Oi Pessoal! (Hi Everyone!)
The last few weeks have been pretty eventful. I’ll backtrack for you: Classes started Monday…in name. In what seems to be a long tradition for Brazilian Universities, PUC-SP (my school) started the year with a mass hazing of freshman. “Trote”, as it’s called, is the way freshman (“calouros”) are welcomed by their respective academic departments, mostly with body paint and unevenly shaven heads. I’d of course been warned about trote ahead of time, but getting to school yesterday, it was still a shock.
For a month, our group of exchange students has been taking class on the empty campus. As I walked onto campus yesterday, it was completely different with the palpable energy of a new year and the party that accompanies it. Thankfully, I ran into one of the Brazilian students who has been working with us pretty quickly – if nothing else, it meant I knew somebody. In my supposed classroom, the lights were off and no students or professors were in sight. With nothing else for it, I eventually found myself out in the street with a few other American students to have a beer, enjoy the spectacle, and try to meet some people. Fact: the Econ department has its own drum corp.
When I say that my last few weeks have been eventful, I mostly mean the week before this one. Carnaval – Brazil’s famous annual festival – finally came after all the anticipation. Since arriving in Sao Paulo, about everyone I’ve met has told me their own diverse version of how Carnaval is. The main parades and parties happen in Sao Paulo on Friday and Saturday nights (Feb 1, 2). In reality, the parades are a competition of the city’s Samba Schools, community organizations mostly originated in slums, whose main purpose in life is exactly to organize Carnaval. Joining one of our professors, I and 3 other students joined one of the schools, Mocidade Alegre, for the parade. It was amazing. For weeks beforehand, we’d been memorizing the samba (each school has a song), buying our costumes and going to rehearsals. On the night of the parade, we arrived 6 hours early to get over 3,000 people and their costumes in place. Finally, at 4:30 A.M., we walked out under the lights and sound of the Sambódromo (the stadium used once a year for Carnaval) and danced and sang our lungs out for an hour. Later on, I wound my way home, riding Sao Paulo’s public transportation at 7 A.M. with a gigantic Feijoada (traditional Brazilian pork stew) costume in tow.
That was only Saturday night, and we had an entire week of vacation after that so we headed for the beach. My planning for the week was dismal so, in truth, I just took advantage of some other people’s plans and joined them in a hostel outside of Florianopolis, a coastal city 10 hours south by bus. It was really nice to get out of the city and see some rural Brazil. The beach was beautiful and we spent most of our 3 days there. One of the nights, we headed into one of the small towns nearby to see how they were celebrating Carnaval. I cannot describe how cool those townies were: probably 50% of the guys were cross dressing! I basically spent the night marveling at the hairy men walking around in complete confidence with their skirts and nasty tight tops. Better yet, most of them had their girlfriends, dressed normally, hanging on their arms!!
Thanks to everyone who’s been reading along. God keeps telling me and showing me how faithful he is during this trip. It’s about a ¼ of the way through, and it feels like I’m just getting started. As a note, I turned 21 on Saturday!!!!! Woo!
God Bless and write! Email: wclarke@purdue.edu
