Maschmellow @ Privi-lee-zhee, Samba, AIESEC, and more!

Ola meus amigos e minhas amigas!

Ahh so I´ve finally gotten to writing a little again, I´ve been meaning to for a while. So, last time I wrote, it was about my trip to Rio. Since then I´ve been quite busy though havent gone on any other trips out of town yet.

First of, I´ve been to a few parties here in Juiz de Fora, to a funk party at a fancy club called Privelege (you say it "Privileee-zheee", it sounds very cool), and if you guys dont remember, funk is a type of Brazilian hip-hop music which made me feel quite intimidated in Rio. In JF, the manner of dancing wasnt quite so extraverted though, although the actual funk only started at like 2 am!

Anyways, Privilege is quite a cool place (although, pretty expensive, as many things in Brazil actually are), surrounded by a forest, in a big beautiful building, and an extra restaurant as well. I also went to Privilege last week for a "Top of the Pops" party with some people who invited me, and yes, it was Western music, haha. It was cool though, and a nice company. And many, many gay couples... I will say no more :P
The party was really fun with lots of pop hits, old and new, but what was also pretty memorable for me, was that when I went to get a taxi home, a bit earlier than my friends, I got one with another girl who was also going into town. She was pretty impressed with my Portuguese considering I was then only in Brazil for 5 weeks (now its 6 lol), as most people catch on pretty quickly when I speak that I´m not Brazilian (or, as they call it, gringa); and she told me: "Voce está doida", which means "You are crazy". This girl was kinda funny, and very talkative, and according to what I understood, I was therefore crazy for going back home on my own in a foreign city haha.

Of course, when most people think of Brazilian music, the genre they immediately arrive at is samba. As some of you may know, I´ve tried a little samba in Holland already a few years ago, and I went to a samba party in town a couple of weeks ago. I have to say, if you´re worried about gaining weight (and I maybe should be, as I eat more here than I generally do, although so far I havent seen any changes. I thought I was being abnormal, but apparently Brazilians just kinda eat all the time... so maybe it just means I´m integrating well!), samba is a very good workout. It is hard! And then you see some girls just dancing away at a speed that could get them all the way to planet Venus before they know it, and just feel inadequate with your feeble little attempts at learning it. But maybe it wasnt so bad - this week I was told that I was dancing samba like a Brazilian who doesnt know how to dance samba, rather than a foreigner who doesnt know how to dance samba. So there you go, I´m pretty content with that.

The band that was playing the samba was really nice though. The woman´s voice was really good, and some songs were really cool. I have to say, Brazilian music really is very rich. This week I went to a samba performance at a cultural dance school with some friends, and while I was expecting a performance of just samba dancing, it was a lot more than that, exceeding my expectations. The show was a mix of music and dancing (a samba style called samba gafiera, danced in couples, I believe it is a more traditional samba style), some singing, acting, a plot, and even video of the actors/dancers involved. It was actually about a real person, a samba musician from Juiz de Fora. It was only about an hour long, but really excellent. And afterwards, we congratulated a bunch of performers who were in it, and it is so funny that here you even kiss them on the cheeks when you meet them afterwards, even if you´ve never met before (and probably won´t meet again). My friends and me hung around on the balcony for a little while the actors were getting ready to leave, and actually I havent met a couple of the girls before, so that was nice to get acquanted.

I´ve also been to a couple of house visits, to the house of a teacher from Saci (whose daughter is in one of my bilingual classes), where there were also her son and his girlfriend, and another friend, and it was nice to get to know everyone. They were actually the ones who took me to Privilege for the pop party. They also taught me the meaning of some funk lyrics, and I haven´t realized till then that the lyrics were quite that explicit :p

I´ve also visited the house of my friend Vico, and yesterday I joined him and his family at a hotel/bar type of place where some of his family were performing famous Brazilian songs, which was also fun, to just hang around, chat and, of course, eat ;) (It really isnt just me, its the culture... what a relief!).

And last weekend was the AIESEC discovery days weekend for the new members the committee has recently recruited, and I was invited (/requested, hehe) to come along. It was at this big house they rented, somewhere at the outskirts of the city, with some nice views of hills and other pretty houses. The house was really big, although most of it was just for the owner who rented the place to us, but we had quite a bit of space downstairs for the AIESEC activities, introduction stuff, parties, etc. There was even a pool that some LC (local committee) members were thrown in at the end (luckily, not me), although during the day there was no sunbathing by the pool as they had a tight schedule with lots of work to be done. Well, they had lots of work, like introducing the 29 or so new members to different aspects of AIESEC, discussing the current affairs of the LC, etc. On Sunday, I and a few others who have been or are on an AIESEC exchange, were asked to participate in some sharing between trainees and new and old members about our exchange experience; but aside from that I didnt have many tasks to do as I´m not a member of LC and my Portuguese is limited. Oh yes, that said, most of the stuff was actually in Portuguese, so it really tested my skill levels. But many people were very impressed nevertheless by how fast I´m learning the language, and I did try my best to understand things (of course, people also spoke English. And when we did our sharing, I did so in English. But all the presentations and discussions were in Portuguese, so I tried understanding them as well as I could. And I interacted with people, particularly new members, in a mixture of English and Portuguese).

We did a bunch of roll calls too, which are a typical aspect of AIESEC culture: a dance routine to various songs. And are there many! We did one a couple of times that I learned in Shanghai and which is really famous the world over called "Tunak, Tunak", so I was really excited. For the rest, I had to learn on the go as I am almost as clueless about AIESEC roll calls as the new members are. That was a workout too ;) And the party on Saturday night involved many of these roll calls, with a few people leading the way - it is amazing how many roll calls they can remember.
During the weekend, you could post little notes into each others´ "mailboxes", and pick up your envelope on Sunday evening. So I wrote a bunch of little notes to a bunch of people, and now have a small stack myself :)

And tomorrow is Konninginnedag! It´s amazing how fast time flies, really. I wish those of you in Holland an awesome Qday and long weekend, party for me! :p
Tomorrow is also a cultural Russia day at Saci (yep, a bit ironic, I know, but I´m obviously pretty used to cultural mixes by now), and hopefully it will go well :) We worked really hard on it this week with the teacher whose class is responsible for it.

I hope you guys are all doing well! Those of you reading this outside of Brazil (well, most of you), I miss you all!

Muitos beijos pros todos!

^^