Week 2 of Skoo

I write this looking outside of the student lounge at the FGV on the second floor. I just finished talking with my parents through Skype video! We talked about everyone and everything- 50 minuets worth- for zero reais! I love deals. My heart warms. Carol, a friend that we have here, described a restaurant with a phrase recently that I resonated deeply within me. It is in Portuguese of course and has a good alliteration: "Barato e bom." In English it is "inexpensive and good." Stay tuned for similar stories on barato e bom.

Skype has tons of cool features. Look at these pics we took and shared on line!


So it has been another week here at the GV in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I'm starting to get the feel for this place... I think. We'll maybe not. Sao Paulo is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, 7th, with about 20 million habitats. Running any type of demand analysis would be quite a project. Utah by itself has less than 3 million. Anyway, so there are a ton of people here and a ton of things to do. Stay tuned after these pics...

Here is our room- really clean as you can tell. Our roommate, Roberto from Texas, today said he cleaned his room yesterday and was displeased with himself letting it get messy again. I sort of empathized with him about me hanging up clothes, when he disagreed and said our room always looks clean. He made me think- and yeah we are pretty clean. So I agreed with a soft yeah .. yeah I guess so.

Here I am reading the Jacare times. Ok it was just to pose. More to come on posing and modeling later.
Welcome to our office (In the picture below). This is where we get internet and the only access to Facebook, Orkut, and You tube. Yeah you thought BYU was strict on their restrictions. When BYU allowed Youtube on campus it made National News haha. Anyways we get the groove network ouside our window at an amazing low signal that lets me to do not much more than merely accept and ask for friend request and a few messages.

Notice my puffy eyes. I have never had this type of swelling in my life. I think it was just a reaction to something. Possibly my lotion. Surprisingly I still have to use lotion because it is supposively a bit more dry here in the winter than it will be in the summer. This was at or near the peak of my puffiness. It lasted for about 3 days.
See a little puffy, but not too bad.
Compared with this. Where did I get this pic? Yeah I am starting an experiment where I take a picture of myself once a month. Then when I am old I could maybe look back and believe that I am old by seeing the changes. We'll see how long I can keep that up lol. Anyways I had the picture on my computer so I just put it in for puffy eye comparison purposes.
So we went to a garage/house party. Here is what a garage/house party in Brazil looks like from the outside.


An "emo" friend of ours from institute hosted a garage/house party with a live band, dancing (including forro, which was the first time I had ever seen forro), popcorn, and about 30 liters of soda- serious. If you've been to Brazil this is probably a pretty typical party, socializing, a little dancing, with popcorn and tons of soda. Am I right?
We went to the party with other friends we had met at institute including Franciane, Cecilia, and their brother Jefferson.

The ground was like sand paper. Not too good for break dancing lol.
We met up at their house to go over there. I broke the record for bowling on the Wii with a 252. Not too shaby for a beginner haha!
This is one of my favorite views (below) that I see just about everyday. Our school is just to left in this picture. This is Jay walking to the bus stop. The Museum of Arts of Sao Paulo (MASP) is that red building with windows in the center of the picture. This is 2 min walking from our house.

We went to an intitute dance. After institute we got invited by a crowd to go with them to an institute dance.

Our Young Single Adults ward leader and me!
Tiago, Jay, and Franciane.
Here is a good view of the dance. Jay, Anieli, and Camila.


Jay and I went to the temple! Cool to go in Portuguese.


We met up with a friend there. Her name is Fernanda. She was an aeromoca. That is she worked at the airport on the intercom- "Atencao senhores passengeiros..." haha. Now she sells expensive clothes at shopping Jardim to famous people.

We played University of Sao Paulo medical school last Wednesday. We lost by 13. It was a practice game but still. Our coach wanted us to work on 2-3 zone for the whole game. I'm finally getting the portguese jargon for basketball here like laterois, armador, postes, curta, ladrao!, homem, rebote, etc. I played about a third of the game and scored about 13 points, which wasn't too bad. Final score was 74-61. Me and a couple other exchange students will play in the ABC league here!

