Unfortunately, living in Brazil can be a bit dangerous even if you are not a tourist.  According to a recent study, Brazil has two cities in the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world and fifteen cities in the top 50 - the most of any country.  I felt safe last year living in Ilhéus, BA because I lived in a smaller city and spent most of my time in my neighborhood community where everybody knows everybody.  This year, however, I live in Belém, one of the largest cities in Brazil by population and the main hub in the north of the country.  Out of all of the places where I have lived and traveled, living here has definitely felt the most unsafe.


Although the polls and studies focus on violent crimes and homicides, most residents consider Belém to be dangerous because of muggings and theft.  I have not met a single person here who hasn't been mugged at least once and many students have been robbed several times.  I have talked with many students about what normally happens in these incidents and it tends to be this: someone approaches you with a knife or a gun when there is nobody else around and demands everything you have.  Most of the students I talk to say that when they get robbed they "don't feel afraid but rather they feel helpless and very angry."

About three weeks ago, I was walking home with two other Americans and we were approached by two men with knives.  The men had pieces of cardboard in their hands that shielded the knives from anyone else on the street.  They wanted our money and our cell phones.  I had my cell phone hidden in my clothes but since I had just come from the university, I had my backpack.  We gave them what we had and they ended up giving me my backpack back saying that they "didn't want books."  I didn't end up losing anything, but the other girls lost their phones.  The incident was traumatic, frustrating and a huge reality check for what daily life is really like here.



This same situation happened yesterday to one of the German students living in our house while he was on his way back from the market and is just another reminder of the never-ending problem of crime in the city.  This affects my daily life in a number of ways.  When I walk around, I always have my cell phone hidden in my bra.  I never take my computer out of the house and only carry things I am willing to lose in my backpack with me.  If I happen to be carrying more than about $10, I divide it into two separate stashes.  According to everyone here, the most important thing about being mugged is that you have to give them something.

I wouldn't say that I live in fear here, but I do live in a state of hyper-awareness of the people and situations around me.  When I walk, I scan peoples' faces and clothes to see what kind of person they are and I am always watching to see what they have in their hands.  I don't like leaving the house at certain times of the day when the streets are dead and I have to take taxis a lot more than I'd like to.  I dress very casual and carry things in plastic shopping bags instead of in a purse.  Above all, I have a significant appreciation for what it means to feel safe and how this feeling is so easy to take for granted.  In eight more months I get to return to Holland, Michigan, a place where some people don't even lock their doors at night, but for the permanent residents of Belém, they will continue figuring out ways to deal with the ever present threat of violence and crime in their city for a long time yet to come.

Anna, Stevie and I do various things as ETAs (English Teaching Assistants) at the Federal University.  We hold conversation clubs, do classroom visits and meet with students to offer individual help with writing assignments, TOEFL test preparations and college essays and applications.  One of the most fun things that we work on together is putting on workshops about American culture.  We have started offering workshops every Friday and so far they have been very well-received and successful.  Last Friday we had our most ambitious workshop yet - decorating Easter eggs.


We each did a short Powerpoint presentation and then led four different stations while small groups rotated through.  Anna talked about the history and regional variations of Easter celebrations in the States, Stevie shared about Easter candy and fun family traditions, and I talked about decorating eggs.  After the short presentation, we divided the students into four groups.  One group started with egg decorating and the others played various word games and participated in activities to stimulate conversations about Easter in the U.S.



We gave the workshop twice: once in the morning and once in the afternoon and had about 15 students at each event.  Fortunately, Sean came along and volunteered for the day which helped out a lot.  Obviously, the highlight of the day was dyeing eggs and none of the students had ever done anything like it before.  It was fun to see how different all of the designs were and how creative the students were.  At the end of each workshop we received lots of thank-yous and compliments.  One student said that our workshop was the most dynamic English class that he had ever been to - so cool!  We are looking forward to our future Friday culture workshops and I hope they all end up being as successful as this one was.

