Interim
I apologize for that spontaneous hiatus, but I do have an excuse. For the span of seven days, my host parents were somewhere else. I assume on vacation, but only because I spotted a hotel’s webpage left up on the computer last week. They could have been doing a small stint in prison for all I know. Sorry about the lack of forewarning, but I had none myself. People rarely inform me of things here until approximately five minutes before they happen, or just as frequently five minutes after. Thus, one day before Glicia and Henrique departed for parts unknown, I was told that I would be spending this brief spell in the home of two Rotarians.
All in all, it could have been worse. They could have had me shacking up with Wormtail. Instead, at about six o’clock on Wednesday evening I found myself just outside the wall of Fernando, a small friendly red-faced man with slightly bulging eyes and no more than two words of English. (Those two words were probably money and beer, but don’t judge him for that. That’s basic vocabulary for any Brazilian who’s seen enough American movies, I’ve found.) Living with him was a woman he introduced as his fiancé, which I thought rather anomalous as they live together and are both at the very least in their late forties. Her name was baffling and sounds an awful lot like Juicy, but was she nice enough and meant well and has eyes that bulge even worse than her fiancé’s.
Their house seemed larger than Glicia’s, but not as comfortable. Rather than leaving their ceilings high to disperse the heat, they opted for a two-story model with low ceilings, smaller windows, and clearly established doors. After the open airy flowing horizontal nature of Glicia’s house, it felt slightly claustrophobic. It lacked both the sleek and intentional interior designing of Glicia’s home and the cozy warm woodenness of the one I left behind in America. It was not unpleasant, but I felt none of the spark of interest that typically arises when I enter a new Brazilian home for the first time. It was thoroughly bourgeoisie and had a very… empty nest sort of feel.
Immediately upon my arrival the couple began showing me around the house. The backyard was spacious, and obviously built for group gatherings rather than solitary coffees. I ignored this disappointing factor for the Chihuahuas, of which there were three. They were minute and manic little creatures, but eager to please and I found them amusing. Juicy squealed at them in an insufferable baby voice, and I quickly returned to the kitchen to prevent her from recognizing the expression of disgust that streaked across my features.
Fernando offered me a snack, which I gratefully accepted as I had apparently missed their diner hour. I kept a straight face throughout the ensuing jumble, but not without concentration. I began making myself a standard ham and cheese sandwich, which Juicy was falling over herself to assist with. She stared at me in revulsion as I explained that I preferred my ham and cheeses dry, and promptly decided I was just confused and brought out a parade of condiments, from butter to liquid cheese to pepper jelly to ketchup. A similar pattern of miscommunication soon followed. I asked for the peach juice and was handed the grape juice, strawberry yogurt, and a bag of milk. When I attempted to requisition a plate they presented me with a soup bowl. So on and so forth.
I was forced to wonder if they had ever housed an exchange student before, because they were rather dreadful at non-verbal communication. Their charades were drastically substandard, and they had the tendency to jump to conclusions. They would offer me something, I would indicate that I didn’t want some at them moment, and they would say, ‘okay, you don’t like it’. I knew enough to understand them but not enough to correct them, which was frustrating.
The snack fiasco over and done with, I was led to my room, which had obviously been someone’s bedroom once but was now nearly stripped of personality. There was a desk with several matted watercolors stacked on top, and ostentatiously large sound system, and a single framed photo on the bedside table. The photo was of two teenagers, a boy and a girl, in formal dress and posing in front of several banners. Neither was very attractive or well dressed, nor did they seem overwhelmingly pleased with their surroundings. The lighting was poor and the photography mediocre. It was again a sharp contrast to my previous lodgings, where the only pictures worth framing were those taken by shockingly paid professionals. The room did contain one thing of interest, and that was the bed. My bed at Glicia’s house is comfortable enough, but it is a single and really quite narrow. My bed in the US was a twin, but had both a headboard and a baseboard, which meant I was a bit cramped unless I lay diagonally. In Fernando’s house however I was the proud occupant of a queen-sized bed, one ideal for sprawling across at odd angles to stare contemplatively at the ceiling. The sheets pulled across it were hideous and floral and looked like they’d been stolen from the curtain rack at a Salvation Army, but it was nice and firm and had a simple broken wooden rosary hanging from one post, which I thought gave it character. At least, I think it was broken - it only had 53 beads. Aren’t they supposed to have 55? In any case, the bed will be missed.
