Carnaval and Samba!

Oi! To begin, these arent even my pictures, these are courtesy of Aaron...who will never read this blog most likely. But thanks, Aaron! Anyway, yesterday we had a speaker on the history of Brazil then P and D class (urban politics and development) with Eve. Had a quick lunch and then went to city hall where a representative from the PT (Workers Party) talked to us for a while about the history of the party. Then we were "lucky" enough to watch a city council meeting for an hour....I gotta say that I could have done without watching a bunch of people speaking portugueuse run around on the floor of the meeting room. We were up in bleachers watching them and it must have been the first time pretty much anyone has ever wanted to watch so the film crew (the film it like C-span in the U.S.) kept filming us cuz theres 35 of us and then they interviewed Jacob (who speaks portuguese) about...politics? I dont really know. We were supposed to be done at 3 but the day ended up going til like, 5. This is a definite reoccurance on IHP, no day EVER ends when they say it will. But thats IHP. So we didnt have class today til 2 so everyone decided to go out last night, which kind of ended up pretty chaotic. Everyone had decided to go to one neighborhood, but then Raphael who is one of our country coordinators and also a cool, hip, young Brazilian was going to a cool, hip, brazilian bar in a different neighborhood so everyone was all split up and some people have phones and some dont....bleh! I ended up going to the bar Raphal suggested and it was so fun! It was totally packed and a total hipster bar like some place I would hang out in the U.S. And its so funny cuz everyone can tell were american just by looking at us so all these people were talking to us in their broken english. Its weird that foreigners want to talk to us! It has to be Obama cuz everyone here LOVES Obama and thus, vicariously loves us. Unfortunately two kids jackets were stolen from the coat cubbies at the club but...hey, this is Sao Paulo. Of course your coat got stolen. (Sao Paulo is kind of a sketchy city if you havent gathered from my previous posts). I...dont really know what this is, but it represents SP pretty well.

Beautiful!

I think this must be capoeria but Im not sure since I didnt take the picture. Capoeria is like...street dance fighting.

Today we had a girl talk to us about Carnaval which we are all so psyched for. We learned the history and then she showed us how to samba. Were all pretty bad. We were given a scavenger hunt list for Carnaval that we have to have completed by the time we get to Curitiba. Some things we can bring and some things we just have to have proof we saw....like the most feathery outfit or getting on one of the carnival parade floats. We took a bus to the most well known School of Samba in the city, Vai Vai, and learned their history, saw a bunch of crazy carnaval outfits and then got to watch their rehearsal in the street which is like a party. Theyre so good that people come to watch their rehearsals and the streets closed off and theres food booths with sausages and beer and its just a crazy party. Theyre rehearsing cuz Carnaval is in 2 weeks and if you dont know, Carnaval has evolved into a competition of various samba schools and theres a prize for the winners. Originally, Carnaval came from Europe when the elite would have a big feast and wear masks so the costumes people wear reflect the kinds of costumes the europeans wore.

Thats all for now, bom noite!