It’s been over two weeks since my last post – I think I see how this blog is going to go J. I found out about a week ago that my host home has internet and 30 minutes ago that they have the equivalent of DirectTV. This place is getting better and better. I watched Seinfeld.
I moved in with my family shortly after my last post. My “mom’s” name is Mônika and her 20-year old son’s name is Guilherme (Gil-yer-me, he goes by Gui). We live on the 13th floor of an apartment building and have a phenomenal view of the city at night. In the building next door lives Mônika’s mom, Dona Jamila who’s hosting another CIEE student, Julie. Julie eats her meals over at our place so it’s nice to see her all the time. Though the immediate family is small, they are very hospitable so there are almost always people over – they joke that they and their friends are a big family and it’s pretty much true. Haha every Friday, there is a get-together at one of the couple’s homes. I’ve gone for the past 2 weeks, and ended up both times talking to the 69-year-old partially sober man named Marcio whose home it is about American politics. My task this week is to figure out how to explain to him how the Electoral College works – I didn’t manage it last weekend.
Living in the city has been interesting. It sometimes just seems overly loud and busy, but other times that can be invigorating. The bus system is extensive if confusing and the metro is great. Of course, I can’t really compare it to any other system that I’ve used regularly. To give an idea of size, the urban area of Sao Paulo has roughly as many people as New York. One of our professors mentioned that, any time we might think that Sao Paulo doesn’t function very well, we should consider that it runs on roughly 1/10 of NYC’s budget. It’s a miracle how well this city works! The school I’ll be attending is called PUC-SP (pronounced pookie – like the dog) for Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo. Normal classes start after Carnaval (2-6 Feb), and I’ll be taking econ classes mostly. Communism’s pretty big in Brazil, especially in their universities, so I’m looking forward to getting a little bit o’ Marxist theory.
Well, my greetings to everyone! Thanks for reading, and I love to hear from people if you want to email me.
Peace,
Wyatt
2 comments:
Sounds like you've got a great host home. I have a friend who is working for the Peace Corps in The Gambia... she lives in a hut and only can access the internet when she gets to their offices once every few weeks.
It is amazing that they can do so much in Sao Paulo with so little.
Shane Vander hart, Are you comparing Sao paulo with Gambia???? You need to travel before talking shit about brazil. Sao Paulo is a rich city. ...IGNORANTE!!!!!
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