Here is more on Bom and Barato (Good and inexpensive)- All you can eat sushi bar last Saturday on Avenida da Liberdade! 30 reais. Bom e barato. Found a lunch place close by- big plate 8.50 reais. Bom e Barato! On the way out after an evening of pizza (bom and barato) Jay found 100 reais on the ground! He stopped as we all walked. Carol said "what Jay?" Response "It's 100 reais." Bom and Barato!? (it doesn't cost much to pick up money right?) Sortudo.

I said there will be more on modeling and posing. Jay and I will be part of a friend's school project. She studies Men's fashion and needs seven models for her designed clothes. Come on December 2 and 3 to see a runway show of a lifetime haha. The theme is German outfits. I'm part German right?

A Normal Week of Skewl

Tuesday evening I entered my first class of International Business (in Portuguese) with jeans and a T-shirt on. The teacher started class on the hour, at 9:00 pm. Everyone else in the class was dressed very nice, business suits with expensive briefcases, notepads, and pens. About a year ago I have been noticing notepads and pens. My first meeting with PRI I came with a bright green notebook with a black Dragon sticker on it and I used a black bic pen to write on it. I felt too noticed then as I did in class on Tuesday.

Among the Brazilian executives I listened carefully to the teacher so I wouldn’t miss anything. Fortunately a lot of business ideas and words are in English so I didn’t miss out on too many foreign business words. The teacher assigned a group project for groups of 4. I had made friends with the guy at my right so we gathered up a group. Two other members of our group had jeans on as well. I am excited to have this class to get a good perspective on international business and further my Portuguese.

Wednesday evening I came to basketball practice on time. Nothing here starts on time. I give the reason for this phenomenon to the culture as well as the traffic. Honestly, it is hard to judge how a long a bus will take sometimes. So to save headaches they give you about a half an hour. Another school was on the other side of the court warming up with jerseys on. We eventually had about 11 players show up and dominated the other team. Julian, a German, and I are the only exchange students on the team.

Last week we went out to a Rodizio pizza place. It is exactly like Rodizio's but with really good pizza of all varieties instead. I ate about 12 slices of pizza including chocolate coconut pizza, ice cream pizza with banana slices, strawberry pizza, and the classic pizzas. I highly recommend this restaurant on Faria Lima for a good feast for about 20 reais with a drink.

This week we went to a Institute dance. I learned forro! It is a simple dance that is closest to bachata. Anieli, a gal from our first ward in Caixangi, was kind enough to show me the basic dance moves to the popular Brazilian dance. Young adults from four different stakes filled the dance floor and enjoyed the dance and food. The young adults here have been really nice so far and really like to spend time doing fun things. The energy and little sleep they get sometimes amazes me. They are very active people.

First Week of School

After patiently waiting for the swine flu crisis to simmer, we finally commenced our classes at the FGV! We kicked it off with a Portuguese assessment on Tuesday, and then a night out with everyone that evening at a café nearby. Jay and I have really stepped into the international scene with people from all over the world.

Students flooded FGV on Wednesday, the official 1st day of school. Our classes are in English, taught by Brazilians, with a lot of other students who have English as their second language. I feel like I have an upper hand because of this. Jay and I were put in the graduate level classes because we are close to finishing school. A few other Americans are in the program as well and are getting their MBAs at Pepperdine, New York, and attending other international schools in the states.

As part of the welcome week they had a few activities like "trote" for the incoming freshman. Here they lined up the freshman and walked them around the neighborhood while terrorizing them with eggs, alcohol, hair shavers, flower, cooking oil, and what not. In the end they came out a mess with patched heads.

Yesterday we had our orientation assembly. The Dean of the School welcomed us along with the other international relations officers and Club leaders. They also planned a couple "surprises" for us. Of course it almost wouldn´t be Brazilian if something wasn´t somewhat "surprising." For surprise one, they closed the curtains for about three minutes and then opened them again to Kapoeira people who commenced Kapoeira singing and dancing. Two dancers swung their legs at each other very quickly to the rhythm of the others banging on drums, sticks, and singing.

After their routines they kept playing the instruments and invited audience members to participate on stage. Melina, the international relations officer, called out people to come up. She said let's get more people up here... how about those from BYU. At that I went up. About 15 of us participated in dueling one on one with one of the Kapoeira dancers with the crowd clapping and the other Kapoeira dancers singing and playing their instruments. It was a fun welcome.

