Do you hear what I hear?
Over the days and weeks, I'm becoming accustomed to the sounds of my new neighborhood. There are the things you'd expect to hear in any city in the U.S.--kids, birds, dogs, cats, cars, buses, motorcycles, the occasional train--and then there are the neighborhood sounds that I've only encountered in Brazil--roosters; screaming soccer fans (and firecrackers and car horns belonging to the same); ambulating salesmen (a truck broadcasting music to sell cylinders of natural gas, a bakery guy with big baskets on his bicycle and a bike horn, and somebody I haven't seen yet who sounds a cowbell); a loudspeaker driving around announcing the specials at the grocery store; and the unique sounds of Brazilian building reformation. It's good that the dwellings here don't burn because they aren't made of wood, but anytime you want to reform a building, there's the constant pounding of mallets breaking through tiles and concrete walls.
[Note to Hillary: I saw my first real Brazilian firetruck at the pre-Carnaval festival downtown this Saturday. It looked just like an American firetruck (and might even have been manufactured int he U.S.).]
Last week was the kids' first week back to the two Shade and Fresh Water Projects since before Christmas. It's disturbing to me that I forgot a lot of their names after just 7 weeks. At least I usually remembered the first letter of their names, for some reason. The kids are very curious and eager to learn new things (as long as it doesn't involve reading or writing). They are very affectionate and sweet on an individual basis; it's just a real challenge interacting with them in groups, where a minimum of 50% seem to be acting up at any given time. Last week and this week, we're doing a different schedule of activities at São Gabriel and Liberdade. I'm teaching music workshops in Liberdade. We're repeating a lot of the same activities we used for the vacation Bible school in Nova Almeida. I'm teaching the "Boogaloo Song" in Portuguese, and it's a big hit. It's interesting because I can usually guess children's ages in the U.S., but here, (at least at the projects) the children are much smaller. I'm not sure how much is genetics and how much is poor nutrition. The average Brazilian adult is smaller than the average American adult, but the difference between the children of the same age is much more prominent.
My laptop is still out of commission, so the administrative work to do for the Methodist Foundation is piling up. I've received a pretty high quote to fix it at a different shop, so we'll see if they fix it or not.
We had four or so lovely, sunny days--a welcome respite from the constant rain, until today, when it was back to precipitating. I tried without too much success to find people to hang out with and things to do this weekend, so I spent a lot of time finishing a bad book (I agree with your assessment, Pearson!) and knitting. The aforementioned pre-Carnaval festival on Saturday turned out to be the gay Carnaval in Belo Horizonte. There were all kinds of people there and lots of, um, interesting things to look at. Basically, though, it consisted of groups of friends hanging out, getting drunk and listening/dancing to different types of extremely loud music that was slowly driving by on three huge floating stages. I walked up and down a bit, drank a soda and took the bus home after about an hour.
Saturday, I thankfully found out in advance, was also the biggest annual soccer game in Belo Horizonte, between the two archrival teams here. I say "thankfully" because otherwise, I would have completely freaked out on the bus heading downtown when we passed a very loud firecracker at very close range. The faretaker on the bus had a little portable radio and was listening to the game. When a fellow passenger heard the telltale "GOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!", he jumped up to ask the faretaker which team had scored and ended up standing at the turnstile for the rest of his journey to listen to the game.
When I walked to find a hardware store on Saturday morning, I saw two men in the street in front of a house that repeatedly pulled a rope into the middle of the street and then walked back with it, and I couldn't figure out what on earth they were doing. As I got closer, I could see that several men were constructing walls on the second floor, and the rope was attached to a pulley to lift up big buckets full of cement to the second floor. From my recent wall-building experience with the work team at Betânia, I know exactly how heavy those buckets can be and completely understood why it took two men to hoist each full bucket to the second floor.
It's interesting how things that are supposed to benefit you often can work against you. For example, employers here are required to pay for your public transportation, but there is quite a bit of discrimination against people who live more than one bus/metro ride away (and would cost more). A very capable young woman in the Liberdade neighborhood who successfully completed a training program was not hired because she lived two buses away (and the second bus is quite expensive).
And speaking of the two buses to get to Liberdade, last week I walked to the busstop after teaching at Liberdade, and, thank God, I listened to the little voice in my head asking if I had my keys, because I didn't. Thankfully, I was able to only walk up the hill to get them and avoid having to either take four extra bus rides back and forth between Liberdade or two 15-minute walks + two bus rides to get to my supervisors' house because they have my spare key.
I had two different experiences this evening in my neighborhood where people unexpectedly called me by name (people I didn't expect to know/remember my name). For a brief moment, I began to wonder if I'm starring in the Brazilian version of "The Truman Show."
