Bissexuality: EVERYTHING'S GOOD!

So, I'm catching up on about 2 weeks of ridiculous. Hold on and bear with me!
my last weekend was amazing, because i really reconsidered my perspective. i lived with this host family on this island called ilha da mare in the bay of bahia, and my mother was amazing and so welcoming to me and even though i couldn't speak portuguese, she talked to me more than any other person so far in brazil, and her child, 3 years-old, was literally the most adorable kid i've ever had the pleasure of playing with, and she was so happy i was her "sister" all weekend, and would be annoying and do all the little things that children do, and i wasn't ever pissed because i really loved being around her. i just felt so much apart of a family, and it's been so long since i've felt that, like years. i explored this beach at night on the rocks in the bay (because low tide is REALLY LOW TIDE at the ilha) with these two other friends of mine in the program, and we got really far out, and saw these really small glowing things on rocks thatg stuck to our shoes and humongous mean-looking crabs and fish and it was beautiful. and the moon was so big. and the entire afternoon, after interviewing some people with health conditions that are tended to on the island (ethics issue? maybe? no, because apparently people with high blood pressure and pregnancy have the right to be interrogated by my program! woo-hoo!), the womyn taking us around bought us sweets and passion fruit popsicles, and we hung out on the beach with my friend's host-sister and wrote "love" all over in the sand. it was pretty :-). and i felt really accepted and my host-sister was effing adorable. she would yell my name in the morning and give me hugs when i got back to the house, and i was only there for two nights! cuuute. we also had to go to a bullshit health fair at Ilha da Mare, where I was supposed to work with a gynecologist (exciting, right?) who never came (downer, huh?), and ended up sitting in on a sexual health lecture which some people had to attend (everyone had to attend one lecture in order to get medical attention). and they had these great slides about abortion ("Abortion causes malnutrition in children!" Wrong.) and condom demonstrations (Me: do you have an actual penile model? Lecturer: No, but we can just use our fingers and have them giggle at how unformatted this is!), but namely two slides on "different sexualities". And, for bissexuality, she literally said, "People like men, womyn, everybody. Everything's GOOD." Thusly was this blog named for a female health worker who's slightly too excited about bissexual lifestyles. YES.

then, in the next week, we had second AIDS talk of the program and these people have a very defined way of driving me crazy with their ignorance. the only thing that saves me is these two other queer kids in the program that actually understand that the world has issues. we peaked into rooms with very sick AIDS patients, and, as always, were given strange examples of risk groups, namely the "What do you mean, womyn can be homosexuals? We only discuss MSMs in this country, because we're afraid to deal with large risk groups that make us feel awkward, like womyn who apprently can't appeal to our machismo!" and the "Bisexuals are no longer a discriminated risk group in South America!" bit. Yeah, I wanted to shoot somebody. STFU, Brazilian scientists working with AIDS patients, STFU.

after that, it got hard again for awhile. i was walking home last tuesday night and got attacked by a dog right outside of my house. it was the owner's of this bar in front of my house, and he was in the doorway with the owner without a leash, saw me walking past to the door of my house (remember, i live with the famed host family) and ran over, barking, and bit down on my bag, pulling at it and growling at me, obviously about to go for my leg. after about 15 seconds, trying to fend myself from it, the owner finally came inbetween us, but all that he did was see if it bit me. when he saw that it didn't, he just tended to the dog. until this day, he has not said sorry for anything, and i'm scared every time i walk home that it will come out again and go for me for real. it was really upsetting. after that, i started to realize that i should have changed my host family a month ago. along with the fact that they've eaten a cube of my cheese for my lunch food, used my toothpaste, and that the children only say hello to me if i say hello to them first, and weakly at that, i accidentally ate a chicken salad the other day, and it was really traumatizing. i had already eaten some of the stuff they had prepared for me and realized, after seeing a small bone with marrow in it, that it had shreds of red meat in it. after being really upset about having eaten a spoonfull, i told my host mom when she got home that i thought that it had had meat in it. she responded that it hadn't (even though it had) and left my room. but she came back in a couple minutes later and told me that the salad i had eaten had had chicken in it, and that vera (the maid in my rich house who comes several times a week and cleans and cooks occasionally) had put it in the wrong container (the ones that she usually puts mine in). thus, even though it was on the wrong side of the fridge, i ate it. and then she stood there in my room, smiling a little. and it was really upsetting and i didn't know what to do, so i cried. and then i started sobbing. and she kept on asking me why i was crying and to stop, and i told her that it wasn't their fault, since i knew they didn't mean it, but that it's completely against my ethics and ideas (having to do this all in portuguese) to eat meat, and that it was just really bad. and of course i'm not gonna stop crying. and so she pats my shoulder, sees her daughter (40 years-old) come in, tells her what happened in a hushed voice outside of my room that i could still hear, and left to get me some tea and ask my pardon and see if i'd "calmed down". then, the next morning, when her daughter-in-law came into the kitchen, she told her what had happened and the daughter laughed at me. not in front of me, of course. and her other daughter laughed atg me when they slowly told me thatg they separated my food. so the disrespect is pretty obvious. people stare me down when i'm walking home, on the two streets leading up to my house. basically, i was really close to leaving. i still am. but yesterday, my mom actually remembered to call somebody for me to get my hair done by here, and she was nice, and then, everyone in the family semi-talked to me more than they usually do, and nicely. i only have about 2 weeks left with them, so i might not change families. but it's hard.
last weekend, we had a long weekend, and i got to just chill and hang out with my friends here. i drank with my friends at this touristy beach, drank with them at the zoo and saw bitching animals, attended the event "Precarious 9" at the movies with them (use your imagination there), and then went to a weird party-bus-beach day with lots of creepy men (annoying) and no organization and my friend Alex got mad sunburn. It was ridiculous. And every single person on the party bus/trip got a little too drunk and did the preppy picture thing. We, instead, did the bitch-but-except-that-we're-not-in-a-program thing. and we had meals in between at each other's houses.it was really cute. long weekends are amazing :-).

i've decided on the name for my independent study project "Societies should wear condoms: How We Can Prevent HIV Infection and Pregnancy in Adolescent Womyn in Salvador". also, i ran today for the firstg time in awhile and fainted in the shower. why does that happen? tip for the week: DON'T EVER PASS OUT IN THE SHOWER. it was only for a couple of seconds, i think, but i hit my head twice on the wall (i think) and had to sit down for awhile. i came to before i hit the ground, and didn't bruise, but it was intense. DON'T DO THAT, YOU PEOPLE.

key words (in the mood of the abstract i'm writing tonight): gay womyn/bissexuality, existence, missing gynecologists, vegetarian/not chicken-atarian, exclusive cheese, bratty kids, leash-your-effing-dog campaign, beach, drunk zoo, precarious 9, naughty party bus, sexually promiscuous societies, fainting