.Well I can't sing to save my life and neither can Alyssa, and we didn't even really know any of the songs they had in english ( or we neither of us knew the same one ).Eventually they gave up with us skirting the issue and just handed us the microphones and started to play my heart will go on, all why motioning at us to sing.Alyssa being of a rather uncomplying nature, stood up with me ,smiled at them and turned her mike off.Leaving me alone to serenade the Brasilians with a song that I ardently and wholeheartedly despise, they loved watching the poor american girl make a fool of herslf though, so it was all good fun.Then we both got the grand notion that if we sang along in portuguese it would improve our pronunciation. Not a terrible idea until Estella and another girl started to sing quite racy songs during which I promptly sat down with the other girls and laughed at Alyssa standing there sweetly singing in a valiant attempt to improve her portuguese ^_^. About halfway through the song she started to pay attention to the lyrics and was quite mortified for the rest of the evening.

I feel always feel ridiculous posting pictures of myself,note that in all my solo shots I usually don't look very happy as they are never ever my idea
This was extremely uncomfortable as we really are very squished onto that couch and are trying not to accidently sit on other people's cameras and drinks in the process

Alyssa

My second week here wasn't especially eventful except that I finally got to meet the only other exchange student in Lins who had just arrived in Lins after a week of touring Sao Paulo city with her host family.Alyssa goes to IAL as well and is from near Philadelphia , though she was born in France.There was quite the negotiating ordeal between our host mothers as both our class churrascos were on the same day and Tania and Ana Paula both wanted us to go with each other .They switched back and forth over who was going were so often that I finally just told them I would go with Alyssa's class and have done with it.The churrasco wasn't especially fun but Alyssa and I managed to have some quality bonding time with each other and speak way too much english ^_^.Although Alyssa is a contradictory language nerd who complains constantly when people speak to her in english ( her second language ) but is ecstatic at any mention of french ^^.We met several times during the next week and while I wish that there were a few more exchange students in Lins, at least Alyssa is an absolute sweetheart, if a little reserved, timid, and overly cautious ^^.

Not the best of times

Well I would have to say that my second weekend in Brasil was definitely the worst few days I've spent here, also concidentally the only time I've been reduced to tears since I came to Brasil.I did try to see the humor and absurdity as in all of it as well .Especially at 4:30 in the morning when my host brother's drunk friends barged into my room and dragged me out of my bed while attempting to convince me to go out dancing at clubs with them.My initial reaction was both disgust coupled with incredulity at their boorishness and lack of self control and extreme amusement at the fact that they sincerely believed that I would find the notion of going somewhere with them appealing.And yes while I'm well aware of that the fact that evidently good exchange students are supposed to accept any invitation from people to go places and attend events, I do rather doubt that the people in my district back home would've been terribly keen on the idea of my accepting the invitation ^_^.Saturday was spent at my host family's lake house , mainly in the company of enebriated boys who didn't care a whit whether I existed or not, though thinking back on it I prefer that as opposed to them harrasing me.Evidently my host family does not seem to realize that it is a wee bit awkward to be the only girl on a boat with eight or so drunk and rowdy guys who all speak a different language and know each other very well.I essentially spent the afternoon crouched in the prow, with tears trickling down my cheeks, hating Brasil, rude men who happen to be Brasilian in particular, bad beer,loud music,and the utter dearth of intelligent conversation in portuguese, english or any other language.And wondering why on earth I was wasting my time here when I could have gone to college.Sunday Tania informed me thirty minutes before departure that I was to go with her to Ribeiro Preto in order to help get Iuri settled into college and that we would be spending the night there as it is a three hour drive one way.I was initially slightly annoyed at the short notice and at missing school. But also excited at the prospect of finally getting to go somewhere other than Lins as my host family had not yet and in fact still hasn't really showed me around at all.I still haven't even been shown around Lins except for what I've seen on the way to school etc.There was little need to get excited however as what I saw of Ribeiro Preto consisted of watching Tania fuss over Iuri in his room, dazedly waiting around in the grocery store for two hours while Tania and Iuri dashed about buying things and arguing, and sitting in the hotel room for hours on end while Tania went and signed papers.Then it was straight back to Lins next morning, even though I had not really gotten to see anything at all of the actual city.Something I was most disappointed with, but I've noticed that my host mother has little to no interest in showing me places as any of the few excursions I've taken with her have been completed in the absolute minimum fashion with the single minded purpose of getting the business over with and heading back home.I've resigned myself somewhat to this fact and I simply hope that my next host family might be slightly more interested in showing me some of Brasil.I spent most of the weekend in silence as my portuguese was still terrible at this point and whenever I did try to speak there was very little point as most people did not have the time or patience to try and understand me.

