Saturday 20 July 2013

Danças Brasileiras

Day 51 - 19 de Julho: Paulinia

Today was the first day that we changed our breakfast location. In a church, a little farther away, we sat down for a quick breakfast. They had pastries and bread, along with coffee and juice. Very typical for here it seems. Of course, as I said before, the brazilians really like to eat. Soon after, we filed into the church and had our lesson of the day - Brazilian history. It was very interesting how the countries were divided and the stories of portuguese explorers.  We were going to have a projector for the slides, but the person in charge of bringing it did not show up, so we just had to watch on a laptop. Still worked out though. The next event had us, and our posse of Brazilians, jumping on the bus and driving to a dance studio. Oh, great - out of all activities we could have done, they had to choose my anti-talent! It was fine though - there were others in the same boat. We were first given a concert of typical brazilian songs. There were even some english ones. But the impressive thing was that the guitarist playing for us was blind. He was so good though! Eventually, the music was accompanied with dance; several different brazilian dances. These people looked real professional - and when they eventually said it was our turn, I was thinking that there was no way i could do any of that. When we partnered up though, i was actually partnered with a girl from this particular dance studio, so she could help me with my footwork. She sure was a talented dancer. After learning 2 or 3 types of dances, we headed back to the church for lunch. It was another of the same rice and bean dishes that are so common here. It was cool, because while i ate, i had a conversation with some of the brazilian youth, entirely in portuguese. I'm so happy that the language is coming to me! After lunch, we had a quick meeting outside, and when that was finished, i brought a bit of personal best martial arts to brazil. I put on a little class in the yard outside and had about 5 copying my kicks and punches. It wasn't a formal class, but it was fun and they loved it. Since it was starting to rain now, we could not do whatever our next planned activity was. However, we had a backup; we travelled to campinas to visit the biggest shopping mall in latin america!! And it was massive. You could easily get lost in there. And as myself and one of the brazilian guys with us pointed out, it is a girls paradise. There are literally shoe stores everywhere you look. I've never seen so many shoes in my life! But anyway, i didn't end up buying anything here, but i'm sure glad i went to see it. We drove back to the church for 5pm, then met up with our host family. We got a tiny bit of rest (i even napped a bit), then we were right back out again to church. We had a great mass - our priest from canada had a speech for the brazilians that brought them (and some of our group) to tears. We will definitely all miss each other a lot! I hope to return again some day. The day ended really well!! We had a party planned afterwards. Although it was a typical kind of brazilian party, it was basically a country hoedown. The youth were all dressed up in country gear and put on a great dance for us. Afterwards, they invited us to try - more dancing. Haha. Well, the night continued with dancing, good food and these firecrackers that people continuously set off. Later, we returned home and i hung out with my family some more before going to bed. I was super tired so that's why this post is late. It's brief, but that's all i have the energy for these days.

The music for us
My dance partner
Country dancers

My paulinian family
Me dressed up for the party

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