Geeky Yet Waterproof

You’ve probably noticed that as it is now the year 2009, last night was New Year’s Eve. And in this country, people like New Year’s Eve.
I’ve never spent New Year in a hot place before, so this was a new experience. For at least a week, people have been setting off scarily loud fireworks every few minutes 24/7. No matter where they are in this city, you can hear them. When we first got here, I thought there was a rebellion going on and people kept exploding grenades.
Another thing I forgot to mention earlier (which doesn’t have anything to do with the New Year) is that about every 4th car that goes down the street here has a custom ear-blasting speaker system and drives along with the back hatch open and about 3 people hanging off. It’s so loud it can thump your chest from up here on the 2nd floor with the window facing away from the street.

Anyway, back to December 31st. Avó, Zi, and Clovis were making food all day, and by the evening we had more than a table completely full of delicious food… ham, fruit, rice, fruit, salad, fruit, fruit, beans, fruit, pudding, champagne, and fruit. And there was even some fruit.

When all was ready, we had to carry it all up to Iza’s uncle’s apartment on floor 5, where we’d be having dinner after midnight. Once all the food had been delivered (after three trips by six people), we stayed there for a while watching the sea of people from above before going down to the beach. It was insane — the crosswalk directly below looked like Times Square, and there was a group of people dancing in the middle of the street. They were following a car that blasting music and driving about 3mph (it couldn’t go any faster because of all the people). It was just like a parade — an improvised one!
And when we went down to the beach just before midnight, there were at least two million people all dressed in white. There is a tradition here that you have to dress in white on New Year’s Eve for good luck.
When the hour struck, two million people busted open bottles of champagne and exploded off fireworks all at once. (Actually it all happened over the course of about two minutes, because nobody’s clocks were the same.) Cassio aimed his glass champagne cannon right at me, and I took the full blow of it. My white t-shirt was suddenly tie-die!
After we had each drank at least a full bottle (though for the “children” it was non-alcoholic), we all ran over to the ocean for another local custom: everyone had to step in the water and jump seven waves, making a wish with each one. After the seventh, you must run backwards until you’re far from the water, without letting the eight wave touch you. (What happens if the eight wave touches you? Do you die in a fiery ball of flames? I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t risk it…)
After this was completed, we went back to Tio Claudio’s apartment to feast. There is another tradition that you must first eat a plate of seven different grains (rice, lentils, etc.), and only after that can you eat whatever you want. Zi explained this to me in Portuguese, but when she mentioned “sete grãos” (seven grains), I thought she said “sete graus”, (seven degrees) which I took to mean seven courses. You can eat whatever you want after you finish seven courses! Fortunately Iza explained it all to me in English before I erred.
It wasn’t until around 1:45am that we headed back to Iza’s apartment, all of us weighing about 10 pounds heavier.

Obviously, the next day we didn’t get up until around noon, and then we relaxed and digested for most of the day. In the afternoon, Iza, Cintia, Pamela (Iza’s cousin), and I drove 2.5 hours to Guarujá, so we could turn in our tickets for the Ivete Sangalo concert that would take place there on Saturday! (Ivete is sort of like Madonna here in Brazil, at least in terms of popularity). We also had to pick up some bright green shirts which we’d need to get in to the concert — they’re sort of like big, really green tickets. Our task took 10 minutes, and then we drove 2.5 hours back home, excited for the concert.

Christmas Eve. We woke up to the hottest day so far during my trip. After breakfast we went into town to go Christmas shopping, and we walked down the street where my dad bought his Brazilian guitar 30 years ago.
Later some of Iza’s friends from swimming came over, and we had a huge lunch of turkey, Brazilian rice, and salad. I had three helpings of this because I was advised that we wouldn’t be eating again until after midnight.
In the evening, we went to Iza’s aunt’s house for about half an hour to say hi to everyone and… to eat food. Then, we went to her grandmother’s house for more food and the gift exchange. I also got to meet all of her dad’s family there, which was cool. We all waited in the kitchen until midnight, then blew open the champagne and dug into the food when the hour struck.
After a lot of consumption, we went back to her aunt’s house for — you’ll never guess — MORE FOOD! It was incredible how much I ate that night. I think I’ve never consumed so much food within 24 hours ever in my life… but it sure tasted good!!
When we eventually returned to the apartment, we opened more presents and sat around talking for a while. We also ate some chocolates. It wasn’t until 4am that everybody was finally in bed!

On Christmas Day, I think I need not mention that we all woke up pretty late. We had a relaxing day, and we went out to lunch at a churrascoria (a Brazilian BBQ restaurant) with Clovis’s family. At restaurants like this, you have a little spinner thing on your table, and if you set the spinner to “green”, a constant stream of waiters will be coming by with hunks of meat on a stick, and you cut off however much you want. If, however, you set the spinner to “red”, it means you can’t possibly stuff yourself anymore, and the meat will pass you by.
Afterwards we went to Zi’s family’s house again and had more food, and just hung around for a while. I had a long conversation with one of Iza’s uncles in Portuguese, until he tried to argue politics with me, which I was simply unable to do. It’s hard enough in any language… let alone one I started learning 10 months ago.
When we got home we went around the apartment a little bit to visit some friends, then just relaxed for the rest of the evening so that we could get ready for the next day: the beach.

