Halloween is by far my most favorite holiday to teach and talk about outside of the States.  Here in Brazil, Halloween isn't celebrated at all but the students know a little bit about it from American media.  This week, classes were a blast as Sean and I talked about our traditions (costumes, pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating etc.) and played some games.  The games that worked the best were a jack o' lantern drawing game in which students had to describe the faces of their pumpkins to their partners who then had to listen and draw by following directions.  The second game that was wildly successful was "Halloween Pictionary" which included words like vampire, ghost, graveyard, bat, wizard, zombie etc.  The students got really into it and I was glad that Sean was there to help keep things fair and under control as things quickly turned heated.


Sean and I bought a Brazilian pumpkin and carved it and then roasted the seeds which turned out great.  We brought them to UESC for students to try and they thought it was both hilarious and ridiculous that we eat pumpkin seeds (though they thought they were very tasty indeed).  Sean also labored quite a bit over some pumpkin apple muffins which also turned out well despite the fact that we couldn't locate allspice and barely managed to find some nutmeg.  Though we won't be having any trick-or-treaters tonight, I, for one, am definitely going to rustle up some candy.  Happy Halloween!

There was no school on Monday as it was "Public Workers' Day" and the beaches in Ilhéus were packed.  Sean and I had a busy and fun holiday weekend.  On Friday we met and hung out with a group of twenty Americans doing volunteer chiropractic work.  I was able to help with some of the translations but there were a lot of medical terms in Portuguese that were way over my head.  It was really cool to watch some of the more advanced English students at UESC work their magic as interpreters, however.  I walked away impressed and also very relaxed as the chiropractors gave me and Sean adjustments as well.



On Friday night we had three students stay the night and on Saturday night, after dinner at another student's house, we had two friends stay over as well.  We all enjoyed Sunday at a nearby beach called Carurupe that is famous for a little river that runs into the ocean.  That evening, two more friends showed up for drinks and watched, fascinated, while Sean carved our Halloween pumpkin.

On Monday we spent the day at a different beach with my boss, Isaias, and his family.  We had a lot of fun teaching their two boys, Ciro and Arão, how to play frisbee.  After grocery shopping, cleaning a house that had hosted various groups of people, laundry and lesson planning for the week, we both crashed pretty hard last night.  I think our weekends are actually more work than work itself at UESC.

From lefto to right: fish moqueca, caruru and vatapá

On Saturday night, Sean and I were invited over for a big traditional Brazilian meal at a student's house.  We got to try some dishes that I hadn't ever had before including caruru which is a mixture of finely chopped okra, onion, shrimp and nuts along with the dende or unique palm oil that is used here.  Along with the caruru we also ate vatapá (another traditional dish made with palm oil), chicken, fish moqueca, rice, and beans. 

Ready to eat with Zelia (Shalon's mom) and Shalon

I think my favorite part of the meal was the pudding which was absolutely fantastic and covered in a carmelized sauce.  Shalon's mom said that next time we come over she will show me how to make the pudding so I can replicate it at home.

The dinner was kind of a thank you for helping Shalon get accepted into a study abroad program in the States.  Next fall he will be attending St. Ambrose college in Davenport, Iowa for one semester.  Shalon is so excited about this opportunity that he can barely contain himself.  He has to pay for his own flight and room and board but he doesn't have to pay for any of the tuition.  The university here in Brazil has an agreement with St. Ambrose to send one student a year on a full ride and Shalon was lucky (and had worked incredibly hard) enough to get it. For the past two months we have been practicing English and interviewing in preparation for the selection process so I felt like I had won in a way as well.  Congratulations, Shalon!

The heavenly pudding

Loni, Sean and I along with our student monitors are gearing up for our biggest event of the year - Language Week.  The theme of this year's LW is Brazil and the U.S.A. - Sharing our Similarities and Celebrating our Differences.  LW is going to happen on Monday and Tuesday, November 4 and 5 at UESC.  It's an opportunity for university students to engage in lingusitic and cultural immersion and will include panels and presentations from UESC students and professors along with several guest speakers outside of the university.  Loni is going to do a presentation on "How to become Fluent in English" and Sean and I are going to do an interactive presentation on little-known cultural facts about the U.S.


There will be additional presentations and panels on teaching English, tips for studying abroad in the U.S., how to work as a professional in the U.S., how to learn and study English on your own along with a session of playing some common and popular American board/card games.  The two ETAs last year were the first to do Language Week at UESC so we have some framework in place to go on, but other than that Loni and I have to do everyhing on our own and I am finding that planning and executing an event in Brazil is an incredible amount of work.