My bedroom was on the second floor, which meant that I was permitted to leave the window open at night if I so wished, a blessing in the ever-increasing heat. The logic was I suppose that no one could manage to sneak into my window except ninjas and people with ladders, both of which I assume were scarce in that neighborhood. The view was pleasant, all blue skies, tiled roofs, and picturesque green flora. When darkness fell and I watched it from my bed, the scene reminded me of a religious Christmas card - palm fronds swaying gently in front of a blue-black sky littered with twinkling stars. In that half-asleep and nonsensical state that I frequently find myself in just before slipping away, I would occasionally think inanely to myself ‘huh, that’s Jerusalem that is’. No lies or embellishments, I did.
I’ve never been very good at sleeping, and I will admit that the problem was worsened slightly since my arrival here. On nights where three am rolled around and I simply could not drift off, I would meander downstairs and watch American movies in Portuguese. I’ve tried time and time again, but I simply cannot figure out how to get subtitles. Once I even tripped over an episode of Cops, though I was rather amused to find that none of the footage was of crimes in Brazil. It was all videos from America, primarily the Midwest. Has anyone ever actually gotten away with a high-speed chase? And no, the Transporter doesn’t count. On the second night such as this, part of the way through some film about Leonardo DiCaprio running around Africa with a gun, I spotted a stack of DVDs on a shelf. Jackpot. There weren’t a lot of them, perhaps only twenty or so, but it was still a very good find. There were plenty of the usual suspects - Titanic, Terminator, When Harry Met Sally, The Matrix, etc. - but there were a few excellent surprises as well, things like The Meaning of Life and Shakespeare in Love. Eric Idle has always been one of my favorite Pythons, but his musical numbers in The Meaning of Life had me laughing so hard my face hurt - and as far as Shakespeare in Love, seeing Captain Barbosa as the playhouse owner and Mr. Weasley as the stuttering tailor was kind of a warm-fuzzy moment for me. They were just the pick-me-ups I needed after the long languorous awkward days where I lived in dread of someone suggesting we go out for the evening. At least, they were until the DVD player malfunctioned on Saturday and I didn’t know how to request assistance. The good things never last.
The daylight hours were more troublesome. I had no house key, so in order to leave the premises I needed to ask someone to let me out, and I could only go out if I knew for a fact that there would be someone home to let me back in upon my return. This wasn’t all that easy, as the only person who’s schedule remained consistent was the maid. There weren’t many things around the house with which to occupy myself, which would have been fine if there was a nice spot to sit and write, but there wasn’t. The kitchen table tipped, the living room was cramped, and sitting outside meant dealing with the hyper active dogs during the day and the expansive bug population during the evening. There were ants of every known species in that back yard and I kid you not, bees the size of the biggest June bug you ever saw. (As I’m writing this, there is a persistent ladybug encroaching on my plate of orange slices).
I spent plenty of time with the cachorros and got into the habit of lingering over lunch for as long as possible. This was also in part strategic, as I could surreptitiously feed the dogs the food I didn’t want, and the longer I waited the longer the ice cream had to thaw on the counter. While at Glicia’s house desert was a rare thing, usually consisting of fruit in syrup or bis-a-bis, at Fernando’s house there was always sorvette in the freezer, usually pilled in a trifle dish with layers of briagadeiro.
