perdido

so I kind of think there is a curse on my first class. I don't think I've been let in for it more than twice so far. Today was the worst; I woke up at 5H30 to catch a bus at 5H45 in order to MAYBE get to school by 7H. but guess what? 20 minutes to 7, the bus literally BREAKS DOWN in the middle of the street, everyone gets out and waits half an hour for the next bus to pass by.

I'm on that bus, and somehow the bus manages to NOT pass in front of my school like my host mom had said it would (why do I trust anything she says though? she says she has never used the bus). I was pretty much forced off the bus by peer pressure, but I think we were all supposed to get off. Unfortunately I had no idea where I was, basically I was in the smelly, graffitied, salty-aired abandoned part of Salvador.

So I walked for a while, passed some stray dogs, some homeless people sleeping in carpets on the street, some food stands. Finally I resolved to catch the bus home (another hour and a half on the bus), so I caught 'V. do Atlântico' until, miraculously, it did a turn around and passed by my school.

and I still only missed first period, so all my hijinks and adventures went completely unnoticed. truth be told the only reason I didn't just go home was because I have Religion class today, and I reaaaally like Religion class. mostly because of my glaring lack of interesting classes.

no pictures right now.
I'll tell about Morro de São Paulo and Porto Seguro later (sorry I haven't updated for so long, I know some people are still reading this but I'm really writing now because reading my old entries is a riot.)

tchau gente
--m

the legendary photo post (more to come shortly)

I'm not doing so good on the consistent blog timeline thing... I'll probably never fix it though, that's how I like it. This picture was of the walk to the cave we went through on the Lençóis trip, the sky was crazy blue and beautiful.

The first day in Lençóis we hiked for about three minutes and hit a series of really awesome little pools and rock formations (this is one with Lençóis in the background)

My faux-artistic photography at work

these pools look really shallow, but that one behind Freddy was deep enough to jump into. The people on this trip were me, Sandra (behind Freddy in the black swimsuit - from Germany), Mathilde (next to Sandra - from Denmark), Kevin (from Germany), Sherise (from Florida) and Alexember (from Iowa?) We also had Neyton (Kevin's host dad) but that's a given.

water in motion

more dynamic water

lambreta, after which I was forced to drink the 'caldo', or juices

bright sky!

pineapple plant

hey Mom! hey Dad! Bird of paradise!

the cave roof

A lizard chillin' under the tree

The inseperable Dane and German (Mathilde and Sandra)

The clear water cave in Lençóis where we went snorkeling

on top of Pai Inácio

Some random religious statue on Madre de Deus (an island in All Saints' Bay, a few hour drive from Salvador)

Another shot of this incredible island (also will be bringing back incredible shells from here, all orange and blue and huge)

vou colocar algumas fotos daqui um pouco, seja paciente e me espere gente...

I went to Olodum with the kids from the Northeast trip on Tuesday (pretty good until Charlie Brown Jr. took over for an hour...)

two kids going home: Greg (Vancouver, Canada exchange student) is going home and Moni (Melbourne Australia girl) is going home too...

on the 16th I'm going to Lençoís for a five-day hiking trip,

tomorrow I'm going to a capoeira 'roda' (meeting-type thing) at 5H30 followed by a forro (Brazilian dance) event with my host mom and the German girl spending a week at my house

today I went to the beach with the same girl, found a sea urchin, went swimming, used my conga (thin Brazilian towel made to look like the flag...), and then later ate acarajé

Saturday might be headed BACK to Mercado Modelo and Pelourrinho, even after I spent three solid days there basically... on the 14th I have to do my presentation (that was what that last failed post was supposed to be... if anyone wants to see it they can comment asking for me to email them the invite...)

pictures real soon, I got my thumb drive back and will be uploading recent pictures within the next week... sorry to who ever is still reading this :D
-- m

nova familia

So yesterday Paulo tried to keep me with him for as long as possible (he even took me to Vitoria x Palmeiras futebol game until like 6h30 which had me at the house at like 7 and me at my next host family at like 9h30... game was interesting, especially when some guy set of three bombs - apparently 'torcidores do Palmeiras' are the most violent fans of any Brazilian soccer team - they're from São Paulo...)

so now I have a new shirt from the Vitoria game, all my stuff packed in two suitcases and two backpacks (except my blazer and the two paintings I bought). and I'm sitting at the house right now. They have a pool and a really cool neighborhood and a fitness center right nearby! very cool. plus the beach is a short jaunt away apparently, so that's good.

anyway I left my thumb drive uploading photos at the Rochas house (on purpose, don't worry) so when they get that to me I'll be uploading photos quick. watch out for that.

tchau!
-- m

only six more days

I change host families in exactly six days as of today.
Today I believe I am going to a rock concert with Greg and whoever else is with him, and maybe going to the movies and Paulo might remember to take me to prove that his boat actually EXISTS. other than that not much going on, on Friday I had a normal-yet-fulfilling day; I bought chocolate milk and wandered around with Larah, then went to Caffa's house and played some weird version of Brazilian crazy eights with about seven different people, then went to João's birthday party and ate a whole shit ton of sushi of every conceivable kind. And I made a new friend all on my own (which I still get excited about doing, even though I'm doing it a lot recently... her name was Vivian and she was a typical Brazilian beautiful friendly kid... people must think it's appealing to be really white and have an annoying sotaque (accent)

also NaNo update, I finally hit 30K words last night, which means I only need to write like 5K words a day to make it without too much stress... I think I can do it, do you? (I cheated a little, parts of it are in English cause I didn't know the words for some things, like arrow... and couldn't be bothered to check the dictionary).

I will upload some kickass pictures for those of you who don't have facebooks or orkuts when December gets here.
peace out!
-- m

fim da escola

herro everybody!

yea the internet is kaput right now, so the next update might not come until December, sorry about that (but people don't appear to be reading to much so I'm not stressing..)

looks like I'm going skydiving, scuba diving, surfing, probably on Iguaçu Falls trip, birthday party next week, a show of some sort on the 22nd, maybe taking an English test on the 19th to humor my classmates, changing host families on the 29th (on the same day is the District 4550 outbound interviews, so we're supposed to go...)

I can't sleep lately because of NaNoWriMo and BUGS. there are bugs EVERY WHICH WAY, HITHER AND THITHER, BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. there is this one mosquito that hates me and keeps me up all night, and last night there was this mental bug that kept slamming against walls and the ceiling. couldn't sleep until like 4 in the morning, and by then the moon was all bright and pretty, so I had to go look at it...

speaking of NaNoWriMo, by last count I was 15,026 words in (almost 100% in authentic, I-checked-the-dictionary-and-spell-check-TWICE portuguese. which means today I am about 7000 words behind, AND I have capoeira today.

FUN. STUFF.

I'm writing postcards right now to be sent in a big bundle home and then scattered to the winds. If you want one, you should scurry like bunnies and give me your address so's I can send ya one.

school is pretty much out for me because no one expects me to take tests (though I DID pass the Literature test oddly enough...can't say the same for the Portuguese chemistry test...)

so...this year has been on and off, but all together it has been "all that and a bag of chips" (I've been itching to use that expression for a while, so there you go). end of school means no more drawing commissions which distract me from class (which is sad, I'm getting pretty good at them...)

my next host family apparently has a 14 and a 10 year old and a dog and live close to the beach. looks like a good summer coming up, hmm?

Christmas approaches...we'll see how that goes!

Skype might be out of the question Sky and Dad, but feel free to try calling me to see if the web is back up. probably won't be because brazilians are notoriously undermotivated to get stuff done, but you never know.

peace!
--- m
(also this might be obvious, but no pictures for a while either...sorry!)