My First Concert Here and A New View of 9/11

Wow, I need to update more... Oh, and on a personal note: Mom, can you start printing these out so that I can have them when I get back, please?

Hello, all. I hope things in the states are well. I haven't read or watched the news once since I arrived, so the White House could have burned down, and I probably wouldn't know about it. I will be very poorly informed when I arrive in time for voting season; although since none of them tell the truth, I don't know how much it matters anyway, haha...

Things here continue to go well, although I am starting to enter the phase of homesickness/cultureshock where everything stops being so exciting and I get irritable. This, of course, is just by the books, but I have been a little bit more on edge lately than I was before. I feel restless when I am not doing something, and while I feel badly about wanting to be out all the time instead of at home, there is pretty much nothing for me to do here except watch TV, read, and be on the internet, which gets old. Plus, I am trying to cut back on my internet time, and the temptation gets too strong when I sit around for too long.

I'm still happy, though, no worries. That is really all I have to complain about. My grandparents were living in the house last week, which wasn't too bad, but I was very happy to see my parents again Sunday morning (as was my host sister, but she was rather more vociferous about it, haha). My grandparents are very kind people, but I prefer the normal life, for sure. However, I had to wait another week to go to the Tennis Club to sign up, and that was a little bit frustrating. We went today, though, to get a list of classes, times and prices, so tomorrow or Thursday I think I will be going in to get a small exam (weight, height, bodyfat %, etc) in order to start going to the gym in the afternoons when my host sister goes to English or ballet. The gym is $35 reals ($17.50) for the first month and $R30 for the following months, so I think that's pretty good. I have to pay another $30 for the initial start, but I have barely spent any money in anticipation of these costs, so it will be fine. They have a long list of classes, but I still want to do Capaoiera. They have an all women's class twice a week, so I hope I can do that starting here pretty soon.

Last week I went out and about every afternoon/evening (I have to be home by 10:30, which is a little bit annoying b/c it's earlier than pretty much everyone else - we don't have to do anything in school, anyway), which included a little pool party at my Mexican friend, Annia's house (the pic is of, clockwsie from front, Caio - Brazil, Gerardo - Mex., me, Tania - Mex., and Annia - Mex. after swimming), a birthday party/watch soccer party for Iván a Mexican guy (Brazil beat Mexico despite the 4 Mex. exchangers' yelling and waving flags around, though, haha), watching Little Miss Sunshine (my new favorite movie - it's so awesome), and general hanging out mostly with other ex. students, but with some Brazilians as well. Haha, our parents go crazy because the girls that I hang out with most regularly and I go as follows: Anna, Tania, Johanna, and Alanna, so when we talk on the phone no one can tell whose name we are trying to say. Friday was Presidente Prudente's 90th birthday, so I had no school, and Thursday night was the Babado Novo concert.

It was awesome!!!

I went with two Brazilian girls who are in my class and who both studied in the US last year with Rotary, Natalia and Marina, and we hung out with a bunch of other girls that they know and I recognized, mostly from school. It was an all girls sort of night, which was cool. They took very good care of me - making sure I didn't get lost, that I knew how to dance, that I was included, that I was happy, etc. I was actually a little bit irritated earlier that night because they went to Tennis Club to hang out before and I couldn't go, so I had to wait until after 11 for them to even pick me up, but in the end I was really glad I did. They definitely showed me a good time. We also ran into a few o my ex. student friends, including a girl from Cali. that I really like, and who I have been wanting to see ever since the initial conference. I think she is going to come in for a friend of mine's party here in a few weeks.

The concert itself had a different vibe from any that I've been to in the US. There were two areas, VIP and regular. I was VIP, which meant that I was allowed to go down onto the ground instead of having to stay in the stands - it didn't get anymore VIP than that. As I have learned about Brazil, schedules and organization are generally of very little importance, haha. The concert ticket said that it started at 9, but we got there at about 11:30PM, and the "show" didn't start until 1:15AM, haha. Up until that point they played dance music, sold drinks, and tried to shove everyone into the gate; it was, essentially, like a big outdoor dance party with 11,00 people. Actually getting in was a slightly different story. Back to the point about organization, this was how it was set up: There were two open doors with guys at each taking your ticket and giving you a wristband and a bandana, which denoted you VIP or regular. In front or those two doors was a giant mass of people shoving their way in. That was pretty much it. So, for about 15minutes, the girls and I all locked arms and slowly shoved our way toward the front, totally smashed into one another and the random people around us. It would have been rather uncomfortable had we not been laughing the whole time about how ridiculous it was, haha.

