3 months already?

So I'm a little late but my three month mark for living in Brazil was May 12th. I also understand why it's so difficult to update blogs. You just don't have time, but I can't believe how fast time is going. I'm already a quarter through my program. And what a better way to celebrate than going dancing! Because Palmital is so small, Dub's Disco Club is the place to go and hang out with friends and to go dancing on the weekends. Each week there is a new band that comes and plays. No it's not disco music like you think. Disco clubs are what Brazilians call dance clubs. They play all sorts of music. This weekend there was a rock band playing so my older sister Bia invited me to go with her and her friends. It turned out to be great and I got to meet new people as well as see some of my friends as well. I've been to Dub's two other times and only stayed on the floor where it's packed with people but this time we bought tickets to go to the camarote. The Camarote is this balcony above the floor and it's less crowded and there are more places to sit and enjoy the music if you don't want to dance. It cost a little more but it was cool and I really enjoyed it and getting a chance to hang out with my sister. We have gotten very close but she is always working or going to college so I don't get to see her that often. It was a Saturday to remember for sure.

The following day was Sunday, of course, and it also happened to be Mother's Day as well. After trying to regain some of the sleep I lost from the night before, I woke up to wish my host mom a Happy Mother's Day and then go to my grandmother's house for a big lunch. Afterwards, I went back home and skyped with my mom to wish her a Happy Mother's Day as well.

This week I have made so new friends. I really enjoy seeing them in school and there is always something to talk about. They try and teach me words in Portuguese and in turn I teach them some words in English. I have also started sitting with them in my classroom and they help me understand some of what is going on because the teachers all talk really fast and sometimes I don't always catch what they are saying.

I also got to experience my first futebol celebration. Santos, one of the favorite teams here, won an important game on sunday. Of course Brazilians are known for their crazy soccer fans but from what I have seen its pretty similar to what us American football fans are like. They are just excited about their team winning and in turn celebrate. My town celebrated by driving around in cars blaring the favorite music of the Santos team players and honking their horns, waving flags, dancing in the streets, blowing off fireworks and fire crackers, and wearing their favorite teams sports gear. My sister and I walked around town and watched all this and I have to say it was really great to see how spirited everyone was. They are not the crazy fans that you think and from what you see on TV but they are happy when their team wins and celebrate! Who doesn't love a celebration? I was happy for Santos as well because my family cheers for Santos but Palmeiras is my family's favorite team.

Also this coming month I'm going to start playing soccer on the team here in Palmital. I won't be playing on an actual field like I'm most used to. Instead it's more common to play on an indoor field similar to a gym floor used for basketball except the lines are made for soccer. I'm excited because I have missed soccer so much and seeing so many people playing soccer makes me really want to play. My host parents and AFS are going to talk to the team and see if I can join. Hopefully I can start right away. I really want to play and hey, maybe I'll learn some cool new moves.

Tchau & Beijos

Cori

Rodeio Weekend

So last weekend here in Palmital we celebrated the city's 92nd birthday. To celebrate such a wonderful occasion we have Rodeio (Rodeo). I have to say that it is most similar to county fairs. Nothing but fried food, candy, ice cream, and junk food. There are rides and games but the main event happens on the weekend. That would be the rodeo of course. There are two contests. One is where two people on horse back have to rope a sprinting calf on the head and one of the feet and bring it down. The other is the bucking contest. You have to see how long you can stay on a bucking bull and let me tell you, most of them don't last long. Everyone gets really into the spirit of everything. Most of the people that go to the rodeo get dressed up. Like I'm talking plaid shirts, cowboy boots, jeans, hats and even fancy belts. It's a big deal and they talk about it weeks before it happens. They even have a queen and king of Rodeio. To go along with the country theme, música sertaneja (country music) is very popular. They have performers everyday. I have to say though that it is not my type. Besides the music it was a lot of fun. I did dress up as well because why go if your not going to participate? I would have stuck out like a sore thumb if I didn't anyways.

This is was a week long celebration so there were cultural things at different times during the week. There were films you could see and demonstrations to watch. One of the days my sister Flavia, my host mom, and I went to watch Capoeira. It's a Brazilian martial art. It was very cool to watch. They put a lot of work into perfecting it. I give them an A+.

Hope you enjoyed reading,
Tchau
Cori

 This is me and my host sister Flavia on the first day of Rodeio

 This me and my sister and her friends on the big opening night of Rodeio

 This is us at the Rodeio watching the contests. Lots of people showed up to see it as well

 This was the contest where you had to rope the calf. It's much harder than it looks.

 This is the stage at the front of the ring.

 This is the other side of the ring in which the contests took place.

