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.
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