Finally in the city of Belém, settled in at last. It’s been quite the week, so I suppose I’ll start with what’s most fresh on my mind. Don’t worry, I have pictures too.

First and foremost, my host family is wonderful. Lucky for me, I will be living for the next several weeks in a very nice apartment only a five minute walk from the World Learning Office where I take my classes. Lucky, because mostly everyone else in my group must take the onibus, which actually ends up costing about 1-1.5 reais for a one-way trip. That’s a little under a dollar, but I am sure it adds up. So basically, while some of my friends here will need to take 30 minute bus rides, I will be able to get there easily, no hassle, in no time at all. Best of all, the Office and the apartment I am in are both very close to the Bosque, a large park in the middle of the city. My host brother Diego told me that people go running in it/around it a lot in the mornings, so maybe I can hit that up while everyone else is on the bus. Plus, it only costs 1 real to actually enter the park, so no problem. Back to my family-away-from-home. My host mother’s name is Léa, my one host brother Diego, and my other bro Judah. Léa teaches Spanish at the University, Diego is 23 and is finishing his last year of engineering school at the University as well, and Judah is 13 and in a escola (I’ll apologize in advance for times when I randomly write in Portugese). They’ve all been extremely nice so far, even though I just moved in only a few hours ago. They even liked my homestay gifts so far.

I don’t really know that much Portuguese, but they told me that mine’s actually fairly good, and considering how blunt Brazilians often are, I guess that’s pretty cool. Judah is learning English at school so basically we are both in the same language boat. We had the big dinner/snack thing tonight where we all met our host families, and after awkwardly chatting with mine for 25 minutes or so, we got into the car and drove to the supermercado to get some cereal for breakfast…even though I insisted that they didn’t need to buy me cereal, and that I’d be fine with some of the coffee and bread. Oh well. They showed me around the house, asked some more questions about home and such, I was able to get most of it. Diego and Judah speak some English, but I want to make sure that they kind of force me to speak in Portugese.

Speaking of Portugese, I am in the Intermediate Class, pretty cool, sim? I guess doing some Rosetta Stone over the summer paid off. A good portion of the group is in the same class, and I felt pretty good during our first class a few days ago. # 2 is amanha. I think I have a lot of the basics down. Plus, it’s a beautiful language.

So, I should back up and try to start from the start, although that will probably fail seeing as I am pretty tired, its 11:30 here, and I need to wake up around 7 or so. Getting to Brazil almost a week ago was quite the process, but looking back nothing too exciting. Meeting everyone was kindof fun…kindof. I’m always slightly weird about those awkward first meetings. But I met a lot of cool people. Off the top of my head, and the people I think I bonded with the quickest with, Sarah and Will both go to Brown, Karina goes to Vassar, Nigel goes to Lafayette, Ups goes to Davidson, and Maya goes to Occidental (she is also a CISVer, pretty cool coincidence). Meeting all at the airport was pretty chill, everyone bonds over being tired and awkward together. We got to watch a movie in Portuguese on the plane, fun. Speaking of which, Brazilian planes are so much nicer than the one I had to fly from Philly in. You not only get food on your flight for free, but it was pretty good for airplane food. You also get a hot towel. Nice.

Let’s see. Basically, it has been an intense week. Some very exciting moments, some not so much. The first day getting there at 7 am was a toughie. We had lots of time before our first lectures from Gustavo and the other program staff, so a bunch of us took walks along the roads. Ah, and yes, we were at what is called a sitio, and there isn’t really any English translation. That seems to happen a lot here. It looked kindof like a getaway/farm/I'm not really sure. It was nice, and if my laptop would let my pictures upload right now, I would show you a picture, maybe tomorrow at the office instead. No, now.

So, yes. Orientation. Day one was long, lots of general stuff to cover. Honestly, I'm just going to pan over the whole thing and just do the main cool parts. So, the second day there....Saturday, we had what in every SIT program is called a Drop Off Exercise. Basically, you are given two questions, in this case in Portuguese, and, you guessed it, are dropped off via van in a random place and have 3 hours to obtain the info. In our case, most of us were dropped off along little agricultural villages or fishing villages. I don't know the name of the town I was dropped off in. It was very very small. I had two questions: 1) what sorts of artisan crafts do you make in this village, and what are the most expensive and 2) what is "espardarte"?. So, in my little Portuguese I tried asking people around, and people either told me that there weren't any such shops or lojas in this town, or that the closest one was in the nearby city, Curuca. So, I spend a lot of time walking down highways and talking to people along the way. Needless to say, in 3 hours I did not find any art things. I just drank all my water very quickly. Although I did find out what Espadarte was. I was told by two people that it was a restaurant in Curuca. Ok, great. So, we all reunited from our separate little adventures, and found out that actually, espadarte is the name of a certain fish, an ocean fish that many of the fishermen in such communities catch. It is also the name of a new restaurant/hotel in the city. Also, it is the name of a new port that will be built in Caruca, which will be the largest port in Latin America. Many of the fishermen are upset about its construction because it will threaten their livelihood, bring more people into the region, and their prices for fish will drop, both due to increased fishing/merchant activity, and less fish in general, means less they are able to sell. To get a better perspective on all of this, and not just talk about it, Gustavo had a whole days worth of excursions ahead of us, easily the best part of orientation, involving trudging through the waters of a mangrove forest, talking with a community based ecotourism and environmental education NGO, and listening to a fisherman talk to us on one of the beaches of Caruca about the building of the fort while he cooked us basically the most delicious fish ever. But, that is what I will update this about tomorrow.

Tchau!