I need...a cabbage
Oh the challenges of management in a foreign language, one that you are far from fluent in.
Yesterday I was doing well, explaining the agenda for the summer courses at
Musiartes to Simone, one of the receptionists.
"Here you can see who are the teachers, the number of hours per session, the number of sessions for week. So what I need you to do is created the agenda"
It is all good until here. There are nods of understanding.
and then.
eu preciso...um repulho ate sexta feira
I need a...repulho...by friday...
Blank look
The word I am searching for is Draft and I recall a word starting with R and ending with HO printed across a document that was a draft...
Repulho? Simone asks.
Si, um repulho. Yes, a repulho. I am more convinced
She searches online for a minute and then finds a picture of a repulho. It is not a draft. Not even close. It's a cabbage.
"Dear Simone, I need a cabbage by Friday, it is extremely urgent."
Awesome.
By the way, the word for draft is
Rascunho. A difference of a few little letters and I go from draft to cabbage.
The sun sets on Santa Maria
The sun makes a brief appearance only to descend into the horizon
Do you like blue or red?
"Annika, which color do you prefer, red or blue?"
This is a loaded question in Santa Maria, one that means friendship or the cold shoulder.
I was first asked this question driving from Porto Alegre to Santa Maria, bumping over the pockmarked pavement.
"So what's your answer?"
I can tell by the way it is phrased and the way that everyone in the car turns around in their seats to hear my answer that they are asking something more important than what is my favorite color.
"Ummm, well...I wear a lot of blue..."
"YES! Gremista!
"But I like red as well"
Other person in the car, " YES! Internacional! Colorado!"
As of yet I've not had to choose sides and am trying to avoid doing so under any circumstance. Both teams are from Porto Alegre, both started in the early 1900s.
One of the most common ways Colorado fans explain the difference is by pulling at their skin and saying "Preto, preto!" meaning that Internacional has always allowed people from all ethnicities to play, whereas other teams were exclusive, sometimes even to only a certain ethnicity, such as the German only team, or the Italian only team.
I'm sure the day will come soon when someone will give me a shirt as a "gift" as a way to brand me as one side or the other. For the moment I remain unclaimed.
night fears
tic tic tic.
tic tic.
tic tic tic tic.
In my subconscious I hear these tapping noises on my right ride. Must be a dream.
tic
No. Not a dream.
I reach to my right and feel for the switch on my bedside lamp...
I swallow a scream. Adrenaline shoots from a pocket in my heart.
On the edge of my laptop, this very computer, sits my nemesis. Two long antennae tap the screen, feet that emerged from primordial ooze freeze for a moment, brown shell of a body taunts me with its ability to survive a nuclear holocaust.
I turn off the light, hoping to escape the visual image.
tap tap tap.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
The sound of cockroach feet hits the pit of my stomach, draws sweat to the surface of my skin. I should be able to deal, it's just a damn cockroach. But I remember waking in the middle of the night in Cameroon to the Flying cockroaches that would land on the sides of my mosquito net, and once going on an adrenaline fear fueled rampage to eliminate this creature from existence. Shock, and suddenly I flashed forward out of the craziness into a moment of meta cognition and realized that here I was, in only my underwear, viciously focused on crushing a fairly harmless animal with my flip-flop.
So now I sit here awake, blogging about my irrational fear of cockroaches, hoping that the one or two who reside in my room will please just disappear into a nice cockroach hole for the night, change their schedules to hang out and tap around during the day while I'm not here and agree to not ever, for any reason, venture into the cushy territory of my bed, or into the soft folds of my clothes.
Ridiculous amounts of Meat
I pity the vegetarian of Rio Grande do Sul. I haven't met one yet, but when I do, I will be in awe of the will power, the sheer determination to find restaurants with vegetarian dishes on the menu and the stomach to withstand watching the regional past time of this state: Churrasco - Brazilian BBQ.
My first two days in Santa Maria I attended three churracos. The first was my host family's welcome churrasco, complete with enormous slabs of meat, chicken hearts, and salads that allow you to fool yourself into pretending that you're eating a light, healthy meal, and that you didn't just have grease dripping down your face a moment ago.
My second BBQ took place at my friend and co-projecteer Mauricio's house: once again the theme of chicken hearts and huge slabs of meat continue, with a new twist of dipping the meat into farofa, a powdery substance made out of manioc that is very similar to giri in Ghana. At this point I'm pretty sure I've reached my meat saturation point for a few days and that I may need to have a vegetable fast for a few days to normalize my digestive system.
But it is not to be.
Day two in Santa Maria brings yet another Churrasco, with even larger slabs of beef skewered onto small metal poles that pierce the flesh. This time I get to watch the process of impaling the sides of meat onto the skewers, a process of weaving the poles through the meat and then rubbing it in rock salt. It slowly roasts on the grill, browning perfectly, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.
It is delicious. Every five minutes or so I decide that I definitely will not eat anymore. And then I fail at keeping that promise. The pieces are cut so small...so easy to eat...
My second extreme meat encounter happened after attending an amazing percussion show on Thursday. It was late, but we decided to go get a Santa Maria favorite: Xis.
Pronounced Cheese, it is the American Cheeseburger's enormously obese older brother. The Xis is something that looks like it should be eaten only in one of those How Many can you eat competitions, or those restaurant promotions where they offer you a free meal if you finish the Mac Daddy of Burgers.
I tried, but in the end the Xis won.
Summer is coming and with it Churrasco's galore. I will need some mental preparation and will power to survive, but I know that I will.
Ate logo...until next time...
Labels: Brazil, food, meat
a week of heat and storms
I head out into the street outside my office building in Santa Maria at the end of the day, attempting to catch the break in the rain in order to walk home.
Turning the corner, the weather is clearly not on the same page as me. The clouds tear open and the battering of the earth begins again. Four days ago the temperature in Santa Maria was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and now I am cursing not bringing my raincoat to work.
My open umbrella dances with others on the street, rising and falling to pass each other and avoid poking out their owner's eyes. Again, I turn and the rain beats down, increasingly more aggressive. I stop under an awning, waiting for it to slow, but after a while decide that the bottom of my jeans are soaked anyways so I might as well continue.
As I walk, the rushing water on the sidewalk seeps into my shoes and slowly soaks my feet, creating an internal slip and slide for my foot.
I come to a crosswalk that is no longer a crosswalk. A river about four feet across now runs through either side of the zebra strips, ankle deep, brown water that is carrying all the dirt of the city to some unknown location underground. I survey the scene, walk towards a slimmer part of the river and in the end have to stomp across anyways, giving into the wet, allowing it to fully bathe my feet and ankles.
And I can't help but smile as an old woman stomps across with me in her flip flops as she explains to me that it's good she's wearing a short dress so it doesn't get wet. At the next river, deeper and wider than the last, off go her flip flops and she wades across the street.
A small bird rolls down the sidewalk with the water, its feathers slicked down to its body, a tiny drowning victim of the storm.
When I reach home, I sit with my host parents at the front door of the house sipping juice and chimarrao, a bitter herbal hot drink characteristic of the South, and watching the rain drops explode on the street.
The storm eventually passes and leaves fresh wet streets,wet people and clean air, staving of the heat. At least for today.
