Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008

I´ve made it to Brazil... Sao Paulo, actually.

The rolling clouds are beautiful and the buildings look like any other European city. The weather is mild, but feeling slightly soggy. I feel well taken care of by my program... an airport ride, nice hotel and dinner, but I can´t help but feel enabled. Today we took our laguange placement exam and though I´ve never taken Portuguese I still felt like I was supposed to know what the test said. My first day here was great.. I felt confident and good knowing I could just try to speak and others would do their best to understand my broken language.

This is the biggest barrier.. language. It makes me more excited to begin classes next week and pick up more vocab and grammar. I didn´t really come here to learn Portuguese, I have to be honest... I came to live in the culture and FEEL the samba, samba reggae and candomble in my skin. I know the universal language goes beyond the words that describe these things, English or Portuguese.

I am definitely challenged to revisit my purpose for coming here.. I know there is one, just as I knew this challenge would come up. Sao Paulo is a place I didn´t forsee staying in long. It reminds me a lot of a city, except on a massive scale.

Tomorrow we will be visiting Mocidade Alegre, a samba school, for their practice. Carnaval is in about a month and they´re working hard to get that one song right. I had an extended conversation with one of the Brazilian students who is overseeing my program. He made it sound like people really only practice, REALLY practice their samba song for a few months out of the year, not the whole year I´ve heard of in the past.

I´ve been here for less than a day and am still integrating. I am so excited to see Mocidade Alegre...