World Youth Day: "¡Esta Es, La Juventud Del Papa!"

Oi everyone! So it is 10:15 AM in Rio and World Youth Day is finally wrapping up with a closing mass on Copacabana beach happening right now. I'm watching it on TV from the comfort of my homestay living room ... there's no way I would go back to the craziness of Copacabana right now haha. I ventured out into the crowds of pilgrims on the beach on Friday before the stations of the cross parade and that was quite enough for me. I even saw the popemobile speed by ( and the jolly old pope himself for 2 seconds!) so I was satisfied. Sadly I have no picture proof as I literally ran from two blocks inland to the beach just in time to see the pope drive by.

Walking to Copacabana beach from my neighborhood (Botafogo) along with thousands of pilgrims who would randomly break into the chant "¡ESTA ES, LA JUVENTUD DEL PAPA!." The entire neighborhood of Copa was restricted to pedestrian access only.

So this is how I saw the pope: I was grabbing a snack with three friends at a juice bar, then went to buy postcards at a news stand but as I was doing so my friends told me to hurry up because a TV at a nearby bar was showing the popemobile starting to make its way down the beach. Since we were right near where the pope was starting his trajectory along the beach to the main WYD stage, I quickly paid for the postcards and we SPRINTED to the beach where the popemobile zoomed by right as we arrived! I found myself screaming like a fangirl (along with hundreds of people around me) because it was so exciting and the timing was so perfect hahaha! For the record, Papa Francisco is AWESOME! He has such a friendly demeanor, and he was totally working the crowds from his popemobile, kissing babies and throwing up thumbs-ups and huge smiles to everyone he passed by. My host mom joked that he has already performed his first miracle----to make Brazilians love an Argentine!

The three story media tent for the 4,000 journalists that came to Rio to track World Youth Day. The man in front with the plastic bag is a vendor for the ubiquitious Bisocoitos Globo, fried chip-like biscuits that Brazilians eat on the beach.

I think everyone in Rio (myself included) is relieved that World Youth Day is ending after a crazy week of interrupted transports, protests, frantic last-minute changes (the original site for the WYD Vigil that was brand new and cost more than 6 million Reais to build, was ditched the day before the intended pilgrimage there because of the rain this week that made it completely muddy and unusable) and especially the hundreds of thousands of people everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE!! I have never seen so many people in my entire life...The Globo newspaper estimated that 3 million pilgrims came to Copacabana beach for World Youth Day, making it the biggest public ever seen at a single event in Rio.

I wasn't able to find the huge group of Filipino pilgrims that I heard was in Copa but I found a small group right here in front of Copacabana palace! I also met some pilipino priests picking up pasalubong (tagalog word for souvenirs) at the grocery store later that day haha!

When I went to the Botafogo mall yesterday to watch a Brazilian movie called O Concurso, hundreds of poor pilgrims had taken over the mall for one last moment in "civilization" before continuing on to Copacabana to set up camp on the beach for the night. What a scene... lines out the bathroom were 50 people deep on every floor of the 8 (!) floor mall and every spare space on the floor of the food court was taken by pilgrims hurriedly scarfing down their last warm meal for who knows how long. Also, the stench in the mall was horrendous...sadly, many foreigners don't realize that toilet paper can't be flushed down the toilet here... so you can only imagine the state of the bathrooms...

Excited to walk into the tunnel to get to Copa with pilgrims from all over!

Claustrophobes beware...The crowd was this thick pretty much along the whole beach (4 KM!)

Only in Rio--skater beach boy cruises by nuns and it's totally normal. Haha!

Anyway I could go on forever but I think I've already rambled on too much!! Thanks for reading everyone!!

