Lesson Seven: How To Focus on the Positive

19:06 9.12.2008
Okay, I think I was a little harsh on Salvador, I’d just had a tiring day of flying and shopping and being hassled in the Mercado, so I think while I painted a true picture of the annoying and upsetting times, I skipped out on the good parts. So here are the good parts:
I WENT TO THE FREAKIN’ AMAZON JUNGLE! HOW COOL AM I? I saw awesome plants, CRAZY huge water lilies (Victoria Regia, oops forgot to add those to the kids blog!), and held a baby caiman! And fished for piranhas! And drank straight from a jungle vine!
I also had a FANTASTIC moqueca in Salvador proper. Moqueca is a seafood stew sort of thing, a traditional Bahian dish. Carrie, Marcella and I went to this little café right off Pelourinho square for caipirinhas and cuisine. The caipirinhas were delicious (I only had one, Mom and Dad, calm down)- they’re made with a sugar cane liquor called cachassa which is Brazil’s national beverage and involved in EVERY SINGLE BRAZILIAN DANCE SONG EVER. Seriously, in the Amazon we listened to this CD (over and over and over and over until it broke, which we were all very happy about) on which cachassa was mentioned at least once in every song, and once the chorus of the song was just “Cachassa! Cachassa! Cachassa! Cachassa!”
But I digress. Our entire meal was only R24 per person, which is like $15, and we got our caipirinhas and an enormous, 3-person-sharing-still-didn’t-finish-it moqueca. There were Langoustines, 2 of them, in there, along with these weird super-tiny mussels, shrimp (with heads and tails on, awkward one Brasil), and fish in an awesome sauce! We attacked that thing and we still only ate about half of it. It came with arroz (rice) and this weird but DELICIOUS cheesy grit sort of mixture called pirao. It was a delight.
Now more funny things about the Amazon! Along with all the songs about cachassa on our favorite oft-repeated CD was the Rihanna song “Umbrella”. You know, the one that goes “under my um-ba-rella, ella, ella, ay, ay, ay?” Yeah. On there. But in Portuguese. Remember how you felt when they (over)played that song on the radio last summer? Now picture it not by Rihanna, in Portuguese, and about 800 more times. That song was stuck in my head the entire plane ride(s) home, and I’m guessing it’s going to be stuck there for quite some time.
Our guides were kind of like good cop bad cop. They were both really nice, so technically they were both good cops, but one was short and slim and serious, but really knowledgable; the other was fat and jovial and loved to dance and talked ALL the time, but generally “said” less, if you know what I mean. So I don’t have to call him “the fat one” in this anecdote, I will tell you his name was Ronaldo. Ronaldo taught us to dance the “boiboomba”, some crazy Amazon dance that was generally awesome. Our last night in the Amazon, we went to a dance show about the legend of the Amazon women and all this other crazy Brazilian stuff. At the end of the show we got to go up and dance to the song Ronaldo taught us! It was super fun. Ronaldo also had a pretty sweet accent, and he would pronounce phrases like “jungle trekking” and “piranha fishing” like “jungle TREKking” and “piranha FEESHing”, which I found endearing and took to saying them the same way. Mattias (the serious one) told us all to Facebook him. Ridiculous.
Also, when we were on one of our lake excursions, we saw a guy in this little riverside house hanging out the window, we say hi and, in Portuguese, he says "wait! i have cats!"...huh? But, lo and behold, he indeed has cats, which he proceeds to THROW OUT THE WINDOW INTO THE RIVER! He just laughs and goes "they're Amazon cats, they can swim!" and the cats climb out of the water and back into the house, the guy goes "Wait! I go get more cats," and run back inside and gets two cats at a time and just throws them in, laughing hysterically. CRAZY but totally hilarious, my friend on Voyage Book got a sweet picture.
I also forgot to tell you about my favorite, faith-in-humanity-restoring, first-day adventure in Salvador! I cannot believe I forgot, because it really was an incredible experience. I went on a Faculty-Directed Practicum to the community of Saramandaia, an up-and-coming “comunidade” in Salvador. Usually it would be called a “favela”, but that is seen as derogatory to the locals and usually only used in academic context. We went to see the Projeto Arte Consciente, a social change project that keeps kids off the streets by teaching them performance and urban art, like capoeira, boxing, circus arts, graffiti, and music. It was amazing to see. While we were there, the kids performed their respective arts for us, and really seemed to enjoy performing for our rapt audience.
The leaders of Arte Consciente were saying that everyone in Salvador has their own “social change” projects, and that there’s really been an effort to help those in the slums rise above their roots and stay in school. Most kids drop out by sixth grade, and Arte Consciente has about 200 kids, but there were only 40 or so at the performance because most of them have to work on the street to make money for their families. It’s nice because if the kids are really talented, they sometimes get accepted into larger professional groups, like Circo Piccolino, which is, you guessed it, a circus. It was really fun to hang out with the kids and see them in their (new and expanded!) performance space, doing what they love.
Souvenirs from Salvador include Havaiana flip flops (cheap!) with the Brasilian flag on them, a gold wire headband, and the very hammock that I personally slept and sweat in in the midst of the Amazon. Score!
In terms of shipboard life, other than class, I am a staff photographer for Voyage Book, which is a GORGEOUS, 120-page, full-color photo book with quotes and attributions that everyone gets FOR FREE. Since we take photo submissions from the entire shipboard community, I get to help edit those (edit=take out the crap ones) and go on “assignment” to take pictures of stupid but necessary stuff like the campus store. I also joined the “media arts club”, which is code for “we watch movies together and then make a few of our own”, which should be cool and a possible resume builder if the videos come out well enough. Seamus, a fellow Bostonian (an Emersonian, hurray!), is in charge of that business. Should be fun!
Now on to Namibia! I am très excited for my upcoming safari! It is super weird to come back from port and have to concentrate on class. Wah wahhhhh.