jiu jitsu+candomble+babyshower?

I have been absent from blogging for a while, but I actually have a pretty good excuse for it. You see, my computer broke. I was just watching some television on my computer when suddenly the rainbow wheel popped up where my mouse should have been. Not exactly knowing how to work a mac, I tried and failed to work the control alt force quit command. Then I had the brilliant idea of taking out the battery. This generally works with pc's but again, not a pc. Then a lovely white screen with a question mark in the middle, affably named the white screen of death by techies, would come up whenever I tried to start up the computer. Seeking advice from my uncle, I tried a variety of ways to start up the computer, but they all seemed to fail, and eventually I just went out with my host father and bought another one. Sadly, my pictures were saved in my computer, so I don't have as many to share Now on to what I have actually been doing...

As I said in my previous post, I have been kinda doing that whole class thing. But then again, kinda. My program has not been that hard so far, although I am sure it will pick up later on, when we have a research project to do (more on that later). The classes themselves are not too challenging. Portuguese does give the homework expected of a language class, but the other classes have so far had minimal work (right now however I do have some work, and am using the blog as a tool for procrasitination).

The other class though is in the afternoon, and let's just say it has not exactly wowed me. The problem is that it is spoken in portuguese and then translated into english. A further problem is that it is translated into english by someone with an incomplete grasp of english so that the lesson becomes a little broken up from what it could be. Add to that relatively dry subject matter sometimes, and you have the recipe for a difficult afternoon.
One of my classes in particular bears mentioning, just because it started to turn into a lord of the flies scenario. Salvador is renowned for having terrible traffic, and unforutunately, our teacher for that day did not account for that (the teachers switch every day, based on specialty). We continually got calls saying that the teacher would be 15 minutes late, and that 15 minutes late got 15 minutes later each time we asked. In a room on the 7th floor, in a hot environment, this is already bad. With 24 20 year olds, you already have problems. However, the coordinators decided because they had time, we could address some more costs that they had not clarified before. The room erupted into chaos. They also decided to give us a forum for complaints, which is just not very smart of them.

Jiu jitsu has become a big recent feature of my life here in Salvador. I have really enjoyed it so far. The sensei  is a big black man who can just toss me around at will. The dojo itself is a long narrow padded room, but it is the people in it that make it the dojo. The people there have been very accepting, and they were very excited to go against someone with wrestling experience. The wrestling experience put me in good stead against the people in the gym, with only a few people in there beating me (only some of the blue belts). Still, I get a worked by the end of a workout, simply because the cardio aspect of jiujitsu is really intense.

There have been a lot of cool moments associated with jiujitsu, everything from a round robin featuring the sensei where he systematically took on everyone, to getting a tap out on a blue belt, to just hanging out. One of the people there likes to call me Hulk-e, and describes me to be big and green. He fortunately has spiky hair so I call him wolverine. One of the blue belts there goes pretty hard against me, and when he got me in an arm bar he really cranked it, giving me a sore arm for the entire next day. There also seems to be a trend of big ripped black guys in leadership roles, because you guessed it, the sensei was ripped. One of the other days, a couple other blackbelts came in and gave truth to an old saying, you don't fear the blackbelts the most, you fear the grey belts, the people who have been black belts for so long that the threads have become withered. You didn't want to mess with this old guy. I told him I wanted to go with as many blackbelts as possible so I had a fun workout. Still not sure whether that was a good idea or not.


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This is a picture of the group, on a day where we were celebrating one of the members victories in MMA

Life is pretty regular during the week, and I have gotten into a rhythm of class, working out, doing jiujitsu and running in the mornings. It is the weekends that the more exciting things happen, as we just have more available time.

Sometimes we spend the weekends at the beach, but one sunday I decided that it would probably be best to spend the day with the family. I had a leisurely breakfast before my host mom took me out to what is usually her night job. She takes care of two elderly people. I briefly talked to the old woman, and had about an hour conversation with the old man. He talked about his involvement in the war and how he spoke german. At one point in the conversation, he interjected with HEIL HITLER, which left me slightly bamboozeled and slightly concerned. Eventually we went back to the house, and I attended a baby shower (although I did not know for the life of me what we were going to, as I had never needed to say baby shower before). I talked with some adorable little kids, and spent the afternoon practicing portuguese with my host parents. And the lady was VERY pregrnant.