I've been trying to take some pictures of beautiful scenes in my neighborhood to help keep myself out of the dumps, and I'll upload a few on Wednesday when I am at São Gabriel. Weekends were difficult for me in the U.S., too, but here, in such a linked society where the average Brazilian seems to have such a large network of family and friends, two days spent on my own are particularly challenging. I keep saying that I'm going to take/am taking steps to build a social life, but no major results thus far. I'm hoping that will change soon. [Just a little bit of reality for those who are imagining that I'm living this glamorous life in Brazil... :) ]
[Note to Hillary: I saw my first real Brazilian firetruck at the pre-Carnaval festival downtown this Saturday. It looked just like an American firetruck (and might even have been manufactured int he U.S.).]
Last week was the kids' first week back to the two Shade and Fresh Water Projects since before Christmas. It's disturbing to me that I forgot a lot of their names after just 7 weeks. At least I usually remembered the first letter of their names, for some reason. The kids are very curious and eager to learn new things (as long as it doesn't involve reading or writing). They are very affectionate and sweet on an individual basis; it's just a real challenge interacting with them in groups, where a minimum of 50% seem to be acting up at any given time. Last week and this week, we're doing a different schedule of activities at São Gabriel and Liberdade. I'm teaching music workshops in Liberdade. We're repeating a lot of the same activities we used for the vacation Bible school in Nova Almeida. I'm teaching the "Boogaloo Song" in Portuguese, and it's a big hit. It's interesting because I can usually guess children's ages in the U.S., but here, (at least at the projects) the children are much smaller. I'm not sure how much is genetics and how much is poor nutrition. The average Brazilian adult is smaller than the average American adult, but the difference between the children of the same age is much more prominent.
My laptop is still out of commission, so the administrative work to do for the Methodist Foundation is piling up. I've received a pretty high quote to fix it at a different shop, so we'll see if they fix it or not.
We had four or so lovely, sunny days--a welcome respite from the constant rain, until today, when it was back to precipitating. I tried without too much success to find people to hang out with and things to do this weekend, so I spent a lot of time finishing a bad book (I agree with your assessment, Pearson!) and knitting. The aforementioned pre-Carnaval festival on Saturday turned out to be the gay Carnaval in Belo Horizonte. There were all kinds of people there and lots of, um, interesting things to look at. Basically, though, it consisted of groups of friends hanging out, getting drunk and listening/dancing to different types of extremely loud music that was slowly driving by on three huge floating stages. I walked up and down a bit, drank a soda and took the bus home after about an hour.
Saturday, I thankfully found out in advance, was also the biggest annual soccer game in Belo Horizonte, between the two archrival teams here. I say "thankfully" because otherwise, I would have completely freaked out on the bus heading downtown when we passed a very loud firecracker at very close range. The faretaker on the bus had a little portable radio and was listening to the game. When a fellow passenger heard the telltale "GOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!", he jumped up to ask the faretaker which team had scored and ended up standing at the turnstile for the rest of his journey to listen to the game.
When I walked to find a hardware store on Saturday morning, I saw two men in the street in front of a house that repeatedly pulled a rope into the middle of the street and then walked back with it, and I couldn't figure out what on earth they were doing. As I got closer, I could see that several men were constructing walls on the second floor, and the rope was attached to a pulley to lift up big buckets full of cement to the second floor. From my recent wall-building experience with the work team at Betânia, I know exactly how heavy those buckets can be and completely understood why it took two men to hoist each full bucket to the second floor.
It's interesting how things that are supposed to benefit you often can work against you. For example, employers here are required to pay for your public transportation, but there is quite a bit of discrimination against people who live more than one bus/metro ride away (and would cost more). A very capable young woman in the Liberdade neighborhood who successfully completed a training program was not hired because she lived two buses away (and the second bus is quite expensive).
And speaking of the two buses to get to Liberdade, last week I walked to the busstop after teaching at Liberdade, and, thank God, I listened to the little voice in my head asking if I had my keys, because I didn't. Thankfully, I was able to only walk up the hill to get them and avoid having to either take four extra bus rides back and forth between Liberdade or two 15-minute walks + two bus rides to get to my supervisors' house because they have my spare key.
I had two different experiences this evening in my neighborhood where people unexpectedly called me by name (people I didn't expect to know/remember my name). For a brief moment, I began to wonder if I'm starring in the Brazilian version of "The Truman Show."
I've been trying to take some pictures of beautiful scenes in my neighborhood to help keep myself out of the dumps, and I'll upload a few on Wednesday when I am at São Gabriel. Weekends were difficult for me in the U.S., too, but here, in such a linked society where the average Brazilian seems to have such a large network of family and friends, two days spent on my own are particularly challenging. I keep saying that I'm going to take/am taking steps to build a social life, but no major results thus far. I'm hoping that will change soon. [Just a little bit of reality for those who are imagining that I'm living this glamorous life in Brazil... :) ]
posted by Christine Piggee at
4:40 PM
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