Okay, so I never made it to the play, sue me. I did however fall asleep pretty early, like around 9, and woke up to the rise of the sun around 5:00am. In doing so I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I figured now would be good time to figure this whole electric shower thing out, without too much shame or embarrassment. In my plea with the electric showerhead I was successful in convincing it to give me warm water. After my shower, I returned to bed to get a couple more hours of sleep, only to wake with 15 minutes to class. I tried to jet out of the house to avoid any first morning awkward conversations with my family, but to no avail. She stopped me right when I made it to the door, and insisted that I not leave the house without eating and drinking a cup of coffee. I told her I would be late, she didn’t seem to care, so what could I do? In retrospect I’m actually sort of glad she stopped me, in that after our conversation I left the table feeling a bit less confused and a bit more confident than in previous days.
On my way to class when I got off the elevator, I was blinded by the sunlight, “yes!” I thought to myself, this is my first day in Brazil where I haven’t gotten rained on while walking to school. I walked in a little late, basically wrote my name on the placement test and turned it in… 20 minutes later Clara walks in the patio, “David…. Go to room 9 with the beginners”… I thought to myself, “really.”
When I walked in the classroom I was greeted by our teacher. Sra. Cristiana , she is 30 something, very nice, very pretty. Our first assignment was to talk to someone we knew very little about, I ended it up paired with my savior from the other night at Boomerang. We talked and eventually discovered that we share the exact same birthdays and very similar taste in music. Next she threw a bunch of commonly used phrases on the board, most of which I was familiar with, and issued our books. After class I went home and ate beans, rice, and baked fish. It was heaven-sent, as usual. My host-irmai (sister) and I ate together, and over lunch we discussed Brazilian film. She suggested and lent me this DVD called ‘Ultima Parada 174’, I hope it has English sub-titles other wise I’ll have to lie to her when she asks me “So how did you like the movie?”
After lunch I went back to school for our Brazilian History class, where Willys gave us a brief yet concise history of Brazil. According to his lecture, the reason why Brazil is seemingly the manifestation of what one means when he says ‘melting pot’, is because the Portuguese were in fear of Brazil becoming ‘too black’ after the emancipation of the slaves. So they, like many other Latin American Countries, responded attempting to ‘whiten’ the population by offering incentives for Europeans to come and live. This brought us to a further more interesting topic of racism in Brazil, which I’d just thought the previous day to be inexistent, or at worse minimal in comparison with the US. However I was enlightened to find out that Brazilians are dealing with racism but in a more ‘camouflage’, subtle level. Which I cant even fathom, because my eyes can’t discern what’s black or what’s white. Our professors explained that, on a spectrum if you are light-brown or lighter you are considered white everyone else …. Black.
After class I walked, about a mile, down to the beach with a couple of my colegems ( friends from school) to watch the sunset. It was gorgeous but my camera died before I could snap any pictures. After that little journey I returned home and had some leftovers.
As for the rest of this evening I think I might do some homework and take it easy.
In closing So I think that I’m black, but I could be wrong… And overall, day by day things are seeming to be getting brighter, literally and figuratively.
Until you visit again…
Grande Brasso
-Davidgi
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