One of the goals that Sean and I have this year in Brazil is to learn to dance.  This is proving to be more difficult than was originally expected but it has also been a lot of fun.  There are a lot of different possibilities if one wants to learn to dance in Brazil: Samba, Reggae, Carimbó, Forró etc.  Sean and I chose to learn how to dance Forró which is kind of a traditional folk dance for couples but which can also be sped up to dance to pretty much any kind of popular music.
Forró is pronounced "Fough - hough" and is thought to have come from the words "For All" in English.  It's a type of dance that is particularly popular during the São João festival which celebrates the harvest, the working class and family/friends.  It's one of the most popular styles of music and dance in Brazil and is definitely one that is for everyone.

 
My host dad organized a group Forró 101 class for all of the Fulbrighters in the city.  It was held on the porch of my host family and we attracted quite a few neighborhood spectators who hung around to watch the Americans make fools of themselves.  They were not disappointed.  We had an actual Forró teacher who was very patient and started with the basics.  He said that we all needed to move our bodies more, relax and just feel the music.  We assured him that it's much easier said than done.

These days, Sean and I go to dance class every Saturday night with our same original instructor.  The studio is within walking distance of our house and the class lasts for about two and a half hours by the end of which we are both physically and mentally exhausted. 


Last week we decided we might be good enough to try our hand at some real Forró dancing at a club.  This turned out to be a very humbling experience as we weren't even good enough to make it out on the dance floor.  We stayed in a dark corner and tried as best we could to remember moves from class and keep up with the complicated music while staying out of the way of everyone else.  Watching everyone else (who appeared to be professional dancers) was inspiring, however, and now we are fired up for our next class on Saturday night. 

If you are tall, one of the first things you will notice in Brazil during Easter is the quantity of low-hanging giant chocolate eggs in every store that knock you on the head.  Buying these eggs for friends and family is a delicious (and also expensive) tradition here.  The price of the chocolate egg depends on the size and brand along with what's inside.  Some eggs contain other types of candy or chocolate and many have toys and trinkets in the middle.

Our "Bis" chocolate Easter egg

It even comes with a little stand so you can admire it

Last year I really wanted to buy an egg but I didn't because they were so expensive.  This year I'd been bugging Sean about wanting to get one and so we went the day after Easter hoping they'd be on sale.  They weren't.  Instead, we paid the same price (about 20 USD) for one of the eggs that nobody wanted.  I learned my lesson.



We bought a smaller egg of a medium quality brand of chocolate with "Bis" candy inside.  "Bis" is kind of like a Kit Kat but not as good.  In any case, I was still very excited to have bought a Brazilian chocolate traditional egg and I was even more excited to open and eat it.  It was definitely not $20 delicious but the whole experience was fun nevertheless and it will be cool to talk about it with my students.

The biggest challenge is eating it before it melts in the hot weather!

 
Though holidays like Easter make me miss my family back home, we had a really fun international celebration at the house where I live.  We got together and prepared dinner and drinks that was made even more entertaining by the fact that there were people from the U.S., Germany, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.  There wasn't one language that we all had in common so there were always several different translations going around the table at the same time.  I loved it! 

Dinner at the house

Missing these beautiful faces back home along with the tulips!

One of the ways in which this position is so different than last year's position is that I don't have my own classes.  Instead, I collaborate with Brazilian English professors to create special events, visit classes for an activity or discussion and promote English conversation and American culture by holding workshops and conversation clubs.  It feels like I get to do all of the fun stuff that goes along with teaching without all of the paperwork and politics.

My favorite event so far was a language and culture event that we put on last week.  We worked with two different Brazilian instructors, Juliana and Paula, and combined their classes on Wednesday morning to learn about the American tradition of making S'mores.  The students were studying how to give instructions in English so following recipes fit right in with their unit.  We planned for everyone to meet outside by the river and students brought charcoal, bricks, wooden sticks, chocolate and sweet crackers.  Paula had to look very hard for marshmallows but finally found some funny, colored ones in a candy store in the mall.



