Brazil!!!

So I´m currently in Brazil, yay! Im a little new to this blog thing so it turns out the pictures you upload first end up at the bottom of the post...so Ill work my way from Brazil back to New York I guess. Today me and Gabi got picked up by our host, Flavia. She´s 29 and lives alone and is practicing Chinese medicine as well as working toward peace and anti-violence with an organization currently organizing a big march. We met her boyfriend and ate lunch that she had made for us. She´s very understanding of the vegan lifestyle (she´s almost vegetarian she says) and she said she would take me to the Rock cafe (like the Hardrock or something) where all the hard-core, alternative vegans hang out. Sweet! She also said there´s a hardcore music festival in Sao Paulo tomarrow or soon and that we could go to that. Awesome! This is the living room of Flavia´s apartment. This hammock isn´t always there, it pulls out from one hook to another on the wall since she doesn´t have room for another couch. Why do we not do this in our houses?

This is just some graffiti from around the city. It´s everywhere and it´s all really detailed and cool. We got into Sao Paulo yesterday at 6 in the morning and had orientation. Then we went to exchange money and get food. I managed to get a vegan burrito, but I´ll tell you, the language barrier is difficult! Noone speaks English, but you can kind of get by on Spanish. Portugeuse is slowly coming along. We´ve learned some key phrases: "oi" is hello, "tudo bem" is how are you and is also used in about 20 other ways, "voce quer ficar comigo" is a phrase that basically means "do you want to make out" and is used in all the clubs. This is something brazilians do and is totally not weird. In a club or bar a guy can come up and say this to you, you make out for a few minutes and then you just move on. And this can happen like, 6 times in a night. Have yet to personally see this happen. But some of us did go out last night to some bars and had the national drink (the name of which I keep forgetting) which is made of distilled sugar cane and lime and is STRONG! I didn´t feel the effects of my one drink but some girls made the mistake of drinking 2 and were very regretful.

This is the view from my window in the hotel and this is some of us at the airport. The flight was about 8 hours and very few kids slept unfortunately.

This is jacob on a ride in Washington Heights, the neighborhood we visited for Neighborhood day in New York. It´s a mostly Dominican neighborhood that faces problems of drug addiction, domestic abuse, teenage pregnancy and violence and HIV. This is all of my neighborhood day group standing outside Alianza Dominicana, Inc., an agency working to prevent/help all of these issues in Washington Heights.
The picture below is in a park across from the agency that we played in because we were early. One of the girls at the agency told us that when she was growing up in Washington Heights, her mom would take her and her brother to that same park. But before she brought the kids, she would go to the park and clear an area of all the crack vials so the kids would have somewhere to sit. But now the park is cleaned up and the neighborhood is doing much better.

So that´s about it for now. My homestay has a computer, obviously, so feel free to e-mail me or whatever. Or leave comments on this blog. I can´t guarantee how much time I´ll actually have to get on this computer, but Ill try. Tchau!

New York

Hi there all you blog-followers....all...5 of you?
Sorry I haven't had time to update this but I haven't exactly had much access to a computer. So Monday (the 19th) I arrived at International House in Harlem for orientation. International House is where grad students from all over NYC live and where we're living and going to classes right now. I met all the kids and the faculty/other adult persons as well. Ken Kruchemeyer and Barbara Kenect are both the directors of IHP as well as teachers sometimes. Diya, Meika, and Jos are our other teachers who will be traveling with us. Nik'hit is our Trustees Fellow, meaning he's done the program before and is now traveling with us to ensure that we always have someone to talk to and help smooth things between us and any problems we have. We all played some games, ate some dinner, and first day was done.
Tuesday we had two guest speakers, one who spoke about the economic crisis and another who writes for the New York Times about the various neighborhoods in the city.
Wednesday we had agency visits to urban planning centered non-profit organizations. The one I visited is called the Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS). It's a non-profit that does projects that make the city a better place for residents as well as having annual awards to recognize those individuals that are also doing this. Actually, a lot of these projects are really cool. MAS was put on the map in the 1970s when they saved Grand Central from being torn down by the makers of Penn Station who were worried their profits were in danger. Currently MAS is working to revamp Coney Island and make it the world's best amusement park again. Coney Island has the largest public transportation center in the nation and it barely goes to use since people no longer go there. They also do a lot of educational outreach. After agency visits everyone went to Ken and Barbara's apartment in midtown where they cooked us dinner and general merriment ensued. Then everyone booked it back to I House to watch Top Chef and Lost!
Thursday was a lot of boring mandatory kind of things. We had our first "orientation vignette" which is basically when the teachers talk to us about things like safety, drugs and alcohol, offending other people's cultures, etc. Then we had "group norms" which is where we as a group decided how we should deal with other groups as a group (inter-group norms), deal with ourselves as a group (inner-group norms), how we as a group would deal with faculty, and how we would deal with ourselves personally. As I say, boring. We also had a workshop on communication and diversity which actually isn't as boring as it sounds.
Friday we had presentations on the agencies we had visited which were fairly amusing since we were required to present them in a fun way. I had my first Culture and Society class with Diya and my first Urban Development and Sustainable Environments class with Ken. Another orientation vignette about drugs and alcohol where we were told that "if you're caught with drugs abroad, there's nothing IHP or the consulate can do". Alright, scared enough.

Now I'm in the city hanging out with my friend Lisa since we have the weekend off. Sunday is the alumae/i dinner. Next week is neighborhood day where we visit various neighborhoods in the city and study them and what they can tell us. There will be more classes next week and more orientation vignettes. And there's lots of homework! But from what I can tell, this program is no different than college in that everyone STILL doesn't do any of the readings. Except me. So that's all for now, sorry if this blog is boring. I've never done a blog before...any suggestions?