This was the starting place for the bucking contest

Here is a video of the bucking contest. My camera refused to take a good picture and besides you get more action from a video. Enjoy!

 These two pictures are of Capoeira. Pretty cool right?

What is Easter without chocolate eggs?

Today was a great day. Today I learned how to make homemade chocolate eggs or Ovos de Chocolate. My host mom showed me how and I have to say I did a great job. Of course there was a little bit of taste testing involved too which I took part in as well. First we melted chocolate in a pot. Next we took the egg molds and spooned in enough chocolate to cover the sides of the mold and put them in the freezer to set. After a few minutes in the freezer we took them out and repeated the process two more times. Afterwards we wrapped them in tin foil and filled one half with candy and covered it up with the other half. Finally, to finish of the work, we put another layer of colorful wrapping and sealed it with a bow. We had to make a lot for the family we will be visiting tomorrow for Easter and it took all day but overall it was a lot of fun.

Feliz Pascoa Todo Mundo!

Cori

This is what the eggs look like before and after they are finished.

 Above: My nephew wanted to help but more or less wanted to just eat the chocolate.

Below: My Host Mom making a chocolate egg

Above: My nephew with the egg my grandma bought for him. These eggs are common to buy for your family members. You can buy them at like any store.

Below: Bis are these wafer chocolate bars that we filled the eggs with. They are very good.

 Above: Again my host mom making chocolate eggs.

Below: This is me helping make a chocolate egg. I did pretty good for my first try. :)

And of course the finished product. Tomorrow we get to eat them. Yummy Yummy!

Life in Brazil

I have finally had a few weeks break from traveling which has been a great relief. Traveling all over the state of Sao Paulo can take a toll on you, but on the bright side I learned how to sleep on a bus.

I have almost reached my two month mark. (April 12th!) and am finally starting to fit into life here. I have my school schedule worked out and what I do at home. Everyone comments on how much better I speak but I'm still so far away from being considered fluent. While I have been learning my new language though, I have started to forget some of my English speaking skills. My Portuguese teacher thought it was hilarious. I have gotten so used to Portuguese that I speak English the way everyone here does which is not very well and with an accent. I have also started to talk/think to my self in Portuguese as well. I don't say "I need my notebook". Instead I say "Eu preciso minha caderno". I have also been using my dictionary a lot less as well but still carry it around to important places just in case I need to look up a word.

Here is my Horario (Schedule) for a typical day:

6:10 Wake up and get dressed
6:30 Eat breakfast of bread and butter
6:45 Leave for school on my bike
7:00 Arrive at school and walk to get ready for class
7:10 Teacher arrives and get class going. I have three periods each 50 minutes long before intraval. I'll have one class for no more than two periods.
9:30 Go to interval and eat a small snack and chat with classmates
9:50 classes start again. I have two more 50 minute class periods
11:30 Ride my bike home for lunch
11:45-12:30 eat lunch with my family before my sister's and dad leave for work
12:45 Start the afternoon. I usually sleep, read, do homework, watch TV, go on the computer, go out with friends or help my mom bake. On tuesdays I go to my portuguese course and Tuesdays and Thursdays I do dishes.
5:00 Everyone comes home from work. They do the similar things I do like watch TV or go on the computer.
6:30 My nefew comes home from school. He likes to play with me. This is also when my older sister and my dad leave for college.
7:30 Time to eat dinner that my mom cooks. Afterwards is free time spent with my family.
9:00 Take a shower, brush my teeth and get ready for bed.
9:30 Time for bed. I go to bed early here because I get up so early for school.

So that's pretty much what I have been doing the past few weeks.

Cori

Barra Bonita

I had an AFS conference in Barra Bonita last weekend. It was great because I got to meet other exchange students from around the world and that live near me in the next city. There were 8 of us total that were newbies to Brazil. 1 girl from New Zealand, 1 boy from Germany, 1 boy from Japan and 2 girls and 2 boys from Thailand. Later we met up with a boy from France and a girl from Italy and another girl from Thailand. During the day we went over culture shock, rules, and such. We got new information about different things we needed to know with AFS. Later that night, we were allowed to go out to a music concert that was playing near where we were staying. The music and singers were really bad so we ended up just walking around and seeing the town. We chatted a lot about Brazil and our home towns and countries. Afterwards, we met up with our AFS volunteers and ate pizza. Now I have to tell you that it's not the pizza you are used to. It's the same concept but it looks and tastes very different. Oh and it's very common to find chicken and corn with the light amount of tomato sause. Also whole olives and whole slices of tomatoes are usually on top as well. So if you ever visit Brazil, Pizza is not as good as you think. You are better off buying Brazilian style food because it tastes much better. : ) After sleeping and having a nice typical Brazilian breakfast, we left to go back home. It was a great experience and I'm so glad AFS does things like this.