Beijos
Marie

Botanical Garden and Praia Vermelha

Today is the official start of World Youth Day--- the Pope arrived to Rio yesterday and as I am writing this the opening ceremony is starting on Copacabana beach. I wasn't brave enough to venture out tonight, it rained the whole day today and for the first time since I've been in Rio I am actually COLD!! Can you believe it? So, instead of being out there with the thousands of poncho-ed pilgrims I am going to update my blog and watch a cheesy Globo novela to work on my Portuguese listening skills :P

Last Thursday after class I went with two Cal friends to the Botanical Garden, a gorgeous park that is just a short walk away from PUC. The garden was founded way back in 1808 by the Portuguese king D. João IV and is supposed  to contain more than 8,000 species of flora. The garden is within the city limits of Rio, right next to the busy Avenida Jardim Botanico along which I take the bus to school everyday, yet it feels miles away. The park is huge, quiet, clean and most of all beautiful! There are fountains, waterfalls, and themed spaces (Japanese, Amazon, etc.) scattered throughout the park. Most impressive however are the rows of imperial palm trees that line the main entrance. My pictures do not do these palm trees justice...the trees were the tallest, skinniest, palm trees I've ever seen...they make Stanford's Palm Drive trees look like stumpy little dwarves!!

Not the best pictures, but hopefully you get an idea of the palm trees I was talking about...notice Corcovado/Christ the Redeemer in the back!

On Sunday, I went to a small beach in Rio called Praia Vermelha. I was originally going to hike up to Christ the Redeemer, but decided against it at the last minute because I realized there would be hundreds if not thousands of pilgrims from World Youth Day there. I ended up going to Praia Vermelha because it is one of the only beaches within walking distance of my homestay in the Humaita neighborhood of Rio. The other beach close to where I am is Botafogo beach, but that beach is quite dirty and not recommended for swimming.

Praia Vermelha, much smaller than the famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema, is a tiny gem of a beach. With a backdrop of Sugar Loaf mountain and mostly Brazilian families with young kids as beach-goers, the beach felt like an escape from the touristy hustle and bustle of the city. The beach was not all Brazilians though...these past few days it has been nearly impossible to go anywhere without seeing groups of World Youth Day pilgrims clogging up sidewalks and buses with their country flags displayed proudly and their bright blue/yellow/green backpacks. At Praia Vermelha, I saw pilgrims from El Salvador and Spain, and at a hot-dog stand  next to the beach where my friend bought a cachorro quente (Brazilian hot-dog), I helped some friendly boyscouts from Paris order drinks. Also, there were nuns at the beach! It was such a strange sight seeing them in their nun habits and closed toed shoes sitting on benches by the sand and enjoying the hot sun. And, that's not even the best part---get this---one of the nuns was playing beach volleyball with a group of pilgrims!!

World Youth Day, when even the nuns come out to play!

OK Y'all! I gotta get back to work! I have one more day of school tomorrow and then there is a city-wide holiday (woohoo!) Thursday through Monday during which all schools will be closed. The city will be pretty much at a standstill in the next few days due to all the World Youth Day activities, and since it will be impossible to get anywhere the government thought they might as well make a holiday so that people would not have to get to work in the chaos. I myself will be escaping the Rio crowds on Thursday for a field trip to the nearby mountain city of Petropolis.

And now I leave you with a picture I took on Sunday at Botafogo beach on my way back from Praia Vermelha. Tchau for now meus amigos!!

Discovering my inner carnivore and more

Hello friends and family!

I have been busy this week with intensive Portuguese class, homework, and making new friends yet also exploring a bit more of Rio.

On Sunday, PUC organized a field trip for the Portuguese intensive students to the Centro district of Rio, Pão de Açucar (Sugar Loaf Mountain) and to a fancy lunch in a traditional Brazilian churrascaria or steakhouse. We were also supposed to visit Christ the Redeemer and the Tijuca forest but the area was closed because a tree had fallen....oh well.

One of the first stops of the tour was the famous carioca Sambodrome just west of Centro where Rio's samba schools parade every carnaval. The Sambodrome, or Sambódromo, is actually quite underwhelming and ugly by day with no one in it: it's basically just huge blocks of cement bleachers on opposing sides of a road spanning about 700 meters. There is however a small, tacky museum near the entrance that was quite fun if only for the fact that it allows people to dress up in flashy carnaval attire and an adorable group of old American tourists did just that.

Me and my Colombian friend Diana in the Sambodromo giftshop. Ready for carnaval!

After, we walked a bit around Centro, which reminded me of Portugal with its colonial style buildings and cobblestone streets that are, in some areas, for pedestrians only. Next stop was the Metropolitan Cathedral, which was buzzing with activity as many pilgrims for the upcoming World Youth Day were visiting. 

