You are so IN LOVE!

Hey populace,

So, I have decided, after much thought, that a follow-up post/note is in order on this blog. I have presented a very ridiculous view akin to Marxism, wherein, just like believing that class struggle and exploitation are the basis for racial struggle instead of effing race (i.e., Marx, go fuck yourself, racial struggles have meaning), I have led myself and everyone reading this blog to believe that bad experiences are the basis for my time in Salvador, Brazil (i.e., I align the idea of standalone "class struggle" to bad, and "racial struggle" to Salvador, both being bases of my post-modern view). Just to say, fuck Marx, and fuck bad experiences. Excuse my language.

In favour of showing the good parts of this experience, I'll start with things I've left out, and lead to today. For instance, the first week I was with my host-family, my host-nephew (awkward, since he's older than me, but my mother here is a grandmother, so the family life is kinda weird in terms of ages) told me that he liked hip-hop too, and asked me if I knew "Fif-tee Cent-ee". Which was pretty hilarious, especially considering that hardly anyone in the black world outside of the United States will ever know black rappers who don't say "bitch" and "where's my money" and "Viacom, please enslave me". So I laughed, and he basically admitted that he was a tool.
I also have recurrent episodes with the womyn who made me cry (Post 3) for not bringing the right clothes to the Candomble Terreiro wherein she is mean to basically everybody, and not too understanding, but had to go with me to my first part of my ISP project (Independent Study Project) to an HIV/AIDS reunion with people from all over the city for information collection surrounding the hospital they attend (semi-interesting experience wherein I got to nervously try out speaking Portuguese with people who didn't know anything about my program, or me, for that matter). So she came with me, and told me that the large intersection in the middle of the city is something similar to "Meeting of the Pineapple". She doesn't speak English, so this was all in confusing Portuguese. And when I paused confusedly, she laughed for the first time NOT AT ME. Little victories! No one can say "Meeting of the Pineapple" in ANY language without laughing. I win!
I also have bought a bikini in my first 2 weeks here, which I wear everytime I go to the beach, which is at least once a week, since Salvador is basically a humongous beach everywhere except for on the streets (WIN). And the bikini has only highlighted my beauty. For every womyn who may be reading this, immediately BUY A BIKINI. No, don't say it doesn't look good on you. It looks amazing. I have seen wonderful large ladies rocking a bikini like a song from your favourite Fender guitar. GO BUY IT. NOW. I am beautiful and so are you, and bikinis only reaffirm your confidence. Especially in Brazil, where every mama goes with the bikini. Except for a lot of real mamas. With babies. In which case, they choose for themselves, and look beautiful either way. But lots of general mamas rock the biquinininhis. I.e., really small bikinis. DO IT.
In terms of school, my classes are completely arbitrarily graded (based off of grading criteria not given, as in, "Your interview in this paper seems a little rushed", or "You did not interview someone [outside of the interview you were told to do]"), but the reading is in some cases very interesting. As in, recently, we've been reading (if we want to, since the classes are completely disconnected from expectations for doing the reading and lectures are quite repetitive and out of order of information needed, i.e. A lecture on how HIV functions two lectures after a lecture on how HIV affects black people in Brazil, two weeks before we here more than one lecture on race relations, and the list continues) is on the intersection between gender and race, and critiques even authors that I used to look up to as G-D. As in, one authortears down Cornel West (No, really West, WTF IS "NIHILISM", p.s. you can't indoctrine people with the idea that racism can be solved through "TENDER LOVE AND CARE", I.E. YOU'RE A JACKASS) and looks at several critical analyses of how race fuctions in the U.S. that I had never really thought of before. And I know a little bit more about transvestites. And domestic violence here in Brazil.
In terms of my project here, I'm going to be analyzing the difference between behavioural bases for enforcing condom usage amongst adolescents and structural bases for enforcing condom usage amongst them instead. As in, it really came to me here, through a mixture of Paul Farmer's Pathologies of Power (If you haven't read it yet, please do; it changed my life and explains health as a humyn right instead of a consumer good, really interesting idea for future policy), different adolescent sexual interventions, and information on gender, racial, and personal relationships in Brazil, that societies put female adolescents at risk for HIV infection and pregnancy, and not the womyn themselves. Specifically through zeroing in on the tactics for communcating safe heterosexual sex (for the purposes of my project, only analyzing heterosexual transmission through vaginal intercourse of HIV and for purposes of analyzing pregnancy and risk; therefore, not looking into intraveinous transmission, homosexual transmission, and oral sex [TRUST ME, I TRIED]), I found very interesting research possible for communication techniques among teens for safe sex and how societies could decrease teen HIV transmission and teen pregnancy, starting with young womyn, by incredible leaps and bounds by several fairly common-sense steps forward in their policies, and resources available to this population.
Sorry if that doesn't make much sense. The paper's coming out shortly, and if you ask me nicely, I'll give it to you via e-mail.
Also, my Portuguese is good enough now to actually have conversations with people. I want to explain to you how bad I was before I came here this summer in comparison to how good I am now.