I have had a lot of other random adventures in the weekends as well. We celebrated several birthdays with one very successful surprise birthday. Dylan, the guy who lives above went a bit hard on his birthday. As the 21st birthday has special significance for us americans, he got pretty drunk that night, and apparently when he woke up, he woke up in a pool of blood. He had apparently smashed into his host moms glass cabinet that night, and had to extricate pieces of glass in the morning. One of the areas that is quite popular to go out to is pelourinho, which is basically the historical district, replete with cobblestone paths and a lot of dance clubs.


I would say the other major thing until cachoeira ( a rural area where we spent about 5 days, worthy of its own blog post) was candomble. This right here was an experience. Candomble is the local Afro Brazilian religion. It is especially important to the program because it is a healing religion. The adherents to the religion believe that there is a spirtitual force known as an orixa that inhabits the people. We sat in a very hot room watching old women dance for a few hours, with drums playing in the background. Some of the old women had some serious character. One old, rather wrinkled woman was placed in the position of respect in deference to her age, and at points, she was nodding in and out of the perormance. Another woman, who was in charge of cleansing, had a stern expression on her face. She uttered a sound which I really don't know how to describe as she performed the cleansing, something in between a hiccup and a groan, and she hit us with branches to make sure the evil spirits came out.


Allison and I at candomble. PS we had to wear all white out of respect for their religion

One of the major features of the Candomble ceremony was that people would get possessed. However, mostly the people who got possessed were participants. They took turns in being possessed, and it was quite clear who was the one being possessed. The rest of the people would remove the person's shoes and head wraps and would allow the person to have space, but also try to make sure they were safe. The people possessed looked like they were halfway between a seizure and a intense dance session. The possessed would scream, run about, and continue dancing. While I am not sure I believe in their religion, it was certainly interesting to see. When we had a chance to ask them questions, it came out that only those of the faith could be healed, and only if they truly had faith that they could be healed. That, in addition to the fact that not every disease could be healed, only spiritual ones, made my mind scream Placebo Effect.

Well, I am off to a beautiful island tomorrow Morro de Sao Paolo, and need to pack etc. Ciao for now!

class (what is that thing again??)

So my idyllic period of traveling was to finally come to a close.  I live in a lovely little neighborhood in Nazare, a neighborhood in the middle of Salvador. The people in the program are all dispersed into different neighborhoods, and to some extent, our social interactions are defined by what neighborhood we live in. For instance, a few of the girls live almost by themselves, creating an isolating effect. Fortunately for me, I live in almost the center of the group. I live in an apartment complex, and a guy named Dylan from our program literally lives above me (I can hear him as he eats breakfast in the morning, as we stutter through Portuguese together with our respective host moms). Britney a girl with intense braids lives 4 houses over, and then 4 more people live within walking distance of us as well (Arissa, Fiona, Natalie and Lea). This makes our alley the defacto hangout zone, which is not the worst thing in the world. We form a walking group, and my house is literally the meeting place (so they can't leave me behind, score!!). It is also convenient for taxis, something we often split between a group.

my host parents

I live in an apartment, with a room all to myself, and there is a kitchen, a laundry room, all the amenities I really need. While it is clear that this is a working class family, they are loving and that what really counts. They also have a fridge, and as testament to their love for me, they told me that I had an open fridge policy, that I was essentially a son in the house, and that they would treat me accordingly. Hopefully I don't make them regret that open fridge policy :)  My host father is a man with quite the large stomach who sells phone credit and phone chips, leaving in the wee hours of the morning and returning around 5 pm and going to the gym at 730. He has his routine down. My host mom is a little harder to place. A lovely woman, she works waaaay too hard. She works two jobs, one during the day, one during the night, as well as taking care of the house. She is a hairdresser by day, with a lot of clients in her beauty parlor dealing with everything from hair to nails, and is a caretaker by night, where she sees to the needs of two very old people (I really wanted to say take care of, but that would be redundant). This left me the question of when she sleeps. She apparently does, but only when the old woman she is watching over sleeps as well, which is hardly the most restful situation she could be in.