Some of the things that have been keeping us busy are: finding and confirming presenters, reserving rooms and projectors, designing the posters/shirts, advertising, organizing the schedule, working on our own presentations and encouraging as many people as we can to participate and attend.  I'm quite nervous about how it's all going to go and this event planning has given me a whole new appreciation for all of the planners of the seminars and conferences that I've attended in the past. 

This Sunday, Sean and I participated in the Rotary Club's bike ride for breast cancer held in Ilhéus.  The event consisted of a few hundred people riding around the city on a predetermined route to raise money and awareness of cancer in the community.  The ride was supposed to start at seven in the morning but due to the fact that it was down pouring and also because we live in Bahia (where everything happens about an hour or more after it's supposed to) we started riding at about 9:30.  I borrowed a bike from another professor and Sean borrowed one from a neighboring student.  Brazil is still pretty new to events like this and even though I thought everything was a bit chaotic, most people exclaimed that the morning was "an incredible success" or that it was "the most impressively organized event they'd ever seen" etc. 



We had a lot of fun, however, and met some new people along with seeing some more of the city and getting some exercise.  The event definitely attracted quite a bit of attention especially because a truck with giant loud speakers traveled at the head of the pack and announced at ear-splittingly loud levels who we were and what we were riding for to the tune of American 80s soft rock. 


 
After the ride ended, we were invited to a churrasco (naturally) at another professor's house.   Sean and I readily accepted and spent the rest of Sunday afternoon drinking, talking and stuffing ourselves with grilled meat.  This churrasco was particularly interesting to me because all of the people in attendance were from the south of Brazil - a region which names its inhabitants "Gaúchos."  There were several new traditions including drinking chimarrão (an herbal mate-like hot tea), grilling the meat a different way and with new seasonings, new and different accompaniments (mayonnaise salad, bean salad and roasted garlic bread) and trying their traditional dessert: roasted pineapple covered in cinnamon.  I also noticed that everyone popped the grilled chicken hearts into their mouths as if they were candy while Sean and I were a bit more wary.

Hope you like chicken hearts!

Trying the "chimarrão" drink

After watching a soccer game and having a few more beers, we were one our way home and already hoping that we would receive another invitation for a churrasco the next weekend.  Brazil is most certainly not the best place to be a vegetarian.

Side dishes at the churrasco: salads, rice, and lasagna

Life in Brazil has it's advantages: warm weather, time on the beach, dolphins, rainbows, friendly people, parties etc.  And from the pictures that I post online it might seem that there's all there is to it but oh, that is so far from the truth.  There will be no pictures of this particular Saturday night on Facebook, for example, because Sean and I are staying home doing laundry . . . by hand - one of the not-so-fun things about living in Brazil.  It's actually quite a lot of work to manually do laundry and the romanticism of what it must have been like to be a pioneer fades away almost immediately. 

The whole process of soaping, scrubbing, rinsing, wringing and then hanging leaves my back hurting, my arms tired and my wrists and hands exhausted.  Currently, I'm working out of the shower and Sean is working out of the utility sink.  We're both soaked from sweat and splashes, elbow deep in gray water and have stripped down to our birthday suits (to throw the clothes we're wearing in the soapy mix too; we've learned that when doing laundry by hand it's best just to do it all at once to get it over with).  That's reason number two while there will be no pictures of this evening's activities on the Face.

When I lived in Chile, one of the first things my host mom taught me was how I needed to wash my undies in the shower with me whenever I took one.  "How absurd," I thought at the beginning but it soon became the new normal as that's what everyone else did in the family and most everyone else did in the country.  Many Brazilians wash their underwear in the shower as well and I can see why: you can get it really clean and it assures that you will always have clean underwear.  One things for sure, however, when it's so much work to do laundry, I am extra careful about how I take care of my clothes, what I do with them after I take them off and how many times I wear them before I wash them again. 

Laundry time has differed a bit in each place where Sean and I have lived but the process has always involved significantly more work than in the States.  In China we had a basic washing machine and hung our clothes on a large hanging rack indoors (in the winter) and outside on bushes (in the summer).  In New Zealand we had another simple machine and dried clothes on a rack in front of the fire (in the winter) and outside on a rack in the driveway (in the summer).  In Brazil we also have a basic machine but it doesn't work a lot of the time because the humidity and salt in the air corrodes the wires and connections.  To dry, we hang our clothes on a rack on the porch, directly in the path of the sea breeze.  Because it's so humid here, clothes take a long time for the moisture to evaporate and the clothes never really get 100% dry. 