The third day in I started rereading Hamlet, but I could only keep that up for so many hours. Every time Ophelia appeared I was reminded of Mrs. Hardison’s SUPA course, which is hardly fair because I didn’t even take it. Unfortunately I had a fair fist-full of friends who did, and I had to endure the rants of her crazed man-hating interpretations of the text. In order to take up the extra time I had while my classmates took exams, I decided to read it back to front anyway, including all of the biography, the overview, and a mess of articles in the back about the significance and intention behind Hamlet’s tragedy. I quite liked the editor, and was surprised to find him witty on subjects typically stale - he was almost catty when it came to discussing anti-Stratfordians, particularly Oxfordians. I reached the final page of the introduction and glanced down at the signature beneath it. Sylvan Barnet, Tufts University. I stared at it for a while and thought mildly ‘of course he is’, and then read the play again.
Beyond this there was little to be done but staring off into space and jossing about with my three closest companions here in Brazil - Mason, Gareth, and Howard Moon. The first is my notebook. He only has about ten blank pages left however, and I’m trying to reserve them for the school days where he is my only escape. My mother attempted to send me some new notebooks, but I’m yet to receive them and they don’t sell composition books in Curvelo, which is a shame because they fit very neatly into my bag. The second is my GQMF SRL camera. There wasn’t much to take pictures of, except for the flowers in the back yard, but it was something to do. The third and most dynamic is my MacBook, most beloved computer of mine. There is no reliable wi-fi anywhere in Curvelo that I’ve found, so I set about composing character descriptions for Nicole and organizing an outline for the novel I’m writing for my mother. It was an irksome task, because that story is expanding by the day so I spent a while looking things up in the dictionary. I’ve always found this amusing, because you never know what words you might learn, and I was pleased to discover that the dictionary on my computer contained not only words, but also phrases and persons of importance (including, apparently, Bill Haley). On that topic, did you know that the acronym ‘fubar’ (fucked up beyond all reason/recognition/repair) has been in use since the 1940’s? I had no idea!
Tuesday afternoon at least was quite pleasant, as there was no one home but the maid and myself, and for lunch the maid had made these little fried things, like meatballs with cheese in the center. I ate a bowl of them, and then sat on the back porch working on my Reed application essays and drinking nectar de pessego* and listening to ‘Decatur’ and ‘Charlie Darwin’ on a loop.
One of the odder things about this house was the shoes. Whenever I opened a cabinet or drawer, no matter what room it was in, there would inevitable be at least one shoe. Whether it was a strappy silver heel under the kitchen sink or a variety of worn ballet flats crammed in next to the VCR, they were everywhere. On one memorable occasion I opened the cupboard in the bathroom in search of more shampoo only to discover two tacky porcelain Christmas ornaments, three mismatched flip-flops, and an abused paperback copy of Tamora Pierce’s In The Hands of the Goddess. Weird.
Late Wednesday afternoon saw me sprawled on my beloved bed one last time, watching Brazil play the Czech Republic in futebal and trying to increase me surface area as much as possible so that my sweat might dry faster. When Fernando came home from work I turned off the game (still 0-0, but there had been some near misses) to lug my suitcase downstairs and have a pre-dinner snack with my hosts before my departure. I had learned that pre-dinner snacks at Fernando’s were rather better than the dinners themselves, and that Juicy, despite the many and varied ways in which she taxed my patience, made the very best banana smoothies that went excellently with coconut-topped sweet bread from the Bel Pao on the corner. It was as good a way to end my stay as any.
Though certain previously mentioned elements will indeed be missed, I maintain that remaining in that house would have proved dangerous to my health. Beyond the obvious reasons, namely the stress induced by restraining myself from strangling Juicy on a daily basis and the sheer aggravation of being awoken from any and all naps by three teething Chihuahuas, there was a palm tree fairly close to my bedroom window. This tree was so close and so sturdy looking that I was quite confident that I could, if I tried, jump to it from my window and shimmy down it. It became more tempting every time I looked at it, if for no other reason than I was curious to see if I could do it without tumbling twenty feet to, though probably not my death, my rather intense pain. I blame Chanel, for being an aspiring ninja, and Dan, for watching too many action and kung fu movies while I was home. Even though I can now no longer leave my window open at night, it is probably better this way. It would be very impressive if I hurt myself jumping out of Glicia’s house. My window is about four feet off the ground. Tops.