For the first few days, we had the afternoon off. On one of these afternoons, we decided to explore the city (and *gasp*, I actually had my camera)

This is the view from the top of the SIT office

A large elevator took us down, and then we were at Mercado Modelo, a major crafts market, and basically a place for tourists to buy trinkets.

One man's store seriously had character. Pictured is Britney drinking from a "water fountain" otherwise known as a penis.

There were a lot of birds flying around

Birds!!

We passed through mercado modelo, and on the other side there were a bunch of capoiera people, doing crazy flips, handstands, basically a mini bale foclorico.

I don't even know how you do this. So people in our group went up and took some pictures with the capoeira people. Then they wanted me to come up, and join them, and I figured, why not. We started doing jenga, the basic footwork, and since I had done some capoeira as a kid, it turned into more of a capoeira match than I expected.

Soon, these guys were kicking repeatedly over my head, and I was like, I am just going to wait until they stop to lift my head up. 

The graffiti in Salvador is off the chain. Everywhere you look, there are these hidden gems. It is like you are in a museum, except you have to search for it a little. 

These are some fences that you really don't want to hop, although I suppose that is the point

I actually did the same trek again with a different group the next day, but I guess I am really starting to know the immediate area.

We entered a pretty cool cathedral

Oh, and there are a lot of strikes. The bank workers decided to strike and this is them

We started class, and I have finally started to feel a regular rhythm to life. I hopefully get up for a run at 7, we leave at 830, and  Portuguese class starts at 930. We have a 2 hour break for lunch, and then a class usually in the afternoon. On the subject of class, I should probably describe it a little for all you at home. Portuguese class is actually really good. I feel like I have been learning a lot in it. I was placed in too high a level, so I switched down to the accelerated first year course. The previous class was teaching the grammar in Portuguese, and I here I barely know what an indefinite article is in english, let alone in portuguese. I have been making progress in portuguese too, able to make basic conversation and even understand some things.

Lunches have been variable. At first we were going to kilo places and literally eating kilos of food at a time, but that gets real expensive real quick, and we soon denigrated to eating salgados off the street. For reference, salgados are fried food that is very cheap, usually between one to two USD. I have also become addicted to these peanut candy things, that I can't pronounce but are delicious and get me my peanut butter fix.

Breakfast is kinda intense here. My host mother is super affectionate, she gives me hugs, she says go with god, and although she speaks nary a word of english, we seem to be able to communicate (usually at least)

She demonstrates her affection through food. Check our the pile of food that she prepared for me. While this breakfast was extravagan and I have since got her to tone it down a bit. But in terms of actually counting what there is: one banana shake (bottom right), a mango, a watermelon, two full cakes, another melon, a papaya, cheese, crackers, meat, and spreads to put on those plus grapes. That is simply too much, even for me.

l found a gym, or rather, my host father already goes to a gym and conveniently showed me where it was. The gym owner is an intense, 6 foot and 220 lb former black belt black man, a man that you certainly don't want to mess with, a man named Hamilton. He showed me the standard gym workout the first week, and kept calling me forte or strong.  In the gym, two things of note happened. One, after I finished the deadlift, I was trying to put away my weights, like a responsible gym samaritan, but the problem was that there was a pole to put them away on, and the weights were 15kg, or approx 35 pounds. I was putting them away, and lifting them up with my hip each time, when I lifted them up again, and it pinched my leg skin in between two plates.
The other thing that happened at the gym was that a legit fight was breaking out. At first two guys were playing around, just congenially kicking each other. When one guy hit the other in the jaw, it got real. They were tangibly angry and demonstrating it with their fists. One was about to go for some weights to pick up and throw at the other when Hamilton intervened, and as you should know from the previous description, he could probably handle both of them and me for watching, all at the same time. And all I wanted to do was bench.

worst bruise of my life

Just a couple more anecdotes, sorry to worry the people back home, but want to give a true depiction of my time in Salvador, both the good and the bad.