Sao Paulo!

On Tuesday I went to São Paulo with my class. It was so much fun. We left the school at 11:30 pm and we drove on a bus for six hours to São Paulo. I tried to sleep but of course like in any group of teenagers, there are the ones that just don't want to sleep. So instead they sang all different types of songs. It was funny because they were very much off key but it was frustrating too because I was trying to get some sleep! So we arrived at our first destination which was the Museo de Futebol. We were too early to enter so we walked around in the Stadium for a bit then we went to this little outside Mercado (market). It is really cool to go to markets here because there are things I have never seen before. Lots of exotic fruits and of course some familiar fruits as well like Morango (Strawberry), Abacaxi (Pineapple), and Maça (Apple). They also had "Fair" food that you could buy. I tried a Pastel for the first time. It was really good. It's a filling of different varieties of meats, cheeses, and vegetables fried inside two pieces of dough. When it's done it has a flaky outside and it's warm on the inside. You can even get ones that have chocolate or bananas inside. The one I tried was carne com chedder. It was delicious. I also got to try a fruit called a Kaki. It looks like a tomato but its got a really sweet gooey inside. Very good and sticky!

So once we were finally inside the museo de futebol, we got to see all the exhibits and we were pretty much alone because we got there first thing in the morning. It has all sorts of exhibits tell the past about Brazilian futebol (Pronounced Fu-chee-bol by the way). It talked about the different players and history of soccer. It even talked about the different crazy moves that players do and how to do them. I'm probably not gonna try them though. haha. At one point we got to see how fast we kick a ball into the goal. I kicked 77 km/s. Yeah that's a good score! When left for lunch at around 11 am we went to this huge mall (and I mean HUGE) for lunch. We got to walk around afterwards and you'll never guess what I saw...A store called "Cori"!!!! Spelled just like I spell it. I was so happy that I took a photo to remember how awesome I am. lol

Afterwards, we went to a large university and walked around the science fair they were hosting. It was pretty cool. There were lots of different exhibits but sadly I wasn't able to understand anything. Well from what I saw, the people put really hard work into their projects and they were very professionally done.
Finally we started our journy home and you'll never guess but all the boys slept the whole way home. haha. I slept too a little bit. It was uncomfortable on the bus but that's okay. I could sleep in the next day because my class did not have school tomorrow. All in all it was a fun trip and I'm glad I went on it.

Tchau,
Cori

 Museo de Futebol

 São Paulo Skyline

 My class up above and below

                                               Yes the store named after me really does exist!

1 month already?

So I have officially been here for 4 weeks. It still seems like a couple days ago I finally landed here. I have gotten a lot better at understanding Portuguese. I am really bad at speaking still. I started taking lessons and they are helpful. In my course I'm going to start working on conjugating verbs which is the hardest and yet most necessary thing to learn. Carnaval was fun. It's like one big dance party in the street in Palmital! I watched the Parades in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero on the TV. They were very cool and very elaborate. The costumes and floats were large and very detailed. I enjoyed watching them Samba. I don't think as Americans we really understand the work that goes into these elaborate events but it is so worth it in the end. Very cool! I wish everyone could watch and understand Caranval.  Tuesday I'm going on a trip to Sao Paulo with my class. We are going to visit a big college that is going to be hosting a science fair and we will go to the soccer museum. I'm excited. School has been getting better. It is still hard to understand but things but I can mostly figure some classes out by reading the books like math and physics. Portuguese, sociology, and history are hard because there is a lot of writing and reading and it's hard to catch on to what the teacher is talking about.

When talking about Brazil, you can't forget to mention the food. The food here is very different. I eat lots of bread, meat of all kinds, beans and rice. I eat rice and beans everyday and least one meal a day. I eat some kind of meat several times a week. I also have gotten to try Suco. It is the best juice I have ever had! We have this place called Coco Suco in my town. I love it! It's my favorite place ever!

I finally went to the Federal Police station and applied for my ID card. I am now allowed to live in Brazil! I had an issue with one paper not being Authorized and I freaked out a little but lucky enough for me there was a place in town I could go and get it done. Literally every single document I brought to the Federal Police had stamps and signatures all over it. I'm surprised they could even read them with everything scribbled and signed over and over. After that I could breath a little easier though. It was a long bus ride to Marilia and then back again but I'm just glad it is over. No more worrying about papers and time limits. Now I can relax.


Here are some pictures of my new family and friends:

Top Picture: Meeting my host family for the first time. Bia, Marco, William (Jessica's Brother), Jessica's mother, Jessica, Flavia, Me, My mother, and my father.

