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!