The students were very excited to have a non-traditional English class and seemed to really really appreciate the chance to be outside as well as the opportunity to interact and practice English with Anna, Stevie and me.  After we started the coals, which took about an hour in the rain and hot and humid air, we explained the history and tradition of S'mores and then instructed how to make them.



The class was a huge success and the students loved roasting the marshmallows and then making the sweet sandwiches.  They don't have anything like that here in Brazil and many of them went back for seconds and thirds.  Nobody seemed to mind sweating around the fire or the bright and fruity marshmallows.  After the class, students pulled out a slack line and a guitar and we just hung out around the river together.  It was a really fun morning and one that I hope can be repeated in different ways for the rest of the semester.

Three of these situations have happened to me in the past week or so which, I think, represent perfectly the hilarity, the frustration and the utter ridiculousness it is to temporarily reside in the country of Brazil.  The first one helps to explain the lack of blogging the past month.

Situation 1: The internet
The internet where I live has been spotty, inconsistent and very, very weak.  Usually it doesn't work at all.  Everybody in the house is ready for a change, but we're all a bit wary of trying to quit the current internet provider and look for a new one because of the wasted time and bureaucratic hurdles involved.  Processes like this in Brazil can be so nightmarish to attempt (especially for a foreigner) that they are almost comical.  Almost.

The other day I resolved to start the process of taking the plunge and making the change.  I walked to a nearby, recommended itnernet company and asked about the possibliity of signing up.  They told me about the rates and service and then told me about the forms that I needed to fill out.  "Can I do that here?" I asked.  I was informed that no, I couldn't fill out the forms there but that I had to fill out the forms online.  "Do you have wifi here so I could do that now?" I asked.  I was told again that no, the internet provider did not have wifi available at their physical location.  I was advised to fill out the forms online at home.  "But I don't have internet at home, that's why I'm here - to install internet in my house" I explained.  The internet company said that they were sorry but that they couldn't help me and turned to the next customer.

Situation 2: Cellular communication
Most of us in Belém use a cell phone provider called TIM because it's cheap.  Unfortunately, because it's so cheap, service is down a lot, calls don't go through and messages get sent hours after their inital time stamp.  One of the things that I hate doing is adding money on my prepaid phone.  It seems that everywhere I go and every time I try to do this, the system is down and can't process my request.  Last night I thought I'd go straight to the heart of the situation and wait in line at the TIM company store in the mall.  After about 30 minutes in line, I asked the casheir to add about $10 to my cell phone credit.  "Oh, I'm sorry," he said.  "The network is down in the store today."  Just to make sure I understood, I asked again, this time a little annoyed and incredulous.  "This is the TIM store and I can't add any credit to my phone because the system is down?"  "That's right," he said and then added, "But if you go to the pharmacy next door you can try there."  After another 20 minutes in line at the pharmacy next to the TIM store I managed to successfully add some credit to my phone.

Situation 3: Buying a fan
Sean and I went fan shopping as we have been a bit desperate in the effort to sleep at night when it's so hot and humid.  We picked one out and when we went to pay I asked to add on the insurance/return policy which always costs extra here.  The cashier added it and then launched into a long speech in complicated Portuguese about something to do with the receipt and the pamphlets that he handed me.  All I could get from the talk was that I needed to make a copy of everything.  "But why do I need to make a copy of all of this?" I persisted.  "Can't I just use the original to return it if I need to?"  The slightly annoyed and frustrated cashier tried yet again to explain to me the reasons about a certain process that I could not figure out.  I finally gave up and Sean and I let the store.  Because what he said to me seemed important, I tried one last time with a different employee standing outside the store.  Turns out that you have to make a copy of your original receipt because the ink fades and actually disappears after one week.  Who knew?

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I've found that the more I try to reason and rationalize all that goes on here, the more helpless and drained I feel.  The better approach Sean and I have found, is to try and just accept it, laugh about it and move on.  When we tell these stories to our Brazilian students they just shrug their shoulders and say, unsurprisingly, "Welcome to Brazil."