Bottom Picture: My New Friends. Me, Bianca, Julian (AFS German Exchange Student), Flavia (My sister), and Miriam (Bianca's sister).

I Made It!!!!

Yay! I finally here. Nothing could hold me back, not even a missing visa and passport. When I finally recieved my passport and visa I left the next morning catching an early flight to Sao Paulo. It was a lot of just waiting around amd when I was finally on the plane leaving, There was a lot of sitting. The flight was 8 hrs long. I watched two movies "Mr.Popper's Penguins" and "Monte Carlo". I slept for a bit but it wasn't a good sleep because I could get comfortable in the small space. I also read my portuguese book trying to study as much as I can not that it was helpful but it gave me something to do. When I finally arrived late at night I was met by Jessica my chapter president. We ate and then waited for the shuttle to the hotel we were going to stay at for the night. We slept then woke up at 6:30 in the morning and took a bus all the way to Palmital. It was a long bus ride. We both slept for the first half of thw ride and then afterwards we talked for a bit while we waited for the bus to arrive in Palmital. When I finally got there and met my family, it was such a whirl wind. Everything happened so fast. I got kisses from everyone and introduced and there were pictures. When that was over, they took me inside and showed me my room that I would share with my younger sister Flavia. My mom helped me unpack and then we all went to the kitchen to eat. It was sort of ackward because they tried to talk to me and I totally didn't understand nor could I respond. My family consists of my dad Julio, mom Cristina, older sister Bia (22), Nefew Marco (5), and younger sister Flavia (15).  My house is on a small street kind of on the outside of the city. All the houses are open and yet closed. What do I mean by this? I mean that the windows and doors are all open. No screens. But the houses all have gates that enclose the house. It's very different than what I am use to. Pictures to come soon.

 I started school on Tuesday. I was suppose to start Monday but I was so tired and jetlagged that my host mom let me stay home. School is way different than in the U.S. Each day the subjects are different and so is the schedule. The teachers switch classes instead of the students. School is also very hard becasue I don't understand anything that the teachers are saying. I can guess at math, physics and chemisrty but everything else is hard. I hope it gets better soon. Carnaval is this weekend and I have my Brazil survival course as well. If all goes well, we might have the kids from all over the state in AFS come and then we would all go to Carnaval together. I have made lots of friends but it´s hard to talk to them because my Portuguese is still really bad. They also talk to me all at once so it´s kinda confusing on who I should talk to. Everyone is really nice and lets me look of their book since I don´t have any yet for school. I also have to ride a bike to school because their are no school buses. Everyone here either rides a bike or a small motorcycle. Most people who do own cars, drive small cars. It´s also really hot. Even in the winter it doesn´t get lower than 40 or 50 degrees F. right now it´s summer here so every day its hot. Ahhh. I hope it starts to cool down. And that has been my life for the past few days. ;)

Cori

Two days until take off!

So time has completely flown by. Tuesday morning at 6am I will be leaving my comfy home in Medina, OH and heading for Miami. Wednesday is the gateway orientation and then Thursday at 6pm I'll be leaving for Sao Paulo, Brazil! I have almost finished packing. It's really hard to plan for a year but so far so good. I have said goodbye to so many people and it makes me sad to have to leave them all behind but I'm excited to make new friends and meet my host family. I'm still curious about Brazilian school. I still worry about fitting in even though I have been told over and over not to worry about that. I'm also worried about speaking Portuguese all the time. I hope I catch on fast to the language but there might be a lot of crazy motions in hopes of getting what I mean across in the beginning of my time in Brazil. Thanks for reading.

Cori

So much to do, so little time...

So 18 days left before I leave. It's pretty scary! I finally applied for my visa today. I'll receive it on the First of February. Plus I still have to pack and say good bye to everyone and go to Arizona and Pittsburgh and wow life is busy. Packing will be interesting. I'm very bad at time management when it comes down to stuff such as this and not very good and making clothes fit nice and neat into a small suitcase. Hopefully my mom will be able to assist me so there won't be a mental breakdown. Other than that I have also had my predeparture orientation tonight. I just made it back in time to get the papers finished and get into the call. I learned a lot and met other people going abroad soon to a few other countries. It was cool to see how other people thought of their exchange time and what theirs hopes and worries were as well. I have been listening to my Portuguese CDs a lot lately in hopes that it will prepare me enough to get basic information across until I learn more words and phrases. School will probably be the most different part. School in many other countries is very different than school in the United States and I'm excited to compare and contrast the two. This is going to be an interesting experience and I'm going to take it full stride.

Cori