settling in (somewhat): host “family” & first week of class

Time is flying by! And I’m beginning to wish that I’d taken off next semester to just hang out here, relax, travel, and enjoy my stay in Brazil! It’s not that I’m not enjoying myself now (because I am!), it’s just that we have so much work to do that I hardly have time to relax… it feels like I have something (reading, writing, researching—tons of it!!) hanging over my head constantly… and I’m so slow, so easily distracted, so impatient with all of it, and so unfocused… plus, the heat, the humidity, and the high number of (carpenter?) ants and other little bichos (animals) crawling about my room freely (which is apparently a cultural norm here in the northeast) don’t help my lack of concentration and focus.

to make matters worse, we’re supposed to be diving right into the research for our independent projects (ISP’s), and I still don’t really have a clue what I want to do… you’d think I’d know after having spent so much time traveling in and studying brazil, but that doesn’t mean that I have a clear idea of what specific thing I want to research in depth and turn into a 30-to-50-page term paper… yikes! I need to get on the ball! (so, forgive me now for not keeping in touch with each of you individually and for not updating this more regularly or with greater detail.)

Briefly (and to recap), my host “family” includes a brother (Marcelo, 29) and a sister (Ana Paula, 23), who study all the day and work into the evenings, and another sister (Aurélia, 24), who isn’t studying nor working for the time being. Their parents live nearly 200 km south of Fortaleza in a city called Quixadá. (We went there last weekend for a short visit… The town is beautiful, historic, not over-developed, surround by rocky outcroppings, a bit touristy due to its hang-gliding and famous catholic sanctuary, and home to nearly 40, 000 inhabitants, but it’s also VERY hot and dry.)

Our apartment in Fortaleza is very simple but sufficient. I have my own bed room, but we share a bathroom and I have to keep my clothes in my sister’s room because my room has no place to store clothes. I sleep in a bed, but each room (including the living room) is equipped with at least 3 or 4 hooks to hang hammocks… The apartment complex (of 300 apts.) is right next to a squeaky train track and not far from the airport. So you can imagine the noise… What else (here) worth mentioning?... Open, screen-less, pane-less windows with shutters. Wood and ceramic tiled floors. Florescent lamps (no soft watt lights of any kind)…

One more thing worth mentioning about our homestays is that they are spread across the board in terms of socio-economic class. Many of us are living in very poor neighborhoods, and a few others are living in upper class (or at least upper middle-class) apartments or houses. I’m right in between the two extremes—in what my host mother called simple “student housing.”… I’m not 100% sure about SIT’s motive for randomly placing us into different housing situations, except that it’s supposed to give us different perspectives of life here. While this is somewhat true, it doesn’t change the fact that each of us is living only one reality… I don’t know. I have a lot of mixed feelings about the whole program, and one day I’ll tell you more about it…

Lastly, our first week of class went well. Our advanced Portuguese classes are fun, because our teacher (Eneide) likes to have fun, joke around, and talk about real issues (not just grammar, pronunciation, and literature). I am one of 5 in the class, but only 3 of us have a good handle on the language… The only major issue I have with this program concerning the Portuguese is that it’s not all in Portuguese. Since nine tenths of the group barely knows novice Portuguese and since we have SO much reading and writing to do in English, I can already tell that my Portuguese is suffering, or at least it’s not advancing as fast as I’d hoped… Nevertheless, I’m still learning a lot.

Our program’s theme class (Culture, Development, and Social Justice) has been interesting. So far we’ve had someone come speak to us about Native Brazilian Identity and the New Indigenous Movement and about Brazil’s economic and political battleground and Lula’s campaign and presidency. Lectures/discussions are conducted in Portuguese and translated… The Field Study Seminar also began, but we only managed to get through introductions. A Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and Philosophy (Eduardo Olivera) leads the class, approves our independent projects (ISP’s), helps guide our research, walks the journey with us (as he would say), and takes us on “field-research trips.” Overall, I’m excited about the hands-on learning; I detest the amount of reading for the theme class and for our ISP’s; I fear the quantity, quality, and velocity of writing that’s required of us for all of the above; and I’m a bit worried that I won’t figure our what to do for my ISP in time… That’s it, for now.

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My host "family" in Quixadá (behind us is a reservoir that slaves built)