São Paulo day 3

I will start with a disclaimer: America (or as Brazilians call it, EUA, lost, I am sad, we are sad, the whole country is drunk and crying, I get it. However, I don't have time or energy to truly be upset/care. If I was home this would be a different story of course. Funny how that works huh? Better luck in 4 years! 

So I didn't finish what happened during bootcamp day 1. After our 6 hour break we had lectures. The first lecture was from a "very famous Brazilian MTV vj who now hosts a show similar to Anthony bourdain's No Reservations". That's all in quotes because it sounds pretentious and braggy. In reality, this woman, Didi Wagner, is friends with the woman who started this hostel and she got pulled in. Plus, 20 million people live in this city, the third biggest city in the world, so she was just bound to be in the area. I liked her and her story, but she basically just bragged about herself for an hour. No complaints, having a celebrity 10 feet away was cool, but there was nothing really to offer us as advice. She had some funny stories about interviewing shakira and basically dragging her along the floor, as well as how Enrique Iglesias lies in all of his interviews just because he thinks it's funny. What a silly dude amiright? 

The next lecture was more or less a train wreck. These two guys started a company called iFruit and they manage celebrity's social media accounts. I couldn't tell if they were drunk, terrible at English or a combo of the two; Fefa, our manager of sorts, basically ripped them a new one when asking them questions about some holes in their communications plans. Poor guys. I give them props for attempting English. 

Once that ended, we spent a solid 15 minutes huddled in little groups chugging beer and discussing our evenings. I ended up at an empanada bar (I miss Julia's) with 5 Brazilians, a Colombian and a Filipino, discussing one of the Brazilian girls long distance relationship with a kiwi. Seriously, these two met at Carnaval in 2013, have seen each other 3 times since, and in a month she isovinf to Melbourne, Australia to live with him. 

This sounds wild to me, and maybe the whole living with him thing is, but to Brazilians, it seems like moving away and living abroad for extended periods of time is the norm. Everyone here is ages 23-30 and EVERYONE has lived in America or Europe for a year or two. And they all take off and travel whenever they please. It's just a different lifestyle. I'm rather jealous. 

Today we had day 2 of the bootcamp. We broke into small groups and got together with an expert from the projects to ask questions. We asked our expert some tough questions, none of which he could answer because his English was about the equivalent of my Portuguese. We then had a Socratic seminar type thing to discuss our small group findings and then we got some great (read: meh) news: since the Brazil v Colombia game is Friday at 5, our presentations are moved up to Thursday night, rendering our Wednesday and Thursday totally gone. I guess that's fine, as our manager told us she would be getting us all "really really drunk on Friday!" Woohoo!

The rest of the day was basically a perfect day: Mellie (an American living in NY) and Anuar (a Brazilian living in NY too) went out for Japanese in the middle of Avenue Paulista in the center of São Paulo (the rest of the group split into smaller groups and wanted to stay local), then went to the MASP, São Paulo's big art museum, and then Anuar and I went to the FIFA fan fest to watch the USA game. This was...unique...as I got to ride the metro, which is extremely similar to the DC metro, and got to take pictures with tons of Argentinian men, who apparently have never seen a blonde girl before. 

It was also during this time that I taught my new friends about "Ferk" and they have started using it. This is what being an American is all about, spreading joy and love and the meaning of Ferk. 

We left at halftime in order to make it back to La Na Vila for our nightly lecture, and just so happened to make it back in time for America to lose and for me to get some pats on the back and people sincerely telling me they hoped America would go all the way. I swear upon my holographic Japanese Charizard that I wasn't making any sort of big deal about the game. I was innocently in a chair, being pretty quiet, with the occasional arm flail whenever anything almost happened. These people are just caring! I can't speak enough good things about them all. I feel like I'm at summer camp all over again. Only mix in a lot of free beer and I'm sharing my "cabin" with boys. 

Our lecture tonight was from a woman who recently published a few books about being a dreamer. Hard to explain, but I loved this lecture. She compared her life to the Hero's Journey and was just funny, down to earth, quirky, and really made me happy to be alive. "All we have to do here on earth is be happy and have fun" she said. "There's no other point to being here". She also had a lot of photos of darth vadar and kids giving other kids wedgies. Needless to say, she might be my new spirit animal person thing. 

From there, about 20 of us went to a restaurant about a kilometer away (I'm changing...slowly but surely...I think I think I'm English with a Portuguese accent now) to have dinner/drinks. It was here I learned about the British lady who was dead for 6 years before anyone found her, chatted with this Brazilian dude who has never been to America but has seen it in the movies enough that he thinks he should never visit, and that in Brazil, you buy your drinks by the bottle and all you have to mix with is a piece fruit. Thank you, lone kiwi piece that turned me into a giggly loud American. Thank you. 

I know a few Americans in São Paulo at the momento but due to wifi misconnections and my general lack of trying, I haven't been able to see them. Leave it to pi lam extraordinaire Romano to find me, with his equally as colorful buddies, run into the bar screaming USA USA USA and then pick me up and twirl me around. Everyone I was with had a lot of questions about him haha!! 

This has been my favorite day so far - loved seeing the metro, getting walked around the city by a native, and then having a great dinner with basically the whole crew. Who knows what today shall bring. 

CIAO