Along with doughnuts, decent internet, a hot bath, Mom's cooking and air conditioning, one of the things I'm most looking forward to is washing and drying laundry using only machines.  It's going to be glorious.  Hope your Saturday night is more exciting than ours!  What are you up to?

The locals have a very popular legend about the boto.  People like to explain that at night, the pink river dolphins turn into handsome and charming men that go to bars and seduce women.  They somehow manage to sweet talk the women into going back to the river bank with them and doing a few other things before the men turn back into dolphins and disappear into the river.  The locals use this myth to talk about unexplained pregnancies as in, "It wasn't her fault - the boto had his way with her" etc.  I've heard people joking about it on buses and there are references to the pink creature all over the place.  Sean hasn't seen one of the pink dolphins yet but every day on the way to school we scan the river and the bay looking and hoping.  Or maybe we've seen one at a bar and we just didn't know it?  To see a cartoon version of the pink dolphin legend for yourself, check out the video below:

The "churrasquero" / grill master

This weekend, along with Monday and Tuesday, is a holiday because of a Catholic saint and because it's National Childrens' Day.  Sean and I were invited to spend the weekend with a family at their beach house a little bit outside of the city.  The invitation was too tempting to pass up: a full-blown traditional Brazilian churrasco on Saturday and a typical feijoada on Sunday.  Sean and I stopped eating on Friday night in order to prepare for the incredible amounts of food and drink that always accompany family gatherings such as this.

Fixins' for the meat: a type of potato salad, vinagrete, rice and special type of beans

We arrived Saturday morning and the family was very excited to show us the buckets of different cuts of meat that were being readied to put on the grill.  I should have gotten a picture but the quantity and variety of beef was staggering.  The "churrasquero" fired up the grill and started cooking.  A family churrasco works just like the stereotypical restaurants.  You don't make one plate of food and eat once, but rather the grill master cooks all day and periodically takes meat off the grill which he slices and then passes around on a plate.  Everyone takes a piece and continues sitting, talking and drinking.  There's always more than enough food, however, and because the grill goes all day, there comes a point when people actually pass the meat along without taking any.  The flavor and the quality of the meat was awesome and Sean kept saying, "My dad would love this!"

Brazilian hot dog / "cachorro quente"

In the afternoon we hung out at the beach for awhile before returning to the house and being offered Brazilian hot dogs.  Brazilian hot dogs consist of cut up pieces of sausages mixed in with tomatoes, peppers, onions and sauce and topped with corn, peas and mayonnaise.  It was a little different, but quite delicious.

Lookout of the coast from Serra Grande

On Sunday, we explored some of the neighboring small beach towns and then arrived just in time for lunch - a traditional Brazilian feijoada.  Feijoada is black beans and different kinds of meats that have been slow cooked for hours.  We ate it with salad, rice and topped it with manioc flour.

 
Sean and I are back at home now and are recovering from all the food.  Plans for the day include going to the gym and maybe going for a run on the beach.  Maybe this will make us hungry enough to tackle the five pound Tupperware container of leftovers that the family graciously gave to us this morning as we said goodbye.

Our final two days at Chapada Diamantina National Park involved lots of hiking to different waterfalls and swimming pools.  We had really good (and hot!) weather so a chance to strip down and cool off was always welcomed.  Sometimes we hiked with other people and other hikes it was just the two of us with our guide. 



When our time came to an end at the park we got back on a bus bound for Salvador in the afternoon and then got on an overnight bus back to Ilhéus.  It was a long haul but we made it back home and crashed at 5:30am in my apartment.



We spent Erica's last day and night in Brazil at the beach and down town trying some more traditional Bahian food - acarajé and abará.  It was an absolutely fantastic trip and time spent with Erica and I am so glad that she was able to come to Brazil.  Come again, E!

When Sean and I arrived at UESC yesterday at 7:30 am, the first person I saw handed me a bulletin announcing the "paralisação"/standstill tomorrow.  The first student that I talked to also informed me of the soft strike the next day and said that there would be no classes.  In Brazil and at UESC, many different types of strikes are common and are used as a way to send a message to the government.  Today, all of the state schools are at a standstill to campaign for the money they were promised from the government.  Lately, all of the students and faculty have seen the evidence of the lack of government money in many ways from no toilet paper or paper towels in the bathrooms to events/speakers/scholarships cancelled because of no financial support.  Government money means absolutely everything at a state school like UESC where university students attend free of charge and some even receive small stipends for transportation.