After I dueled, one of the students on stage said "You go to BYU? I go to Utah." His dad was a Mission President somewhere in Brazil.

The other surprises were a drum team pounding the guts out of their drums without being bashful at all and then food and drinks downstairs.

Something really cool about FGV is that they get the students involved really well. They have different organizations that anyone can participate in including sports.

Last night I went to the basketball training. I wasn't expecting anything more special than pickup games, however; I realized it was a bit more than that. FGV has a team here and they play against other schools and go to tournaments. We had a full on practice as a team. It had been a while since I have had a coach tell us to run and do drills. Another cool thing was it was all in Portuguese. Fourteen guys were there.


Jay and I with other international students from Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and Singapore/England.
Freshman getting smothered by eggs, flour, alcohol, and even hair shavers.

The crowd anxiously waiting for the Freshman to come out.

Ok. I am still figuring out blogging. I figured out I can post more than 5 pictures on one post. So from now on I'll change that.

Jay and I went to Rio de Janeiro! We really lucked out on this trip. In Sao Paulo, where we were living near the temple, other study abroad students were living too. We ended up making good friends with them and doing fun things like going to a soccer game, movies, etc. They were all at the end of their program. At dinner one evening we were all talking and one of the members in the group invited us to join a group of them that were going to Rio to stay with her family for a few days to rock climb, see Rio, and be on the beach. Of course was the obvious answer! Super fun trip!

We took a bus over night and Lani and her mom picked us up in the morning. We couldn´t really get to talk to her mom right away because of the crazy driving at that hour. At their house we took a nap and then woke up to a nice french toast breakfast and juice with an outstanding view of Ipanema beach and the city of Rio. Incredible.

Rio is an amazing city with the steep mountains and green landscapes with gulfs and beaches. I told Jay he should propose on top of one of these mountains as we hiked Sugar Loaf mountain in the afternoon. The cable car costs 40 reais. Or you can hike around the back with climbing gear for zero. Super fun.

The next day we took another adventure up Pedra da Gavia. We met up with some of Lani´s Dad´s friends, Chris and Kyle, to hike early in the morning. At the top we took pictures and had a nice lunch while we waited for Chris to check the area for good para gliding conditions. When he said it was a go we all helped him with pictures, and getting the shoot up for him to run off of the 2,500 foot high cliff and fly towards Rio and the beach! He glided in the air and we could see him with prominent objects like the Christ statue, the famous favela of Rocina with 600,000 people, Sugar Loaf, and the beach.

To clean up from our hike we went surfing on Ipenema Beach. Vera, the mom, gave us some manwhiches with french fries and fruit then off we went to the beach. On the sandy beach, Lani gave us some top notch surf lessons that helped us catch some waves. Afterwards we buried Christian in the sand, played volleyball, and then went home to eat and watch about a whole series of Heroes until we were really tired.

On sunday after priesthood meeting, I stood up to leave for the next class and heard someone in the back call out my name. I turned to the back and saw my buddy Eduardo Amorim from BYU back from his internship in Sao Paulo and staying with his parents in Rio de Janeiro! In the evening after we took a long walk on the beach, we all all met up at Eduardo´s place and hung out with him, his family, and friends. I have to mention this day that we ate ribs, fries, salad, etc. and brownies for lunch with the missionaries as well.

If it Has a Mechanical Bull...

If it has a mechanical bull, then you know it's a real party.

Tons of people, food, dancing, and a DJ. The announcer said that I was from Texas when I mounted on the bull.

Friday

The temple is pretty close by. Nice!

Jay won a gold fish at the festa! It died the next day.. aww. Ok he didn't really but tons of kids did. This reminds me of a phrase a guy said to me on the bus here with less than 24 hours in the country. Some lady was doing a crazy street performance w/ a costume that looked like a guy dancing/mugging a lady while traffic was stopped. Then she jumped out from under the costume and put here arms up. The man sitting next to me, without having said anything to me ever before, turned his head and said "only in Brazil."

It's been fun :)