We were walking home in a group of about 6 or 7 people, led by one of the host sisters, when we were stopped by two men. They showed us their badges, and apparently they were cops. Oblivious to it all, there had been four men, known crackheads, who had been following our group for several blocks. Two of the girls had separated from the group, lagging behind, and the crackheads were making their move, splitting up in a pincer attack, when the police stopped them at the last possible moment. We were shaken up, but we made it home safely. 

While it was not right after, there was an actual theft at pellerino. Ray, Allison, Allie and I were just sitting at a table in the historical district, in the middle of a plaza and this guy, a wired out black man with stringy muscles, was at first trying to sell us a bracelet, supposed to bring luck, but also supposed to be free. He successfully tied it around Ray's wrist, so we were obligated to pay him, so I paid him for the bracelet, and I thought that was the scam. However, he stayed around,and then he started asking for money and then he started to threaten us, that there were people who had knifes and guns that were his friends, and if we didn't pay him, then they would come in. I didn't believe him personally so I didn't give him any money. I wanted to tell my group to not give him any money but he interjected with "shut the fuck up", and with that I almost got angry. It took some self control to not get out of my chair. The girls at the table were really frightened so when he asked for 20, they just reached into their bras, and pulled out a 50, and he just grabbed that. Again safe, but a little shaken up. 

I swear though, totally safe and secure. There is certainly more (mostly good things) to write about, but that feels enough for now. Oh, and I love my level of work right now, as in, not very much of it.

Orientation and meeting the family

And then the program actually started .We all met up for orientation, and the group turned out to have a gender ratio of 20 women to 4 guys. It was cool to meet people, but the names were a bit overwhelming at first. I soon got a handle on the names, and we were all excited to meet each other. The first day we got a taste of what was to come. It was evident from the first class that english is not the first language of the coordinators. While I can hardly blame them, it did mean that they spoke super slowly, making interesting content slightly less so.  Another interesting fact, we lived in a convent. No, not in the figurative sense, an actual convent, with walls and everything. When I was told the curfew, I actual started looking at how hard it would be to hop the fence (actually pretty difficult, it has glass cemented into the wall, and an electrical wire along the top too, I guess those nuns are protected). We had to be back by 10 pm, or they would shut the gates and you would have to wait until 6 am the next morning until they opened it. The way some people were looking at each other, some people were thinking of that as a challenge. Orientation passed without too much event. On our breaks we ......drumroll please...... went to the beach. The water is lovely down there, and I didn't even get that burned, so score there.

I decided to start running again, which is exciting for me. I have a past of heavy long distance running, but unfortunately injuries curtailed my ultra marathon dreams. Anyways, last semester was tough (part of the reason I am glad that I am in Salvador, not with quite as few commitments) so I wasn't able to run. Running is a great way of exploring an area, and I really do want to get to know Salvador, so I was like, why not? And predictably, I dragged along a couple people from my program on some of my runs. For those of you that know me back in college, I have a reputation for exercising, and within the first two days or so, I think I have reestablished that reputation. I suppose there are worse things.

So one of the things we had to do was to figure out what level of portuguese we were in. Now I started portuguese about 2 weeks before I left, and did it intermittently at best. Then, during the travels in Latin America, I was focusing on Spanish. I was in Brazil for a little bit, about 2.5 weeks prior to the start of the program so I did pick up some, so what I was shooting for was to be not placed in the absolute beginner class. The format of the test was a bit surprising. All they did was an oral test. They called us one by one, and predictably, yours truly was the last one to be called. I had no idea what the questioner was saying half the time, but I am generally pretty good at coming up with a circuitous route to say what I want to say. They placed me somehow in the intermediate class, which I am tempted to stick to for the challenge. Although in my class are people who have taken portuguese for a whole semester or people who are fluent at spanish. Whatevs.