Me with my Secret Buddy, Iza’s avó

Some of the cousins: Eamon, Iza, The Dude, Cintia, Pamela, Leticia

Iza’s uncle teaching me the polite way to eat farofa

“The bird bites!!”

Viva!!

On Sunday morning, Iza and I went into downtown São Paulo and walked around the market at the Praça da Republica (Plaza of the Republic). It was full of art and native Brazilian artifacts — it reminded me of the Eugene Saturday market, only Brazilian, instead of… Eugenian. After spending some time there, we took the subway to Liberdade, the Japanese neighborhood in São Paulo. It was like Chinatown in any big city, only everything was Japanese, and there was an abundance of Hello Kitty in every shop. We walked around for a while, then took the subway again to Sé, which is a very poor part of town but is also the site of the foundation of the city in 1554.

Afterwards we went home for just a few minutes, and then drove to her grandmother’s house for a bigger family party than the one the night before. There were probably twice as many people here now, but the amazing part was when I found out that they had planned all this just the night before, over the course of about five minutes! And then they said they did it all for me! I couldn’t believe this, but it seemed like everyone wanted to talk to me, even though only one person could speak English (Sandra, Iza’s cousin, who is in fact an English teacher). Needless to say, I think my Portuguese improved by about 200% that day. It was hard to understand people at first, and some had different accents (there was even one uncle who spoke a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish, and people kept having to correct him — he was the hardest to understand), but it got easier as the party went on. But when everyone started getting drunk… it all just went downhill. Sandra was trying to explain to me in English something about somebody’s bad hair, and she kept mentioning garlic… I didn’t understand the significance of garlic, until Iza came over and whispered to me, “She means curly.”

One of Iza’s uncles climbed a tree and shook down some fruit for us to try, which I had never seen before. Then he went up the hill to the “banana house”, cut off a bunch of green bananas for frying, and proceeded to cut down the entire banana tree, pick it up, and carry it over to the garbage pile.
By the way, he’s 60.

The center of the party was the churrasco, or barbecue. They barbecued three types of meat: bife (steak), carne de porco (pork), and picanha (ox meat). There was also a sort of appetizer, which was coração de galinha: chicken hearts on a stick. Now before you vow never again to read my blog, let me tell you that it was delicious. I think I ate about 20 hearts, and all the little kids probably had just as many.
All of the food was amazing, and meat was constantly being barbecued and consumed for hours. After a while, they stopped cooking more meat and started roasting pineapples covered in cinnamon. They told me (in Portuguese) that you’re supposed to eat the pineapple after all the meat, because the acidity helps you digest. Well let me tell you, this was definitely better than any digestion pill I’ve ever taken.

The party started to quiet down after about eight hours, and people started going home with full bellies. Now I know what Brazilian parties are like.

“Fear me and my barbecue!”

After he cut off the bananas, he cut down the tree. With that knife.

Sandra, Eamon, Angela, Cassio, Cintia

The outside portion of the party

Bife, linguiça, and chicken hearts

“The Banana House”

Yes, I know. I haven’t blogged in two weeks. My entries are always late. I’ve become a lazy bum when it comes to blogging, and I’ve lost all my mad writing skillz.

But at least I’m blogging!

As you may be aware, last Friday was the 4th of July here in the USA. We had some Bearcat people over and went swimming/boating in the lake, then made a campfire and roasted s’mores. After a while we went inside and everyone participated in a ping-pong tournament, while Sammi and I jammed on my Les Paul.
It was a smaller party than we usually have here, but nice and relaxed.

—-

The next day I had to get up brutally early (for a 5th of July morning), because I had track racing state championships that day. So we headed to Alpenrose velodrome in Portland, and as soon as we got there it started pouring rain! Now, because the track is so steep, it’s impossible to ride around the banks without imitating an amateur skier, so they had to postpone everything until the track was dry.
Two hours and 500 towels later (not really) Alpenrose was dry, and people started zooming around the track. We soon discovered that my 17-18 year-old age category consisted of myself and Richie Suditu, an unfairly fast 18 year-old national-caliber racer.
We both did two matched sprints at the beginning. This happened to be the very first time I did a matched sprint at an actual race (yes, at the state championships). Of course Richie beat me both times, but the second one was by less than the first. Matched sprints are about 90% strategy and 10% legs, and I used better strategy my second try.
Our other races were a 1k time trial and a 20-lap points race. The points race was interesting — every 5th lap there would be a sprint, and the first four finishers would get points. The race basically consisted of myself, a couple unattached guys, and four riders from team BBC. Three of the BBC guys worked together for the whole race and I hung with them most of the time, drafting here, bridging a gap there… I came in 4th in each of the sprint laps, and I finished 4th at the end of the race.

I ended up getting a silver medal for the overall, because Richie and I were the only 17-18 year-olds (even though I am, in fact, 16). This (state championships) was a fun little break from swimming, and an opportunity to try out my new track racing skills.