Photos per request

I've been meaning to include photos in my entries for ages as I know how monotonous it becomes it read epic entries with naught but text, however I do keep forgetting.Especially as I have already uploaded most of my decent photos to facebook.This entry may be a bit dull , at least I don't think that these are particularily exciting photos, but as I seem to be far too used to complying with requests ( and I've had several for photos ) I've decided to upload some now.
I really do spend a lot of time wandering around the courtyard examing plants when I can't find anyone to talk with me, once they had a few muscicians here to play during break , though I wasn't sure why.This is also were my classmates attempted to teach me happy birthday in portuguese, it was definitely epic fail on my part though ^_^

The entryway and dining room of my house
My itsy bitsy little room, okay it's actually not that small but it's not very sophisticated or artistic ( the collection of my host brother's vodka bottles and stickers of mostly nude women on the windows are especially charming ) and it is at least half the size of the room I am used to.And yes I know it's messy but at least I'm not trying to present an unrealistic image by cleaning it before I photograph it ^_^, There isn't much storage space either, note especially the pillowcase my family wrote on for me ,my beloved Mac and portuguese book posing on my bedspread ^^.
My family's lake " cabin", evidently everyone in this area owns them and can hardly imagine spending a weekend doing things other than lounging around at them.
The view of the river from the shoreline at the cabin
Gazing out at the school courtyard from my main classroom door
The view of Lins from Alyssa's apartment balcony, and yes it really is that tiny.


My host family's little house in Lins
The paltry backyard of my host family's house

IAL

So on monday Iuri took me to my school to register and meet with the principal among other things. The name of my school is the Institute Americano de Lins which also surprisingly enough is a methodist school, which I gather is rather unusual in Brasil.There are approximately 1600 students enrolled at IAL, making it a fairly large school, though it seems smaller most of the time since there are students of every grade attending, which means there are only 500 hundred or so high school students that I usually interact with.I was told to arrive at 6:45 so that the principal Donna Arlene could introduce me to my class and as I still retain my american habits of promptness I was quite concerned about being on time.However when I arrived I was made to wait nearly an hour until she finally arrived and collected me to introduce me to my class.I was initially rather intimidated by the size of the class I was introduced to as Arlene had neglected to inform me that she was taking me to the only period that both 11a and 11b attended, thus I was momentarily under the impression that my class was composed of at least 70 students and was quite horrified at the prospect of such a large class.She then proceeded to make me stand in front of my class as she introduced me and made a rather long speech about various things that seemed entirely unrelated , while most of the students giggled,pointed and chattered about me in portuguese.My class turned out to be 11b , and my classmates then proceeded to show me to our main classroom and bombard me with questions while fighting over who got to sit with me.The first week of school did turn out to be fairly decent and fortunately the majority of my classmates are quite nice and helpful to me.High school is interesting to experience as I've been self taught or homeschooled most of my life and am used to choosing to study art history or Byzantine politics if I so desire, I am also not accustomed to having to listen to a teacher explain the most elementary of priniciples to a class that isn't even paying attention anyway.I do try to have a sense of humor about every thing that I encounter and I am generally on whole quite bemused by all the high school silliness and drama.Frankly it's quite awkward as people are constantly asking me what I think of IAL and if I like it.I've adopted the diplomatic response of muito differente and intersensante, as while I'm quite sure that there are some very good schools in Brasil alas my school is not one of them.I am very fond of my classmates but they simply aren't challenged in school, there are essentially no assignments, the course work is simplistic and usually on subjects I covered ages ago, and they are noisy and disrespectful in class.I'm rather afraid that over the course of several weeks I've slightly started to turn into the punk exchange student who just doesn't care about whether I'm on time or if I break the dress code etc.It's not that I'm in anyway disrespectful it's just so very difficult for me to be passionate about this particular schooling as I've already covered everything they are learning,the teachers ignore me all the time anyway,after five weeks of attendence my textbooks are still on order so I can do very little in class,I'll miss a large amount of school due to trips and functions, and I've already graduated high school in the USA.Though I am still as enthralled with learning as ever, I tend to spend most of my time reading my language books in class, journaling, or writing letters as I have so very little to do, hopefully I can get some books on literature, art,history,economics, and philosphy so that I can keep up somewhat with worthwhile studies.I have six classes lasting fifty minutes a piece daily beginning at 7:00 and ending at 12:30 with a thirty minute break halfway through the morning.Morning breaks are usually difficult as I still have problems distinguishing what people are saying to me when everyone is speaking at once and as they are usually quite impatient they expect an answer far sooner than is within my abilities to supply.As the only other exchange student at my school already speaks quite good portuguese ( due to an extensive background in romance languages and a private tutor for six months ) the students tend to not bother speaking with me as it is far simpler for them to converse with Alyssa.The worst is when they start asking the people next to me if I speak portuguese without even glancing at me and then continue to discuss my language capabilities and me while I stand in front of them , nevermind that I understand portuguese fairly well and can certainly speak some if not flawlessly at least quite enough to get my point across.I have quite accustomed to my school over the past few weeks however and though I still long for Japan it is not nearly as acute as it used to be, though people here constantly think I'm more homesick than I am.I have had quite the trouble attempting to explain that I'm not actually homesick I just wish I had gotten to go to a country that I was interested in as opposed to one quite near the bottom of my choices ^_^.One of the slightly depressing things about my school is that they have absolutely no music,art,clubs or interesting sports to become involved with.I am going to have to see if I can get some sort of lessons whether linguistic or athletic ( preferably both though ) as I am quite infernally bored in the afternoons due to lack of school activities.I will really try to be more regular about my postings here and not spend too much time dwelling on the first several weeks as they are a bit depressing. I apologize for the slight disorder of this entry as I had originally typed out an excellent post but it was lost when my computer shut down unexpectedly and I rather spent several days fuming about it until resigning myself to rewriting it ^^.