For lunch, we stopped at a traditional Brazilian churrascaria where you pay a fixed price and get unlimited access to a buffet of salads, cheeses, and other appetizers in addition to unlimited meat which is brought directly to your table by waiters on long spits fresh from the kitchen. Beef, lamb, chicken, linguiça, anything you can think of is brought right there to your table and you are free to eat as much as you like.

I've never been much of a meat-eater (I've been pretty much pescatarian all of college) but I thought I would try out the different meats for the experience and I am so glad I did! The meat was delicious and perfectly cooked, although sometimes I did not even know what animal I was eating haha... I had never seen so many different cuts of meat, and it was all so tender and flavorful! They even had spits of grilled bread smothered in butter and garlic that they brought to the table several times.  I had to ultimately force myself to stop eating; the garçoms (waiters) simply would not stop coming around with more food. Also, random side note, when I do eat meat I usually like to eat it with mustard but Brazilians do not seem to share this affinity... When I asked for mustard the waiter took a while to find some and finally came back with an unmarked yellow bottle that looked like it had been sitting in a corner for years.

MEAT.

Overall it was a great meal, but at more than 30 dollars per person (and this was after a discount for being in a large group), eating at a churrasca is not a treat I plan on indulging in very often. We finished the day visiting Pão de Açucar, the famous postcard-perfect Sugar Loaf mountain in Rio from which you can see amazing views of the rest of the city. It is linked to another smaller hill called Morro da Urca by gondolas (think  huge enclosed ski-lifts). Luckily we arrived at Sugar Loaf before the line of tourists to go up was too long, and we were still able to see the lighting over the city change a bit as the sun began to lower in the sky.

Here I am on Sugarloaf Mountain with the lovely Copacabana beach in the back! Not sure who this guy is... he jumped into the picture at the last minute.

The view from the top and the gondola I took to get there!

Last but not least...adorable monkeys living in the trees of Sugar Loaf Mountain!

I am hoping to visit Christ the Redeemer this week, which will soon be open 24 hours a day in preparation for the influx of tourists to the city for World Youth Day. To be continued!

Much love!!
Marie

First glimpses of Rio!

Like I said in the previous post, I arrived in Rio Tuesday night. Since it was dark when I arrived, apart from seeing a few of the infamous favelas and tons of traffic on the drive from the airport to my homestay, I was disappointed that I could not really see the famous Rio skyline.

However, it was much to my pleasant surprise when I got up for school the next morning and walked out of my apartment building to see Christ the Redeemer literally right in front of me. Yup, I had arrived in Rio! As I walked the four blocks to the bus stop to get to school, I felt Jesus watching over me the whole way.

Crossing the street onto Rua de Humaita, where I catch the bus each morning:

Not a bad walk to the bus I'd say

Catching the bus on the first day was a bit of an experience. I got to my bus stop and realized that not one, but many buses were speeding by with PUC as a final destination. The only problem? None of them were stopping. I thought that maybe not all of them stopped at my stop so I waited for one that would. Just when I started getting worried that none would ever stop, I realized that people were flagging down buses to make them stop, and otherwise the bus drivers would just keep going. So, I waved down the next bus with destination PUC that I saw. The bus stopped about 20 feet away from where I was standing, so I had to run over, and as soon as I got on the bus I tried to give the driver money. He pointed to the back of the bus though so I was super confused, until I realized there was a man on a stool, right there in the front of the bus, waiting to take my bus fare. So then I handed my money over to him and the bus violently lurched forward. I would have fallen to the ground if there wasn't the red turnstile to stop me. I finally got a seat when the bus-fare guy swiped his card to unblock the turnstile (once the fare is received) and I could get through.

The rest of the ride was bumpy and involved extremely reckless driving on the driver's part (all of my bus rides so far have followed this pattern, making me hopelessly carsick) but I couldn't help but be amazed by how beautiful the city was around me on my way to school. Everywhere I looked was amazing, with lush green trees hugging even the busiest city streets and hillsides covered in tropical forest.

PUC itself is no exception, the campus has a forest and river cutting right through the middle of campus, with tons of varieties of all different kinds of plants, all labeled with their  botanical names.