BEFORE: After a summer of not studying Portuguese and focusing far more on Swahili, I could say "chocolate", "diversity", "community", "water", "thank you", and person-subjects (I, you, us, they) without getting nervous.
NOW: I can have in-depth conversations with my academic director about racism inherent in health systems without getting nervous.
That's insane. The one problem most prominent that I find with SIT is that it's one of those programs structured for anthropological investigation of subjects. And I hate anthropology. I'm sorry if you like anthropology. I understand if you do, and you wish to work as a lone ethnographer, living with families and talking to people in the culture you're investigating every day. This actually sounds interesting, and, though a little strange ethically for me, because you're not part of the culture you ideally investigate (though you live with them and eat their food, surely), you still have important research to do, which I understand. If you're in SIT, my program head, you basically live in home-stay families, have badly structured classes on "understanding people", and end up doing a project for a month on something to your apparent choosing (though it will only go well if your academic director likes your investigation idea, totally based on their experiences with project in their own past, if you're in a program like mine), and don't really have a format based on interacting with the community, but rather, observing them. Thus, it's been kind of hard for me to arbitrarily make friends on my own, a conglomeration of not knowing the language that well at the up-take, having an abrasive home-stay family, and being pissed that I didn't pay for an actual program abroad, but rather, some interesting photocopied reading. But, all that said, I've learned an amazing amount of Portuguese, leading to:
This past Thursday, I realized I knew Portuguese. It just sort of...clicked. The best way I can explain it is if you've also been in an experience in a country where you didn't really know the language and walked out knowing it fairly well. Like, we had this discussion in my ridiculous Portuguese class for 5 year-olds/aka "Advanced Beginners" about adolescent pregnancy, and since that's currently my shizz, I spoke five miles a minute. And it was great. I was more-or-less very well understood. And we went to a bank (there was a strike here for 3 weeks and travelers checks are the DUMBEST IDEA EVER in countries like Brazil where the exchange rate is dropping RAPIDLY, please note) and got travelers checks turned in, and the guy understood me fine. And we went to a restaurant for post-lunch across the street from the bank, and the waitress understood me fine. So I got a Pina Colada, and I understood me just fine. I actually had an entire conversation with my host-mom at night, and told her about the dog attack. She told me the guy was really "uneducated" (her own reason, not my paraphrase). She also told me not to run at Dique anymore, to which I wanted to tell her that she could not just ask me not to do things 'cause she ain't ma mama. And then, I caught myself and realized that this was in English in my head and wouldn't translate.
The next day, I decided to wear a dress I really like, because of Friday. I love Friday. So I wore it and walked to class like I usually do and got ice cream when I was supposed to go back to class and mango sorbet was never sweeter. And I spoke a lot in portuguese. And my teacher had to almost shut me up. It was great. And I almost cursed out a guy in the park in the middle of campus, which is a sign that I know me some Portuguese. And I got to have lecture with my favourite doctor here, this amazing womyn who understands medicine (i.e., really irregular here in my program). And then, I had a chocolate granola bar. And went home with a friend and had her mother's amazing soy. And went to the movies to see "Novidades do Amor" (WHAT IS THE NEW MOVIE WITH CATHERINE ZETA-JONES? It was only briefly mentioned in English), which was IN ENGLISH WITH PORTUGUESE SUB-TITLES, yes. And cute.
And the part attributed of this day to the title for the post was before the soy-eating, being when I was at the office for SIT, and I was waiting for my friend to finish writing on the internet. So I was asking her WTF she was doing for so long when the evil womyn who made me cry was eyeing me. And she'd told me that I need to speak more Portuguese (why me in particular? no idea). So I just started speaking in Portuguese. And it was perfect. Like, grammatically, and it wasn't hard at all. So the two advisors still there were like, "I'M SO IMPRESSED! YOU SPEAK PORTUGUESE WELL!" So, I went out to the terrace of the office to look at the bay and wait for my friend to finish, and was singing "Apology Song" by the Decembrists (they're just good, okay?!), and came back inside, and the advisor I actually like was laughing, and she just told me, "Look at you! With your new braids, and your pretty dress, and looking out at the bay, and singing to yourself: you're so IN LOVE!"
And I giggled. And said, "It's just a great day to be living". In Portuguese. And trotted out with dress in hands, twirling.


All of this is to say, I even went to the beach yesterday and got the cheese-sticks they have here that are amazing, and tanned a little, and swam in this crystalline water, and got juice, but only after dining and dashing for the first time in my life (by accident, I swear! We got a beer and guarana, and the guy never asked us for the money, and we were there for awhile, and left without remembering to pay, but still, THRILLING when we realized half an hour later), and slept for 13 hours. My life is pretty luxurious here. And my host-mom, while being the donna of a family completely out of their effing minds and rude, still makes amazing cake.

Basically, I am in love, and life is more-or-less amazing.
And, fuck Marx. Excuse my language.