Salvador, Brasil

Me, my host Caique, and two of Caique´s friends

So I´ve been one week in Salvador, Brasil now, and I love it. The new/awesome experiences per day ratio is out of this world and as such this blog post will not be able to fit half of what I would like to share. I´ll try, however, to fill you in on the essentials (whoever you are).
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A week ago, when I was en route to Brasil, I had no idea what to expect. A tiny amount of information about the project "Driblando" that I was going to be working on and a series of Facebook messages written in Spanigueseish (that´s a combo of eng, span, and port) were all I had to go by. So you can imagine my alarm in the following situation... The two weeks between college and Brasil were filled with work, family, and friends -- and I had little time or energy for thinking about what awaited me in Brasil. Then, I´m dropped off at Charlotte-Douglas International and I realize how unprepared I am. I´ve traveled before on my own but never to a place where I don´t know the language, my living situation, or anything, really. Then at the gate for my flight to Sao Paolo i stumble across a BBC article warning World Cup visitors about breakouts of the sometimes fatal Dengue disease in (you guessed it) Sao Paolo and Salvador. The disease is carried by mosquitoes which breed proliferously in the blue water buckets kept on top of nearly every house in non-uber-wealthy Brazilian locales. So of course that freaks me out,|I send off a few panicky texts (veiled with humor) about this recent discovery, and zone 5 is called for boarding...

Those blue buckets are scary, man. And they´re everywhere.

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By now I´ve forgotten about the Dengue because to fear it would be to perpetually live in fear. In my host´s house we leave the windows open so much that it´s practically an open air house. There is a small living room when you enter with an always-on TV. Then a small table where we eat rice and beans and meat. The tiny kitchen adjoins, and then there are two bedrooms: one for Caique´s grandparents, one for me and Caique. In the bathroom the light is dim and the water has one temperature: cold. Caique is my host by the way. He is 17 and his English is better than my Portuguese, so we speak English with me occasionally venturing into Spanish. Caique lives in a part of Salvador (Brasil´s 3rd largest city and its original capital) called Pernambues. It´s a poor and dangerous area, but I´ve come to be very fond of it -- more fond than I am of the touristy places like Pelhourinho. He has stories of being mugged and just last night we broke out into a run along the sidewalk because we saw a motorcycle circle back by us twice. All of this might sound rather grim but I don´t mean it to. On the contrary it has been exhilirating to force to the back of my mind the risks that are omnipresent in the world (just more pronounced, perhaps, in Pernambues) and to "get on with it!" to quote Monty Python.

FUTEBOL!

Real street soccer (teams of 2; winner stays)

To the right is my favorite picture ever. I love soccer, I´ve played all my life, but never ever have I had as satisfying a soccer fix as over the last week. Futebol, is literally everywhere in Brasil. On the streets, on the beaches, on the TV, on lips -- everywhere. Some nights, we play street soccer for hours with just the kids from our small street. That is what the picture below is from. Indeed, I have found that my love of the beautiful game has been my best bet for bonding with Brasilians. Seeing as I don´t speak the language, I´m glad I have something in common with them. And, of course, Brasil is gearing up for the World Cup which starts in just four days. Salvador will host 8 games and the new stadium where they will be played is majestic. The first game we host (this Friday) will be a repeat of the 2010 final: Espanha v Holande. I haven´t heard a lot of FIFA bashing, surprisingly, from Brazilians who, from what I´d heard, were incensed with the money spent on (and pocketed through) the World Cup. Regardless of the politics, I´m ready to enjoy a month of the finest futebolers futebol has to offer.


Next time I´ll talk about what I´m actually doing here with AIESEC and maybe, if you´re lucky, I´ll treat you to a rant about the loco bus system!