Me and my new friend Louie on the PUC campus. The tables in the back are usually taken by students reading or even working on their laptops.

In terms of class, I got placed in level V Portuguese for foreigners for the language intensive before real classes start in August. Because it is an intensive, every day I have class from 8:10 to 1:30 with only one twenty minute break. Also, the view out the classroom window is very conducive to daydreaming or just wishing I was at the beach....But, my teachers are interesting, and since my class is small (10 people) so we've had some great discussions. I can't complain!

 Greenery is EVERYWHERE in this city...this is my view during class. See what I mean?

I feel like I've already written a lot... maybe too much, so sorry if I am boring you to tears! I'll just end this post saying that I can cross a few things off of my list of typical Brazilian foods and drinks I wanted to try. Yesterday I had my first caipirinha (Maracuja or passionfruit flavor) on Ipanema beach. Today I had agua de coco (coconut water) and açaí (frozen açaí berry blended with banana and syrup) for the first time, both delicious and refreshing, although I asked for my açaí "natural" (without sugar) and the cashier scolded me later saying that was not how it should be eaten. It tasted great to me though haha! I find that a lot of the food here is either was too salty or way too sweet, but maybe I'll try açaí the regular way next time.

I took this right before trying my first Caipirinha at a beachside kiosk in Ipanema

After you drink the coconut water you can ask the vendor to slice it open so you can eat the inside---yummm

That's me in the blue skirt walking along Praia de Leblon after class today with my new friend Chloe. All the Cariocas (residents of Rio de Janeiro) were out since it is Saturday and sunny! 

OK well that's it for today! Tomorrow I have to be at school at 8 am to go on a city tour with some of the other exchange students at PUC.

So, if you made it this far thank you for reading and until next time!
Tchau!

Welcome to Brazil

Oi gente!

Today marks the end of my fourth full day in Brazil. I have been extremely busy (and tired) during the last few days but I've finally found a bit of free time to update the blog. Now, where do i even begin?

I arrived in Rio de Janeiro Tuesday night after short layovers in Lima and Sao Paulo. As soon as I set foot in Brazil, the salty smell of pão de queijo (OMG so good---delicious little pillows of cheese bread made from tapioca flour and lightly crunchy on the outside but super doughy and warm on the inside) filled the air and I knew I had arrived. After I got through customs I made my way through the crowded and dirty arrivals section of the airport clumsily pushing the cart holding my two massive suitcases and found the poorly indicated drop-off counter for luggage for domestic connections. The rest of the airport was even more confusing, but somehow I made my flight and had a perfectly Brazilian cultural experience along the way.

Here's what I mean: So I'm waiting in line at the gate to get onto the bus that will take the passengers to the plane, and the woman behind me taps on my shoulder and asks if i can do her a favor, or to use her diminutive term, a favorzinho. Brazilians, women especially, like to use diminutive versions of words (so adding -inho and -inha to the end) as a form of endearment. The woman had two carry-on suitcases, so she wanted me to take one until we got onto the bus so that she wouldn't have to check one of them in. Of course I obliged and it was no big deal at all. In the U.S., if this situation happened, the woman would probably simply have thanked me and left it at that. However, this woman eagerly came up right next to me on the bus and said with a huge smile "Hi my name is Karen! What's your name?" And thus began a lengthy conversation in which she interviewed me about who I was, what I was doing in Brazil, etc. Once she found out I was going to live in Rio, she offered to give me her e-mail so that I could contact her if I ever had any questions or doubts.

In past Portuguese classes I have frequently been told how  implying that an interaction will pick up where it left off sometime in the future is quintessential Brazilian conversational etiquette. For this reason, Brazilians frequently end conversations or chance encounters saying "Me liga!" (call me) or, "A gente se ve!" (We'll see each other soon) without ever actually meaning what they say. Likewise, Karen probably never actually intended or wanted me to contact her in the future, but as a form of politeness and as a way of saying thank you for what I had done for her she felt obliged to say so.

Karen disappeared once I got on the plane and she never actually gave me her e-mail address, but of course I was not offended. How could I be? I am in Brazil now, and she was simply being friendly. Which brings me to my next point. I'm in Brazil now!!!!!!! Next Stop, RIO!