After we got in we ran into 50 people we had to stop and say 'oi' to (saying hi to people gets tiresome here because you have to keep your face tilted at this weird angle to give and receive cheek kisses, haha), and then we went down to the field (which was really the blacktop area) to hang out and dance. Oh, I think I forgot to mention that it was at the soccer stadium outside of town, and that 11,000 people filled about 1/4 of it, maybe. The dance music here, might I add, is far superior to American club music/radio crap (unless they play American club music, which they do about 1/2 the time). They have this genre called funk, which is like hip hop except way better, haha. I will see if I can put a playlist on here so you can hear some of it, although, I warn you, you probably don't want to translate most of it, haha. I have very serious trouble dancing to it correctly, but I will learn eventually. I think you have to be somewhat intoxicated to really get it, anyway.

Once the actual band came out nothing really changed. Brazilians are very social, and they tend to like to pay more attention to the people around them than anything else, it seems like. We only watched it about half the time. The whole thing had more of a festival feel than a concert feel, and although there were a lot of people there, it wasn't packed, which was nice. The band was very good, though, upbeat and fun, and they put on a good show. There was one dance where everyone held hands and ran really fast from side to side, and that was a little crazy, haha; I basically just held on and let them drag me. Actually a good bit of the music here has a specific dance you do with it that they tell you in the song, but, as I can't undersatand what they're saying and can't dance anyway, it doesn't do me much good, haha.

Hmm, I feel like there is more I could say, but I will stop there, I'm sure you can't get as excited about it as I can, haha.

The music ended at about 3:35, and one of the girls' dad took us al home. I got in bed at 4:20, and didn't wake up until 1:00 the next day, haha. I was sooo tired. I have been just a little bit sick anyway with a headcold, which makes me tired, so after we went and ate lunch I came home and went back to bed from 3-5, haha.

Saturday I went to a girl named Gabi's house; she goes to my school and lives in my neighborhood. Actually - I have to tell you about this real quick - I had gone to her house for lunch Tues. afternoon, and after that I went to the supermarket with her family, and it was the craziest trip to the supermarket ever, haha. There were four of us, and we each got a cart, and we each filled the cart completely, and basically ran through the store grabbing things we needed and looking at various lists and yelling to eachother in Portuguese. In the end we had 4 totally full carts and almost $R950 worth of stuff. It took us like 20 minutes to check out, haha, and the girl was about my age, so we carried on a borken sort of conversation. It was seriously insane.

Anyway, we had a little churrasco Saturday (again, Brazilian BBQ, but you better get used to the word because I go to them like 3x a week, haha) with her girlfriends and Tania, and that night Tania and a few other friends came to my house and we walked around the lake by my house and watched a movie...

Oh man, and on Sunday I blew up the glass cover on the stove! It was aweful! I didn't really think about lifting it up because I am used to glass-covered elexctric stoves, but this was most definitely a conventional stove, and you most definitely are supposed to move the glass thing, and, as a result of my stupidity, it most definitely exploded all over the kitchen. They didn't yell at me or anything, but I don't think my host dad was too happy. He spent like 1/2 hour cleaning it up. The kitchen was seriously covered in glass. It was really scary. It made this loud bang and glass pieces flew all at me. Luckily no one got hurt, though. I was the only one in the kitchen, and when my host sister came in because I screamed, we just looked at eachother with our mouths hanging open and started to laugh. I was like, "Eu não sei que falar!" which means, "I don't know what to say", so we just left and got our parents, haha.

Ok, I think I'm getting too in depth here, I know you guys just want basics and culture and stuff...

I saw my friend Dayna, who is Canadian, at the show, and she was staying in Prudente for the weekend (she lives about 1hr away), so we hung out a little bit. She introduced me to a munch of her friends, who all attend a different school, and one girl invited us to come stay at her house Thursday night and go to school with her Friday. I am looking forward to doing that - it will be cool to see what another school is like. Then Dayna is going to stay at my house for the weekend because her town is tiny and boring, haha, so hopefully we an find something to do. A lot of my friends went to a town called Londrina last weekend for a giant costume party (25,ooo people) called Metamorphosis, so there wasn't as much to do as usual. I wish I could have gone, but it was way too expensive, and we have strict travelling rules anyway.