I was sad and disappointed when I heard the news of the strike.  Wednesday is the day when I teach most of my classes and meet with many different students and professors to practice English and Portuguese.  Although I understand the need for change in the educational buraeracry, there are so many strikes that each time they occur they seem a little less effective.  It's also frustrating that when there's a strike it's the students who ultimately lose out.

The strikes always lend themselves to interesting discussions, however, and yesterday was no different.  In my morning class, my students wanted to talk about the prevalence of strikes and standstills in the U.S.A.  "We don't really deal with strikes too much on a daily basis" I started to say when I quickly realized my obvious error - the fact that my own government is in a state of "shutdown" currently.  My students, many of whom were not aware of the U.S. government shutdown, were extremely interested in the messed up American state of affairs.  We ended up having a great conversation about the relevant problems of both countries and I think my students walked away feeling a little bit prouder of Brazil and a little less impressed with the U.S.  One of the biggest problems here is a feeling of shame and embarrassment of Brazil and an almost godlike reverence for the U.S.A.  By talking honestly and openly about some of the major challenges that my country faces encourages more realistic conversations and expectations along with stronger relationships.

Sean and I decided to use the UESC standstill as a creative opportunity to do something different rather than having it be a total wash.  We're having English and Portuguese classes at our apartment today and later are having some students over to cook some Brazilian and American food.  Now if we could just figure out how to turn the U.S. government "paralisação" into a creative opportunity for something. . .

Loving life under one of the many waterfalls we visited

Day hike up to Fumaça waterfall

After I got to Ilhéus we really hit the ground running.  The next day Sarah and I left for Salvador, and then continued onto Lençois to start our 6 day visit in Chapada Diamantina, the largest national park in Brazil.  I don't think I quite knew what I was in for with the 5-day trek package we scheduled, but I was excited to find out.  From what I had read and seen on the internet, I expected beautiful views, waterfalls, crystal blue pools, and a lot of incredible scenery.  I was not disappointed- seeing things that I had only seen before in pictures in National Geographic Magazine and being in awe that such amazing places exist.  On the first day we visited a cave that was tucked away in the jungle, and saw rock formations that took hundreds of thousands of years to form.  The guide asked us to pause for a moment and turn out our flashlights and to take a moment to meditate if we wanted to.  Standing in the pitch black, with no sound, no light, was quite a powerful moment.  It reminded me that I don't need to go to Brazil to find this quietness of mind and body, but that it can happen anywhere.  The hiking was really challenging.  We went up steep cliffs with very rocky terrain.  At times it was almost harder mentally than it was physically, thinking about where to take your next step, placing your foot in a sturdy place where you would not slide or slip.  While it was very physically demanding, I welcomed the challenge of pushing myself beyond what I thought I could do.  And there was always the reward of reaching the peak of a mountain for a breathtaking view, a waterfall for a swim to cool off, or just to take a break for lunch and a cold Coca-cola.

Getting some shots of yoga poses with awesome scenery in the background

Getting tired of all the long and extremely bumpy van rides

Waiting to climb down to see the pools

I had interrupted writing about my travels with Erica in Chapada Diamantina National Park to share a little about Sean's arrival and our time in Rio.  Now that things have fallen into a pretty normal routine here in Ilhéus, I'm going to write a little more about the final days of my time with Erica.

Getting ready to snorkel in the Blue Pool

On day three of our adventure in Chapada Diamantina National Park, Erica and I spent all day visiting the "Blue Pool" and the "Enchanted Pool" (Poço Azul e Poço Encantado).  The park is famous for pools such as these because of their incredible colors and clarity.  According to our guide, the translucent blues and greens in the water form because of the way the light hits the minerals present.



I knew that the views were going to be cool but I wasn't prepared for what it actually looked like; the intensity of the colors and the light in the water were like nothing I had ever seen before.  Erica and I kept saying to each other that we felt like we were in some National Geographic Special and also that we wished we had better cameras to capture the moment.

Our hiking group for the day

The Enchanted Pool

Surprisingly, we were able to snorkel in one of the pools and even though the cavern was super deep, we could see all the way down.  It was a little eerie at times but we were calmed by the fact that the only creatures living were tiny blind cavefish. Though visiting the two pools in one day involved a lot of time in a van traveling over unpaved and bumpy roads, it was definitely worth it.

An iguana hanging out by the entrance of one of the pools