A few weeks ago I got to see some of my high school friends again, because Sarah was having a party at the neighborhood pool. Morning practice that day had cured me almost completely of the urge to swim, but the heat of the day and the blue water prevailed over my will.
After a while we were all starting to freeze, so we got out and sat around a fire eating hamburgers and roasting s’mores. I tried to break my previous record of two hamburgers and seven s’mores in a row, but I only made it to six s’mores this time, because — thank goodness — after some time they took away the s’more materials.

When it was dark, we were all sitting around trying to think of scary stories to tell each other, but didn’t progress much farther than, “Somebody should say something scary!” — that is, until Troyce suddenly exclaimed, “Did Eamon bring the Mercedes?!” And before I knew it, Troyce, Joe, and somebody I didn’t know were marching out to go “sit” in my car.

As we were all sitting in the dark car blasting Franz Ferdinand through the speakers, somebody had the idea that “we should go to 7-Eleven and get a slurpy to pour on Sarah!” So we drove half a mile to the 7-Eleven to complete this mission. When we got back, we responded to Sarah’s “can I have a sip?” with, “of course!” *pssssshshhhhhh*.
It was a great success.

But soon afterwards, I discovered my cell phone had gone missing from my pocket. We looked for it all over the car, but unfortunately it was on vibrate mode, so calling it didn’t do any good. I figured it would turn up eventually, so I borrowed someone’s phone to let my parents and Iza know I didn’t have my own with me.
Later, some of my friends started calling (on the other phone) to say they’d been getting constant foul messages from my phone. At first I thought someone from the party must have taken it as a joke, but after further investigation nobody seemed to have it. It then dawned on me that it might have fallen out of my pocket at the 7-Eleven and somebody took it.

I won’t take the time to explain the steps we took in trying to figure out if somebody at the 7-Eleven did indeed take it, but unfortunately that was the case and I’m currently (partially) phoneless. So until an iPhone finds its way magically into my hands, should you need to contact me, call my old number but with a 6 instead of a 3 at the end. (The number of my sister’s phone, which I stole BORROWED for an extended period of time).

Although I neither go to school, nor would I be a Junior if I did, last Saturday was Prom. Because Iza, being an exchange student, has certain superpowers here, we went as sophomores.

I met up with Iza and Allison at Iza’s house for Photos Round I. After that we drove over to Trevor’s house (Allison’s date) for italian sodas and then Photos Round II.

After this, we rode in a Cadillac to Corvallis where we had dinner at The Gables, then we went back to Salem where the dance was.
The McNary school regulations were comical. There were teachers wearing identical blue shirts stationed every 10ft on the wall, with the principle standing on a chair (of authority?). There was a rule that the lights had to stay on, but that rule was broken after about 45 minutes. At one point the principal actually went up to the microphone and demanded that everyone “spread out”!
Despite these factors, it was still a lot of fun. At about 10:30 we went back to Trevor’s house to watch a movie before splitting up, and then we all desperately avoided the Keizer cops until safely home (well past curfew).

The next morning we had to get up early for a swim meet in Corvallis, but the last night was worth the 15 second add in my race…

On Saturday night we had a high school swim team party at Sirenia’s house. I had never been there before, but I was surprised to discover that it was 1.2 miles from where I live!

The main game was a relay, which consisted of several generic party events (such as carrying a LifeSaver on a straw in your mouth), but with the inclusion of a Challenge from Hell™: Debra concocted a Drink of Doom from ice cream, tarter sauce, cottage cheese, nacho cheese?, Tabasco, pretzels, ketchup, and more (the drink was pink and chunky, suspiciously similar to vomit).
Once did I taste the infernal Drink, yet thrice did I almost taste my lunch again. I’ve eaten some very questionable things in my life, but this was the closest thing to death that has ever entered my mouth.

After the relays there were plates of whipped cream set out, with a piece of bubble gum buried in each. We had to dig in with our face and find the bubble gum, then be the first to blow a bubble.
It wasn’t pretty.

After everyone had gotten cleaned up and things were starting to slow down, five of us went on a “walk”, which ended up being a 1.2 mile excursion to my house. The only problem was we forgot to tell people that we’d be gone for a while, so apparently they sent a rescue party up the road looking for us… Needless to say, they weren’t too thrilled when we came back an hour later in a van, refreshed and wondering what was all the commotion.

On Thursday we had a high school meet against Sprague, and beat them for possibly the first time (that I can remember). I swam the 200 IM and 100 fly, which was an epic race between myself and Emiliano. I could see we were trading off the lead at each wall, but at the end I got a 58.26 and he got 58.82. We both had been waiting for that race all season.
Afterwards some of us went out to dinner at Red Robin, where (surprise!) we also saw Sammi and some of her friends.
After a while, somebody joked that we should go bowling, but then somebody else said, “Sure!”. Well, Shawn had a car and a few empty seats, so while about four people went home, the rest of us extended the post-meet party a little longer at Firebird Lanes. This is how it was meant to be… don’t go to school, but party with the school kids at night.