Another quick funny story: today a few people came over and we ate a little Mexican food (the Mexicans and I all miss it soooo much, and Johanna - German -has never really eaten it), and when my friend Gerardo's aunt was dropping him off she locked the keys in the car wile it was running with a dog inside. It was really funny. We waited for like 20 minutes outside trying to get the dog to unlock the doors while her sister came with an extra key. She is Japanese, so we also got a little language lesson, haha.

Ok, now on to culture. I hadn't really thought about doing 9/11 on here, but then it came and I realized it would be sort of a neat idea.

As I said, I have not been paying any attention at all to what is going on at home, and that includes not paying any attention to the fact that it was 9/11. I never really need to know the date, so I didn't even realize it was until that evening at Iván's party. I said that it was weird for me to have gone all day and not heard a thing about it, and that it was actually kind of nice. I didn't realize how insensitive of a statement that was until the people I was talking to looked at me like I was crazy.

All the others remembered exactly where they were when 9/11 happened, and Johanna said that she cried when she saw the videos. Most of them had been let out of school, and had spent the evening at home with their parents glued to the TV. They remember it every bit as clearly as I do, and it affected them just as mush as it did me, I believe. I was the only one, however, whose principal had decided to make the whole school turn off their TVs and pretend like nothing had happened. I don't remember even seeing a video of it until a few days after it happened, and I didn't understand what it means until a few years after it happened.

We all did agree that we were too young to be overly-concerned, but the fact that they took it every bit as seriously as we do erally struck me for some reason. I knew that the world was watching in the aftermath of the attack, but I didn't realize how much it really did care - I didn't think about a bunch of 11 and 12yr olds in Germany, Mexico, and Brazil huddled around the TV with their families. They all had their moments of silence in school and their prayers in church, and they all understand what it meant just as much as I do. In fact, two of them had rather direct connections with people who worked in the World Trade Center (one is American, though, he lives in Calfi., the other was Johanna), although neither of them were killed.

Just to tell you, I know you already know this, and so did I, but just to reinforce it - the world really hates Bush. They don't blame it on me or anything, but they tell me, flat out, we all hate your government, and we all hate the war. I just tell them that I don't like it either, and that hopefully the new election will bring about some good changes. Although, just as a note, the Brazilians I have talked to here don't like their president, Lula, either - they don't like that he uses their tax money to give to poor people (sound familiar?), so he was elected becuase the poor people love him. Being American in a different country is interesting. It's like I don't feel as foreign as everyone else because everyone already knows about our problems. They've been to NYC, they follow our elections, and they love our movie stars. Sometimes I find the anonymity of being Hungarian or Swedish to be much more alluring than having to carry around the associations that come with being an American.

It's not that they don't like me, or don't like us, or don't like our country, it's just that I almost feel like our privacy is being invaded, or, rather we are constantly invading theirs. I am really not into this whole Americanization thing. I really don't miss Wal-Mart (we have none) or SUVs (I have probably seen under 150 since I've been here, and that includes São Paulo). I do appreciate our way of life, and that part of the reason we are so omnipotent is because we do a lot to help others, and that my ability to even be here is supported by the fact that everyone in the world drinks Coke, but having to watch MTV everyday in a country that has so much more to offer gets to me sometimes.

I know that I am not the first person to gripe about this. Not in the least. But now that I am here to see it I am startint to fully appreciate it, I think. Well no, not fully, but I am starting to. I think I will have to join the Peace Corps before I can make any serious statements.

Hmm, sorry about that, I didn't mean to go on so much, but it's on my mind. I appreciate every one of you, even if you are ignorant Americans :-P... JUST KIDDING. Sometimes I get myself into trouble with the sarcasm here, so I just thought I'd make it clear that I don't really think you are ignorant.

Thanks for reading, as always, and dealing with my verboseness. I hope you enjoyed. I will have more pics up on Flickr soon. I am in a little bit of trouble for going out too much, so I will have all afternoon/evening/night tomorrow to do it.

Beijos! (kisses)
<3 Alanna a Americana