Orientation Week

At the acai restaurant with the girls again, acai turns your lips positively black when you eat it by the way, so be prepared to look like a bad vampire extra from a shoddy horror film after consumption :p.


On tuesday orientation week finally began. For the first day all the exchange students went to the house of Mario Perez, who is basically in charge of us all, for four hours to meet each other, be told yet again the rules of rotary, and be given a very entertaining talk by the president of the travel agancy we will be using for all of our trips.My district ( 4480) is very large although it doesn't have much diversity as far as students are concerned and half of them at least were American, we also had no one at all from Asia , which was bitterly disappointing to me.I rather supposed my expectations were going to be too high though as I came from an extremely good district in Ohio, also it seems that my fears about a lot of the exchange students that came to Brasil, came mainly in order to party and not much else as a result of it's reputation as the ultimate party country.Still having to deal with it in actuality is a bit rough epsecially since Brasil isn't a country I'm exactly passionate about I knew would already have a struggle loving it,so I was really hoping that my district would be a really great group.. ah well.. at least a few of them are really nice.Alyssa,Eva from Germany,their host sisters and friends, and I went out for acai at a restaurant that evening ^_^, it was really enjoyable just to go out with a group of girls , talk and have fun. Alyssa and I both adore acai as well, which is a plus ^^, although I have the hardest time convincing Brasilians that not only am I already famliar with it but have been consuming it for years in the USA, as they seem to be under the impression that no one outside of Brasil could possibly know of it's existance ^^.

Our second day we headed to a water park for a full day of relaxtion, bonding time, and sunburn.Starting out on the trip I wasn't too optimistic as I had to endure an hour long bus drive listening to all the different ways the exchange students I was sitting with were breaking every single rule ( I did sit with the wrong group on the way up), how they were turning into alcoholics here,way too many details of their sex lives, their cravings for such exalted substances as Mac n Cheese, all the charming ways they use webcams to sexually stimulate their boyfriends back home, and how they just wanted to run away and live in Brasil forever. My thoughts on the matter were that if they ran away in Brasil and died of STDs in some hovel that would be fine by me..although I really should not be so uncharitable..bleck... I was just exceptionally fed up at the moment.Once we actually got to the water park though it was great fun, and was perhaps the most enjoyable day I've spent in Brasil.This water park was fairly large and had the advantage of having absolutely no lines ^^ and naturally heated water drawn from hot springs, very nice as it was actually a relatively chilly day ^^.I pretty much just spent time running around in the park having fun and getting to know people, since my district is quite large though we never actually did things all together but were usually in about three or four different groups wandering around. I did meet some fun ,cool people amoung the exchangies though ^_^ and I do hope that they will be good friends as I'm definitely in need of some.

Thursday afternoon we all grouped together and headed off for a several hours to tour the largest Guarana factory in the area and a local tv station.It wasn't the most exciting way to spend the day ( although that might have had something to do with the extreme heat) but I found an awesome German to spazz about Japan all day with ^_^, he wanted to go to Japan more than anything as well and never really considered Brasil, so we had lots talk about and sympathasize with.The Guarana factory was resonably interesting and I couldn't stop thinking that quite a lot of people I knew would really have enjoyed visiting it, whilst the other exchange students whined about being bored to death ^^.They also gave us free hats which was fun, and we all promptly started to model them. Then it was off to the tv station for a short lecture and tour of it, during which some of the students took advantage of the broadcasting room to camwhore to their heart's content :p.

That evening I went out again with Alyssa,Eva,our host sisters and some friends but this time to a Japanese Restaurant ^________^.Alyssa and I were so excited as we having been craving Japanese food like nothing else ^^.It was quite the oddest Japanese restaurant I had been to though as none of the staff were Asian,almost none of the items had their japanese names on the menu, but instead were in portuguese making it very difficult to order different types of sashimi, a lot of the dishes were not Japanese anyway, they didn't have such side dish staples as edamame or seaweed salads at all,and they found it extremely odd that I wanted to order hot green tea instead of fruits juice.Honestly what else apart from green tea, sake, and Japanese beer are you supposed to drink when eating Japanese food, certainy not pineapple juice with mint ?I still had great fun though, in fact it was probably much funnier to me because of the fact that it wasn't in fact very Japanese, a fact that became clear to me when I requested a bowl of miso and was met with extremely blank stares ^^, really who doesn't know what miso is ???? It's one of the most famous imports from Japan. I eventually just ended up asking for soup and was served a delicious, steaming bowl of miso a few minutes later ^_^,I must wonder what they do call it if not miso??? they must call it something afterall you can't run a proper business and have such a vague name for such a staple :p.

The last day of orientation we had a churrsco in the afternoon and early evening, again at Mario's house.It wasn't terribly exciting, they sat us down and lectured us on stuff that we already knew and then they had a fairly hilarious attempt at teaching us some Brasilian dances.It was basically epic fail on all our parts but at least we had fun laughing at each other ^_^.We then just sat around and talked for a few hours and traded pins ,cards etc...I had to leave the party at seven in the evening as I had to catch a bus back to Lins that night.My host family in Rio Preto was leaving somewhere the next morning so I had to be back to Lins by that night.I was really sad to part with my family in Rio Preto as I felt more comfortable and happy with them after a week then after six weeks with the Hiratas. But such is life and I do hope to go back and visit them sometime again while I'm in Brasil.I was really touched by how genuinely fond they seemed of me and how warmly they had welcomed me into their family, from they way they hugged me whenever I was slightly down, teased me, constantly made an effort to talk with me, ran through the rain laughing with me even though they couldn't undertand why I actually liked the rain, and even adopting my habit of saying aish... constantly as they found it so endearing.The bus ride back was quite uneventful, although they don't announce what the stops are so you have to pay really close attention to make sure you get off at the right city ^^.I didn't really do anything at all the entire weekend as most of my Brasilian friends weren't available and Alyssa was still in Rio Preto, so it was a bit of a depressing end to the week but at least when I returned to Lins I found a letter from my aunt and a box full of cooking utensils,clothes,Japanese Literature,Tacitus,and ingredients to cook with from my parents, waiting for me so that cheered me up immensely ^_^

Sarah showing off some fantastic chopstick skills at lunch, the both of us were thrilled to see chopsticks and insistd on eating everything with them, something that Pierre could not for the life of him understand and kept teasing us about and calling us crazy ^__^, which we were of course :p.
Most of the people I hung out with during the day ( although we are missing Alyssa,Tim,Alejandra and few others in this photo), here we are trying to figure out what to do after we got seperated from everyone else after lunch.
Some of the swimming area of the water park, it was so so much bigger but I didn't have time to walk over and take any pictures of it, sorry.
Pierre and I at the end of the day at the water park, happy, sunburnt, very tired and silly as ever
Inside the guarana factory
Pierre ( France) being fun weird and very faily french gangster as usual ^_^
me and Tim ,our only Australian and a very fun laidback bloke, modeling out fabulous free hats ^_^
District 4480 curled up by all the guarana, btw guarana is a very famous soda that they only have in Brasil and is made with a special berry from the Amazon region. I'm not terribly fond of it but I think that has more to do with my dislike of soda in general, rather than being a slight on guarana, I'll probably end up bringing a little back with me for some of you to try as it is fairly iconic here.
My only real picture of Rio Preto, sorry for the awful quality, I hate those stupid power lines as well, must they always be in the way???
Preston ( nebraska) camwhoring and playing with hairspray at the tv station
At the Japanese restaurant with the girls ^_^