It's taking some effort to adjust to life here in Rio, but all in all, things are going well. One thing I've had no problem adjusting to is the 30-minute walk to the beach! I took the photo below when I was in Leblon last week and a storm began to roll in. It never did rain that day, but ever since, we've had little storms every afternoon.
Carnival starts today, and while I don't think I'll be doing anything special tonight, tomorrow will be a marathon. My friend Dani and I plan to go to one of the street parades in the morning, have lunch afterwards, go home and nap for the afternoon, so that we can go out again at night for the big fancy parade in the Sambódromo. The "big fancy parade" is where the samba schools (escolas de samba) finally get to perform what they've been rehearsing all year. The parade, which starts around 8 or 9 pm, supposedly doesn't end until dawn, and knowing what I know about Brazil so far, I do not doubt this one bit!
I hope to get some good pictures of both events on Saturday, so check back here on Sunday or Monday to learn more about the phenomenon that is Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.
In no particular order:
1. Traffic in Rio is insane. There's no gentler way to describe it. Just this week, I saw a car hit a motorcyclist. The motorcycle bounced off the side of the car, but stayed in the lane. The drivers exchanged harsh words, but neither one of them stopped. They both kept driving.
2. Buses do not have schedules. Nor do they stop for people to get on. You just have to watch for your bus and flag it down when you see it. On the positive side, fare is relatively cheap. Depending on the distance traveled and the exchange rate, fare ranges between $1.43 and $1.80 each way.
3. One of my first impressions of Gávea, the neighborhood where I'm staying, was the prevalence of relatively unskilled labor here. On every street, there are [clearly poor] men working on the houses of the rich[er], by hand. I saw some men pounding cement with literally nothing but hammers and screwdrivers. I saw another group of men watch one of their fellow workers spackle the outside wall of a house. In the second case, I couldn't tell if the person doing the work was teaching the others how to do it or if they were just watching for fun. Someone told me later that the latter is often the case. The flipside to the lack of construction equipment we take for granted in the U.S. is that there is also a strong tradition of skilled craftsmanship here. The details on some of the houses here are quite elaborate and beautiful.
4. People are apparently worried about the amount of chlorine in the tap water in Gávea. In the house where I'm staying, there is a drinking water filtration system attached to the kitchen faucet, which is great because it means that I don't have to constantly buy bottled water. After showing me the filtration system, however, my landlady then instructed me to always leave the bathroom window open (near the ceiling) when I take a shower so that the chlorine gas can escape. Should I start worrying now?
5. On a different note, Cristo Redentor lights up at night! I can see it from my bedroom window.
6. Brazilian refrigerators (or at least the one here) do not have lights inside. This is a minor point, but my split-second reaction to the lack of light was: "Oh no, when did we lose power?"
7. I learned two new fruits this week: jaqueira (jackfruit) and maracujá (passionfruit). I saw the jaqueira at the Botanical Garden and I had maracujá juice later in the week. (I had had maracujá before--in Austria of all places--but not fresh.) I also had peach nectar (pêssego), which was absolutely delicious. There are juice stands nearly on every corner, and since I know the names of only a few tropical fruits (even in English), I plan to try all the different juices I see :-)
8. Almost all the stores I've been in have mirrors for back walls. It's very disconcerting. I assume the mirrors function as a low-tech security system. Clothing stores are the exception, which have salespeople that follow you around the store instead.
9. When Brazilian cashiers scan a credit card, they use the 3-digit security code on the back side of the card, in addition to the full account number. Perhaps I never noticed before, but I don't think U.S. stores do this.
10. It appears that I am extremely allergic to whatever is blooming in Rio right now. On top of sneezing and itchy eyes, my throat, ears, and sinuses are all sore. My landlady joked, "You're just allergic to the sun," and then promptly offered me an "herbal remedy".
11. olho = eye. ouvido = ear. ouvir = to listen. I've been using these vocabulary words frequently in the past few days. I knew them before, but for whatever reason, I've been mixing them up and creating new combinations thereof. (The olhido is the organ between the eye and the ear that can both see and hear, of course.)
12. Despite my limited vocabulary, according to the online placement test for my Portuguese course that starts this week, on a scale of 1-5, 1 being total beginner and 5 being advanced, I scored a 4 - advanced intermediate. All that this means is that I know how to take multiple choice tests well!
13. I learned this week that I actually like mate, pronounced "matcha". It's definitely better cold than hot and the real, everyday Brazilian variety is so much better than the yerba-maté you can get in the States.
Actually, I should qualify that statement: mate made by your landlady's grandmother, who insists you sit down for a cup before going into the city for the day, is much better than yerba-maté from the States. (I'll probably bring some back.)
14. Football, i.e. soccer, is serious business in Brazil. Okay, I already knew this, but isn't celebrating in the streets until 3:30 in the morning taking things a bit far? Apparently not. There was a celebration in the streets on one of the nights that I was really tired and not feeling so well, but that said, I would love to see a live game or two while I'm here.
15. Trash is collected ... at night? This can't possibly be right, but every night around 10pm (on non-football-celebrating nights), there has been a noise down the street that sounds exactly like a trash truck. One night I'll walk down the street and see what it actually is.
16. When I first arrived, one of the Portuguese engineering students told me, in English, that this neighborhood (Gávea) is home to many artists. I think he may have meant musicians. There's been music every night, and since most of the houses are open-plan in that they're not as enclosed as U.S. American houses, sound travels quite easily. (On more than one occasion, I've thought that we had a visitor downstairs and it actually turned out to be people talking next door.) So far I've heard a piano, guitar, drums, maybe panpipes, and something that sounds like a vibraslap, just not all at the same time ... yet.
17. I discovered a new method for food shopping: when in the produce section, choose the cheapest fruits and vegetables because they are likely the local ones. I know what foods are in-season in the Eastern U.S., but on the other side of the Equator in Brazil, the growing season and availability of produce are completely different. Tropical fruits are an obvious choice, but vegetables make for a much harder decision. Bell peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant were all super expensive, but vegetables that I think of as fall/winter vegetables in the U.S., e.g. squash, yams, and various gourds, were quite cheap. It also depends on where you shop, of course. I've been disappointed in the ridiculous prices at the Zona Sul chain grocery stores around here, but for a while, those groceries were the only stores I could find. Yesterday, I discovered a tiny shop down the street that has a decent selection for its size and much more reasonable prices. I'm looking forward to finally getting to an open-air market, where I can buy fruits, vegetables, and other products directly from the people who produce them.
18. On Friday, I met an Austrian engineering student who is a post-doc at the local university. As a graduate student from Salzburg, he spent two 4-month periods at the Brazilian university (PUC-Rio) and now he is here for another 4 months or so to collaborate on some scientific journal articles. It was nice to talk with another expat and to hear some of his stories of traveling in Brazil. Interestingly, he was very reluctant to speak German with me. We spoke English for the majority of our conversation and he kept asking how my Portuguese was. (His English is lightyears better than my Portuguese.) If I need someone later to encourage me in learning Portuguese, he may be a good person to do so, as he is already fluent in the language.
19. I've started to look for a used bike. There is a used bike shop nearby, but it has been closed both times I visited, so I think it may be permanently closed. Some people had suggested particular newspapers and online listings when I was looking for an apartment, so I am going to return to those sites and look there for bike listings. I'm sure it will become easier to find bikes and/or listings for them once the universities open after Carnival and all the students return from summer vacation.
20. The final lesson from this week: Never make unfounded assumptions, especially in a new country! Everything is a learning experience.
