It´s Bigger Than Hip Hop

Alright, so remember that talent show i wasnt going to be able to sing at? Well, my tear-jerking rendition of "Sweet Child o Mine" by Guns N Roses brought the house down enough that i won!...and also my name was 1 of 6 put into a winners cup and I happened to be drawn. But sick! My prize is that a Samba school is giving me one of their outfits and I will also be on their float (the first in line) in the parade! Guess Ill have to work on my samba moves.

Unfortunately, my singing karoake and g n r resulted in me losing my voice for all of Sunday and only talking in whispers. Ergo, I did pretty much nothing all day.

On Monday (yesterday) we visited Diadema, a city just outside Sao Paulo. We first visited some governmental place where the mayor of Diadema talked to us. As part of a new security measure, they have 42 cameras installed throughout the city in order to spot crime and they took us to the room with all the videos. Creepy...big brother is watching. Then we visited a favela which was NOTHING like the ones we saw before. These are the ones for real, made of random pieces of wood put together and on stilts since they sit above a brown, trash filled river. These things seriously look like they could fall at any moment. But we looked inside some peoples houses and they actually are better than i thought-flat screen tv, play station 2? People who live in favelas arent necessarily poor, the housing market just sucks so much theyre forced to live there.

We then went to this place called Restaurant Popular which charges only 1 Real (about 40 cents) for lunch there so that people can come eat who cant usually afford to. We all ate lunch there and learned about how the government subsidizes the restaurant and who eats there.

Next we visited a health care center. Brazil has public, free health care...unlike the U.S., what a surprise. They have a very systematic approach to it too. All 39 municipalities of Diadema are divided into a certain amount of areas which then have 6 zones within them and each zone has a health care center that one can go to (for free). Nobody goes without health care here if they need it.

The last place we visited was siiick. Its called Casa de Hip Hop (House of Hip Hop). Its an organization that provides kids with a place to go and do/learn hip hop as well as learn about African culture and do graffiti. We watched kids do graffiti while we were there as well as some hip hop/break dancing they did especially for us. Good times! Sorry i have no pictures... i didnt bring my camera. But theres some other kids with blogs that you could check out who do a better job of that than me. This is aarons blog, this is daves blog (he doesnt update that often, but hes concise and funny), this is yeseuls blog (shes actually just doing a blog describing each person on the trip in detail, funny no?), and this is kiras blog...which is actually only about food. So feel free to check those out.

Last night after my long day, Flavia took me and Gabi to a vegetarian restaurant and this cranky vegan got some much needed protein.