Friday, May 2, 2008

Bad weather and futebol

Indiana, you win. Your weather is finally better today. Here’s what I was told about the weather when I arrived in January: It was raining all the time so I asked when it would stop. March. After March, it would get colder and be dry as a bone. March came and went raining, but the weather stayed pleasantly warm. Today, May 2, I woke up, and it’s cold, gray, and raining. The two seasons, warm & wet and cold & dry seem to have a child.

50 degrees may seem tame, but you have to understand how winter is without central heating. At least at my parents’ house, the end of fall in Indiana is the coldest time of the year. About 2 weeks every year, it is clearly cold enough to turn on the heater, but we can’t until the filter is changed – so the house stays at 50 degrees and my hands turn blue. No one has heat here (or well-sealed windows for that matter), so I’m looking forward to lots of sweatshirts and layers for the remainder of my stay. Hopefully, it’ll at least be sunny. J

In January, I had to pick a futebol (fu-chee-bôl) team. My choices were the 4 big teams in São Paulo so I went with the flow and picked Corinthians, my family’s team. 2 weeks ago I went to a São Paulo (another of the teams) game: the stadium was about half full, the team won by 1 goal, and the crowd chanted a little bit. So on Wednesday, I was invited to a Corinthian´s game. Same stadium, completely different experience. Every fantasy I had about soccer in Brazil was fulfilled. The stadium was packed, the crowd was wild and electric, and after 1 half, the score was 4-0!

Filing into our seats, the first thing to notice was the strong smell of marijuana. In the U.S., you can´t even smoke tobacco in a stadium. Dotted around the stadium, people lit flares all games so it almost looked like smoke-effects at a concert. In a stadium for 60,000 people, the tickets are numbered, but good luck if you want to try and sit there. At one point, I asked why the seat´s didn´t have backs. I was kind of laughed at – FIFA just made them install seats about a decade ago.

The most amazing thing about the crowd was their ability to chant. There were literally at least 15 different chants that everyone knew. When they want to distract the other team, instead of yelling, everyone whistles at the same time and it sounds like Death is arriving. The crowd claps, chants, whistles, and curses in unison. I heard there´s even a soundtrack.

The root of the craziness comes from the organized fan block, Gaviões da Fiel. Think hard-core student section. Every time we looked over, they were doing something different. Apparently, they´re also the ones who tend to get violent because they were in their own fenced-off section and are all required to register their names. One of the guys I was with tried to enter the normal part of the stadium with a Gaviões da Fiel t-shirt and the cops wouldn´t let him. It´s basically treated like gang-ware.

Byron, if you come, we’re going to see the Timão for-sure (“big team” – their nickname).

For the past month, I´ve been teaching classes at a Catholic parish right down the street from my house. I had way too much time on my hands and had hoped to volunteer so it´s been really good. There are 2 different classes, computers and English, and the great majority of my students are 35 to 70 year-old women. They´re super sweet and call me “professor”.

The computer class has been the most surprising but also the most enjoyable. Their level varies, but for some of the ladies this is the first time they´ve ever used a computer. When I tried to teach Word, I had to take a step back and explain the keyboard. Have you ever stopped to think through in depth the functions of the Shift and Caps Locks keys? Besides that, either “Shift” and “Caps Lock” are in English or the keys have arrows in place of the word. I tell a 60 year-old woman to hit tab and she’s got 10 different keys with arrows to pick from. They’re picking it up though, and every class I have to explain less to hit the left button on the mouse.

English has been a little less surprising – I knew going into it that I have no idea how to teach English. Thankfully, most everyone has a base to start from so we can just work on conversation and pronunciation. It´s really made me look around and realize how much English they have to deal with here. Lots of music and TV are originally in English. Most movies are either dubbed or subtitled with the actors speaking English. Ton´s of new words have been brought into the language from English. Every once in a while, you´ll hear word that´s made its way all the way from French to English to Portuguese.

Well, my best to all! To those in school, happy end of the school year or happy graduation!! And happy spring to all!

Wyatt