In other news, Glicia’s backyard looks like a plane hit. They say the pool should be finished before the end of November.
*Nectar de pessego is essentially peach juice. Do they sell it in the U.S.? I don’t recall ever seeing it in anything but condensed form, and it really is quite good.
All in all, it could have been worse. They could have had me shacking up with Wormtail. Instead, at about six o’clock on Wednesday evening I found myself just outside the wall of Fernando, a small friendly red-faced man with slightly bulging eyes and no more than two words of English. (Those two words were probably money and beer, but don’t judge him for that. That’s basic vocabulary for any Brazilian who’s seen enough American movies, I’ve found.) Living with him was a woman he introduced as his fiancé, which I thought rather anomalous as they live together and are both at the very least in their late forties. Her name was baffling and sounds an awful lot like Juicy, but was she nice enough and meant well and has eyes that bulge even worse than her fiancé’s.
Their house seemed larger than Glicia’s, but not as comfortable. Rather than leaving their ceilings high to disperse the heat, they opted for a two-story model with low ceilings, smaller windows, and clearly established doors. After the open airy flowing horizontal nature of Glicia’s house, it felt slightly claustrophobic. It lacked both the sleek and intentional interior designing of Glicia’s home and the cozy warm woodenness of the one I left behind in America. It was not unpleasant, but I felt none of the spark of interest that typically arises when I enter a new Brazilian home for the first time. It was thoroughly bourgeoisie and had a very… empty nest sort of feel.
Immediately upon my arrival the couple began showing me around the house. The backyard was spacious, and obviously built for group gatherings rather than solitary coffees. I ignored this disappointing factor for the Chihuahuas, of which there were three. They were minute and manic little creatures, but eager to please and I found them amusing. Juicy squealed at them in an insufferable baby voice, and I quickly returned to the kitchen to prevent her from recognizing the expression of disgust that streaked across my features.
Fernando offered me a snack, which I gratefully accepted as I had apparently missed their diner hour. I kept a straight face throughout the ensuing jumble, but not without concentration. I began making myself a standard ham and cheese sandwich, which Juicy was falling over herself to assist with. She stared at me in revulsion as I explained that I preferred my ham and cheeses dry, and promptly decided I was just confused and brought out a parade of condiments, from butter to liquid cheese to pepper jelly to ketchup. A similar pattern of miscommunication soon followed. I asked for the peach juice and was handed the grape juice, strawberry yogurt, and a bag of milk. When I attempted to requisition a plate they presented me with a soup bowl. So on and so forth.
I was forced to wonder if they had ever housed an exchange student before, because they were rather dreadful at non-verbal communication. Their charades were drastically substandard, and they had the tendency to jump to conclusions. They would offer me something, I would indicate that I didn’t want some at them moment, and they would say, ‘okay, you don’t like it’. I knew enough to understand them but not enough to correct them, which was frustrating.
The snack fiasco over and done with, I was led to my room, which had obviously been someone’s bedroom once but was now nearly stripped of personality. There was a desk with several matted watercolors stacked on top, and ostentatiously large sound system, and a single framed photo on the bedside table. The photo was of two teenagers, a boy and a girl, in formal dress and posing in front of several banners. Neither was very attractive or well dressed, nor did they seem overwhelmingly pleased with their surroundings. The lighting was poor and the photography mediocre. It was again a sharp contrast to my previous lodgings, where the only pictures worth framing were those taken by shockingly paid professionals. The room did contain one thing of interest, and that was the bed. My bed at Glicia’s house is comfortable enough, but it is a single and really quite narrow. My bed in the US was a twin, but had both a headboard and a baseboard, which meant I was a bit cramped unless I lay diagonally. In Fernando’s house however I was the proud occupant of a queen-sized bed, one ideal for sprawling across at odd angles to stare contemplatively at the ceiling. The sheets pulled across it were hideous and floral and looked like they’d been stolen from the curtain rack at a Salvation Army, but it was nice and firm and had a simple broken wooden rosary hanging from one post, which I thought gave it character. At least, I think it was broken - it only had 53 beads. Aren’t they supposed to have 55? In any case, the bed will be missed.