Of family parties and drunk Brazilians

The day after I arrived in Brazil happened to be their Father's day , so naturally my host family was having a party that afternoon.I being  still rather forlorn at this point, sat around trying not to think of all the places I'd rather be while attempting to make conversation with various cousins of my host parents.My host family also insisted that I sample feijoada as they have it rarely and only for special occasions such as this.I being game and not wanting to seem rude agreed, albeit reluctantly as all I wanted to touch was vegetables at this point,Feijoada was in my opinion all sorts of awful being composed of black beans,pork ,sausage and an inordinate amount of gristle, I do not plan on sampling more as it remains one of the least appetizing things I've had yet in this country.Later in the afternoon my host brother Igor invited me to come with him to a country music concert in Lins that night, I agreed being at this point quite desperate to find something to distract me.We left for the concert around 11:00 and spent ages standing around in lines just waiting to get in to the stupid thing.The concert then took about another two hours to start but most of the people there didn't seem to mind as they were quite happy milling about drinking,smoking, and talking.This was also my first real exposure to the atrocities of Brazilian taste in clothing and makeup , I was in turn amused and rather aghast at the positive lack of taste displayed, the whole spectacle can probably be summed up in the words tacky, tight ,flashy, and tasteless.Everyone present at that concert seemed completely bent on attempting to get me drink. I refused on the basis of good sense and the fact that they didn't even have anything to decent to drink, only pathetic weak beer and cheap vodka, disgusting stuff.So at last the concert started and the Brazilians started get really rowdy, I had quite enough of the concert by the time I was repeatedly knocked to the ground and into fences by drunks falling on me.It was really quite vile how ten people would share a single cigarette or a drink would get passed around a whole group of people. At about three in the morning Igor and his friends decided to go bungee jumping off a crane that was erected at the concert.Igor very kindly offered to pay for me and as it seemed like the first fun thing yet to happen, I was happy to accept.It was most amusing to see how nervous everyone else was at the prospect of jumping ,as the crane was only about 100-120 feet off the ground.Most of the people would freak out and once they were up on the top they would hesitate for five minutes or more until being pushed off.When it finally came to my turn they sent up a boy ,who spoke english ,in the crane with me to explain things.I had no qualms however about jumping off immediately as I have always had a tendency to jump off things, especially very high objects ^_^.The staff were all very impressed with me for some reason and kept trying to high five me and talk with me when I finally got to the ground.Finally we returned back to my host family's house at 4:30 after catching a ride with some friends, and Igor invited me to go out again for more parties. I very happily declined and crawled into my bed, quite delighted to be away from enebriated people for a bit ^_^.