Why Portuguese?

I apologize in advance for the lengthy post! I'm still getting used to this whole "blogging" thing.

A question I get a lot is why I chose to study Portuguese. Really I just learned Portuguese so I could go hang out on the beach in Brazil and party at the World Cup next summer. JUST KIDDING! Well, sorta... I would be lying if the allure of sun, sand, soccer wasn't a tiny factor in my decision to pursue the language ;)

In all seriousness, there are many reasons I decided to pursue Portuguese but I will briefly mention a few here. As many of you know, I grew up speaking French. I then learned Spanish in middle school and, continuing Spanish through high school, it was always one of my favorite classes. Feeling like I had more or less become fluent in Spanish, I felt ready to learn a new language. I took two years of Chinese in high school and although I very much enjoyed those classes, I decided that I wanted to return to the comfort of a romance language in order to get fluent faster. Around the same time, I rediscovered an old CD my mom used to listen to of a Cape Verdean singer named Cesaria Evora. I could not understand a word she was singing but I loved the music so much so I did some research and found out she was singing in Cape Verdean creole, a mixture of Portuguese and African languages.

 

The song that started it all...Cesaria Evora singing "Sodade"

 

The more I researched about Portuguese the more I wanted to learn it. I found out that along with being the official language of Cape Verde, thanks to Portugal's explorers and once thriving colonies, it is spoken in 7 more countries spread out across the globe. So, I thought it would be a useful language to know (more useful than say... Italian, which I also considered learning). Also, the language was similar enough to Spanish that I could get the idea of a text when it was written, but different enough spoken to make learning it a (fun) challenge for myself.

So, I started learning Portuguese five years ago, when I attended a language immersion camp, Mar e Floresta, in 2008 during the summer before my senior year of high school. Much to my disappointment I could not find any Portuguese classes around where I lived in high school, so I typed "Portuguese camp" into google one day and literally the first website was a link to Mar e Floresta's page. The camp, tucked away in the unlikely setting of the woods of Northern Minnesota, was meant to simulate traveling abroad and was an amazing experience. I was exposed to native speakers and music from Brazil as well as culturally authentic food from different countries of the Portuguese-speaking world, all of which confirmed my desire to learn Portuguese and to one day travel to the countries that speak it.

 

Here I am (bottom left) as a counselor at carnaval night at Mar e Floresta in 2010!

I later returned to Mar e Floresta as a counselor and  took Portuguese classes throughout college (which I loved because the class sizes were tiny despite being at huge public universities). However, I did not go to a Portuguese-speaking country until last summer, when I studied abroad in Portugal (which was amazing and a totally underrated destination in Europe by the way).

 A fun night in Ponta Delgada (Azores), Portugal last summer after Portugal won a soccer game for the Euro Cup before losing to Spain in the next round.

 

 My ultimate goal was always to go to Brazil! And, after five years of learning Portuguese, I think it's about time :)

First blog post!

Hi everyone! 

This is my blog where I will be posting about my year abroad in Brazil. Thanks to the generous Boren scholarship I was awarded by the National Security Education Program, I am able to take an extra year of college to study Portuguese at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and I will be there from July 2013 to July 2014. 

The Boren scholarship is funded by the federal government and is intended for study of critical languages in non-traditional study abroad destinations. Basically, any country outside of Western Europe and the anglophone world is an acceptable destination, and every study abroad program must be coupled with intensive language study. I recently returned from Washington D.C. for the Boren scholarship convocation and orientation where I learned more about the service requirement that is part of the scholarship and I got to meet many other scholarship recipients who were from all over the country. I had a wonderful time chatting with Boren alumni and other language nerds like me :) There were just five of us going to Brazil, as the most scholarship recipients were headed to China, Russia, and Arabic-speaking countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

 Me in D.C. after visiting the offices of Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Anna Eshoo.

 I leave to Rio a week from today. July will be a busy month as I get settled into Rio while I do an intensive language program at PUC before actual classes start there in August. Also, the pope is coming for World Youth Day at the end of the month! I can't wait to get there.

Tchau for now!