My bedroom was on the second floor, which meant that I was permitted to leave the window open at night if I so wished, a blessing in the ever-increasing heat. The logic was I suppose that no one could manage to sneak into my window except ninjas and people with ladders, both of which I assume were scarce in that neighborhood. The view was pleasant, all blue skies, tiled roofs, and picturesque green flora. When darkness fell and I watched it from my bed, the scene reminded me of a religious Christmas card - palm fronds swaying gently in front of a blue-black sky littered with twinkling stars. In that half-asleep and nonsensical state that I frequently find myself in just before slipping away, I would occasionally think inanely to myself ‘huh, that’s Jerusalem that is’. No lies or embellishments, I did.
I’ve never been very good at sleeping, and I will admit that the problem was worsened slightly since my arrival here. On nights where three am rolled around and I simply could not drift off, I would meander downstairs and watch American movies in Portuguese. I’ve tried time and time again, but I simply cannot figure out how to get subtitles. Once I even tripped over an episode of Cops, though I was rather amused to find that none of the footage was of crimes in Brazil. It was all videos from America, primarily the Midwest. Has anyone ever actually gotten away with a high-speed chase? And no, the Transporter doesn’t count. On the second night such as this, part of the way through some film about Leonardo DiCaprio running around Africa with a gun, I spotted a stack of DVDs on a shelf. Jackpot. There weren’t a lot of them, perhaps only twenty or so, but it was still a very good find. There were plenty of the usual suspects - Titanic, Terminator, When Harry Met Sally, The Matrix, etc. - but there were a few excellent surprises as well, things like The Meaning of Life and Shakespeare in Love. Eric Idle has always been one of my favorite Pythons, but his musical numbers in The Meaning of Life had me laughing so hard my face hurt - and as far as Shakespeare in Love, seeing Captain Barbosa as the playhouse owner and Mr. Weasley as the stuttering tailor was kind of a warm-fuzzy moment for me. They were just the pick-me-ups I needed after the long languorous awkward days where I lived in dread of someone suggesting we go out for the evening. At least, they were until the DVD player malfunctioned on Saturday and I didn’t know how to request assistance. The good things never last.
The daylight hours were more troublesome. I had no house key, so in order to leave the premises I needed to ask someone to let me out, and I could only go out if I knew for a fact that there would be someone home to let me back in upon my return. This wasn’t all that easy, as the only person who’s schedule remained consistent was the maid. There weren’t many things around the house with which to occupy myself, which would have been fine if there was a nice spot to sit and write, but there wasn’t. The kitchen table tipped, the living room was cramped, and sitting outside meant dealing with the hyper active dogs during the day and the expansive bug population during the evening. There were ants of every known species in that back yard and I kid you not, bees the size of the biggest June bug you ever saw. (As I’m writing this, there is a persistent ladybug encroaching on my plate of orange slices).
I spent plenty of time with the cachorros and got into the habit of lingering over lunch for as long as possible. This was also in part strategic, as I could surreptitiously feed the dogs the food I didn’t want, and the longer I waited the longer the ice cream had to thaw on the counter. While at Glicia’s house desert was a rare thing, usually consisting of fruit in syrup or bis-a-bis, at Fernando’s house there was always sorvette in the freezer, usually pilled in a trifle dish with layers of briagadeiro.
The third day in I started rereading Hamlet, but I could only keep that up for so many hours. Every time Ophelia appeared I was reminded of Mrs. Hardison’s SUPA course, which is hardly fair because I didn’t even take it. Unfortunately I had a fair fist-full of friends who did, and I had to endure the rants of her crazed man-hating interpretations of the text. In order to take up the extra time I had while my classmates took exams, I decided to read it back to front anyway, including all of the biography, the overview, and a mess of articles in the back about the significance and intention behind Hamlet’s tragedy. I quite liked the editor, and was surprised to find him witty on subjects typically stale - he was almost catty when it came to discussing anti-Stratfordians, particularly Oxfordians. I reached the final page of the introduction and glanced down at the signature beneath it. Sylvan Barnet, Tufts University. I stared at it for a while and thought mildly ‘of course he is’, and then read the play again.