One of the nights we went out (or should I say evenings, we had to be back by 10 pm) we were at a bar, and there was a guy who was acting as an intermediary for the table and the bar, but at the time he seemed connected to the bar. Well anyways, this guy is highly gregarious, setting Ray up with a patron of the bar, and laying his arm over fiona's shoulders and kissing her neck (i asked her if she needed help but she declined). Fast forward to when we have to pay the bill. Half the group mentally tallies up what they need to pay, and leave. A few of us are left with the bill and we mentally calculate what we are supposed to pay as well and add that to the pot. Unfortunately, our accounting did not quite add up with the accounting of this guy, and it was a difference of about 30 reales. After about 30 minutes of discussion, and eventually dragging the other part of the group back, we examine his math, and it turns out he is charging us a hefty service charge, is charging the girls who ordered beer an exorbitant sum, and is failing at math to boot. We fix the math, and eventually leave paying him 20 reales more than we should have.

Part of the program was the occasional excursion. We were told that we were going to bale foclorico, and at the time that didn't mean all that much to us. We took a bus to the scenic pellerino.

Pellerino is the historic district in Salvador

And we went to Bale Foclorico

Bale Foclorico was a trip. We weren't allowed to take pictures (sorry), but it was pretty cool. For the first dance, there was a lot of traditional dancing going on. Lots of twirling, interesting dress-ish costumes for both the men and the women. I didn't really understand what was going on in the first dance, there was groaning and rhythmic shaking of the arms, but it was clear that the men were fit. Very fit. Actually, there was approximately an ounce of fat distributed through the entire group of men. And the girls in our group picked up on this fact. The dances became slightly more intelligible as time went on. A fat man did a really cool fire dance, which essentially consisted of him juggling fire. He also quenched the fire in his mouth and stepped in the fire pit multiple times, which at first seemed to be on accident, but he repeated the feat multiple times. 

There were other dances as well, but all fell under the shadow of the capoeira dance. Capoeira has an interesting history, stemming from the need of slaves to have a method of resistance that could be camouflaged as a dance, so picture lots of kicks in a very acrobatic manner. And these guys could kick. They could also flip, do one armed handstands, and in general be very badass. One thing that was a common theme was that they would do proximity kicks, which essentially consisted of kicking inches from each others face, and having the other person kick basically a millisecond behind. There was one ugly moment where one guy missed and kicked someone in the middle of a handstand, and if not for the intervention of the people on stage, there would have been an actual fight.

Fastforward, and all the girls are swooning in front of the beautiful men. They do seem quite happy, so who am I to take that away from them. They were also quite happy to be in the guys presence.

We went out the final night to the pellerino again, where we danced the night away to a live band. We had fortunately convinced the nuns to let us back in the convent by 2 am so we were able to actually return. Returning in of itself was a bit of a venture, as we had about 14 people crammed into a single cab. (albeit it was a van cab)

We were somehow supposed to construct a talent show, and we haphazardly do that. I learn the choreography to the Right stuff, and we have a collection of different dances and songs.

The day of the talent show comes, and after packing we get to actually meet the family. My host mom and dad are there, and while I can't speak much Portuguese at that point, they seem to be quite nice. And then a live band comes, which instantly makes our talents look paltry in comparison.

Here they are

And they grab people from the audience. Mariah is the one in the hat, Britney is in the middle, and the singer is showing them some moves

For one of the dances during the middle of the show, the band starts playing a samba. The singer asks the audience if there are any dancers in the midst, and a call goes up for Jasper, Jasper Jasper. Reluctantly, I get up, and start to samba by myself, although lea, a girl from our group, graciously joins me. We samba, and evidently people are impressed (or at least bemused). After this, there is a running joke about my name, All the host mothers say Jaspero, Ha ha ha --don't really quite get it myself. After all the talent show concluded, the students parted ways, and I was off to my new home for the semester.