Where in the world am I?

Once again, I am late on this blog, so I’m finding it difficult to remember those feelings of culture shock in the beginning. Since I am now at the end of my three-month stay in Brazil, I have had the opportunity to adapt to and become familiar with “the way things works here”. The culture shock has lessened to a buzz in the background, at most.

The strategy I took in coming to Brazil, since I tend to be a very anxious kind of person, was to not think about what I was doing. If I thought about how I was going to be in Brazil for three months, in a country that I basically know only stereotypes about, whose language I don’t speak and whose big cities have ¨quite¨ dangerous reputations, I would freak out. So, instead, I packed my bags and got on the plane to Sao Paulo without really acknowledging that, oh my God, I am going to Brazil!

When I arrived (from Sao Paulo) in Porto Alegre, which is in the most southernmost state of Brazil, I was still on numb-mode. Two people from the town where my internship would be met me at the airport so that we could take the 4.5-hour bus ride to the town, Rio Grande, together.

We had time to kill before taking the bus, so we decided to walk to a nearby food market. The bus station was, unfortunately, in the most dangerous part of the city and not at all reflective of the city as a whole.

As we were walking, we passed a man sprawled face down in the middle of the sidewalk, a sidewalk that was crowded with people walking about. Further on, there was a heavy woman with ragged clothes, spots on the black skin of her round face, wandering eyes and frizzy hair that stood on its ends, standing and rocking a baby in her arms, talking aloud to herself. Then we passed by a building with a window, whose ledge extended out about 10 inches and was surrounded by tall bars, in which a person was curled up and sleeping. It was at this point that I woke up and realized, okay Lidia, you are in a different country now.

What has caught my eye during my stay in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil? For one, people walk around with chimarrão as they do with a watch on their wrist. Chimarrão is a drink that is made of herbs and hot water, like tea, except that the people drink it from a hollowed out gourd with a metal straw. In one hand they have the gourd and in the other, a thermos of hot water to refill their gourd.

The habit of drinking chimarrão kinda reminded me of the Canadian habit of drinking Tim Horton’s—in the car, in the grocery store, walking on the street, etc! It was funny to see even in class the students passing around the chimarrão to share.

Also having to do with the “gaúcho” culture in the south of Brazil is the way people dress. It gets really cold here in the winter months of May-July, and people dress for it, with ponchos and some really great hand-made scarfs, hats, mitts and sweaters. There is no heating in Brazil—not at home or at school or anywhere. This was a huge cultural shock for me—having to sleep with a hat and mitts and at least four blankets at night. I remember thinking to myself, am I really in Brazil, a tropical country? When I go back to Canada without a Brazilian tan, my friends are going to laugh me out of the country!

Anyway, most of the girls here wear these fantastic super-platform boots, which I guess is passé in Canada. Along with men, they also tend to wear tight clothes, something that caught my attention because I realized quickly that people would stare at me if I wore sweatpants.

Sometimes, you can catch a glimpse of a gaúcho (a “cowboy”, although this is an inadequate translation) dressed in a poncho, typical pants which have puffy pockets and which are tucked into knee-high boots, with a colorful cloth around his neck, tied in a knot, and a flat hat on his head or hanging on his back by a string.

I’m trying really hard to find things that are similar to home, but everything here has its quirks that make it even a little bit different than from home. Simple things, like buses or convenience stores are different.

For example, in Brazil, when you get on the bus you don’t pay the driver but rather pay a man who is seated in the middle of the bus who will then allow you to pass through a turn style; the seats before this turn style are for the elderly.

Another example is every time you enter a convenience store, you will be given a paper that you must present before you leave the store and which on it will be recorded what you bought; if you lose that paper, you have to pay a fine.

Even something as simple as milk is different; here, it doesn’t come in bags but rather in a cardboard box that you have to cut a corner off of.

I’m not saying that everything is different, but it is hard to think of something significant in Brazil that is surprisingly the same as in Canada. Actually one thing I can say is that Brazilians talk loudly on their cell phones in public places just as Canadians do!