Beyond this there was little to be done but staring off into space and jossing about with my three closest companions here in Brazil - Mason, Gareth, and Howard Moon. The first is my notebook. He only has about ten blank pages left however, and I’m trying to reserve them for the school days where he is my only escape. My mother attempted to send me some new notebooks, but I’m yet to receive them and they don’t sell composition books in Curvelo, which is a shame because they fit very neatly into my bag. The second is my GQMF SRL camera. There wasn’t much to take pictures of, except for the flowers in the back yard, but it was something to do. The third and most dynamic is my MacBook, most beloved computer of mine. There is no reliable wi-fi anywhere in Curvelo that I’ve found, so I set about composing character descriptions for Nicole and organizing an outline for the novel I’m writing for my mother. It was an irksome task, because that story is expanding by the day so I spent a while looking things up in the dictionary. I’ve always found this amusing, because you never know what words you might learn, and I was pleased to discover that the dictionary on my computer contained not only words, but also phrases and persons of importance (including, apparently, Bill Haley). On that topic, did you know that the acronym ‘fubar’ (fucked up beyond all reason/recognition/repair) has been in use since the 1940’s? I had no idea!
Tuesday afternoon at least was quite pleasant, as there was no one home but the maid and myself, and for lunch the maid had made these little fried things, like meatballs with cheese in the center. I ate a bowl of them, and then sat on the back porch working on my Reed application essays and drinking nectar de pessego* and listening to ‘Decatur’ and ‘Charlie Darwin’ on a loop.
One of the odder things about this house was the shoes. Whenever I opened a cabinet or drawer, no matter what room it was in, there would inevitable be at least one shoe. Whether it was a strappy silver heel under the kitchen sink or a variety of worn ballet flats crammed in next to the VCR, they were everywhere. On one memorable occasion I opened the cupboard in the bathroom in search of more shampoo only to discover two tacky porcelain Christmas ornaments, three mismatched flip-flops, and an abused paperback copy of Tamora Pierce’s In The Hands of the Goddess. Weird.
Late Wednesday afternoon saw me sprawled on my beloved bed one last time, watching Brazil play the Czech Republic in futebal and trying to increase me surface area as much as possible so that my sweat might dry faster. When Fernando came home from work I turned off the game (still 0-0, but there had been some near misses) to lug my suitcase downstairs and have a pre-dinner snack with my hosts before my departure. I had learned that pre-dinner snacks at Fernando’s were rather better than the dinners themselves, and that Juicy, despite the many and varied ways in which she taxed my patience, made the very best banana smoothies that went excellently with coconut-topped sweet bread from the Bel Pao on the corner. It was as good a way to end my stay as any.
Though certain previously mentioned elements will indeed be missed, I maintain that remaining in that house would have proved dangerous to my health. Beyond the obvious reasons, namely the stress induced by restraining myself from strangling Juicy on a daily basis and the sheer aggravation of being awoken from any and all naps by three teething Chihuahuas, there was a palm tree fairly close to my bedroom window. This tree was so close and so sturdy looking that I was quite confident that I could, if I tried, jump to it from my window and shimmy down it. It became more tempting every time I looked at it, if for no other reason than I was curious to see if I could do it without tumbling twenty feet to, though probably not my death, my rather intense pain. I blame Chanel, for being an aspiring ninja, and Dan, for watching too many action and kung fu movies while I was home. Even though I can now no longer leave my window open at night, it is probably better this way. It would be very impressive if I hurt myself jumping out of Glicia’s house. My window is about four feet off the ground. Tops.
In other news, Glicia’s backyard looks like a plane hit. They say the pool should be finished before the end of November.
*Nectar de pessego is essentially peach juice. Do they sell it in the U.S.? I don’t recall ever seeing it in anything but condensed form, and it really is quite good.