Making a Change

I'm living a backwards life, and I'm sure anyone living in a foreign country can relate to some extent. When I'm living in Rio, all I can think about is how much I miss Mexican food, my family, my friends, cold nights, ugg boots, good tv etc. But when I'm in my little town of Ojai, all I can think about is how much I miss açaí, my namo, buses, the beach, chopp, Portuguese, etc.

So I've decided to intervene. I am so lucky to have not one, but two amazing homes, in beautiful cities, and I am wasting it by not "living in the now". The weekend trip to Santa Cruz was sort of my wake up call and since coming home, I've made two big steps towards taking advantage of my great life in Ojai.

I think the basis of these changes should be taking advantage of things I can do here, that I am not able to do in Brazil. The first thing that comes to mind is FOOD (how obvious!). Instead of binge eating Mexican food for the next 6 months (the past month and a half was excessive enough), I've decided to return to my vegan ways. It's day #2 and it's going great.

It's funny, I've been vegan once before in my life and I find that the decision is met with a lot of hostility. Some people get personally offended when others choose this "lifestyle". So for any haters out there, I carefully watch what nutrients I get and YES it is possible to get B12 without consuming animal products. I realize that being a vegan is something I could never do in Brazil (I can't even imagine trying to explain to the sogra why I can't eat anything she cooks, nor would I dare to do so...)

My second big step was joining a yoga studio in town. There are yoga studios in Rio, so I guess this isn't 100% unique to california, but none that are this cheap and taught in English. I'm pretty excited about this change in attitude and choice to be more positive about my living arrangements, lets see how long it lasts!

Mirtes - The Homophobic Hoarder - An Introduction

It's been a long time coming, but the thought of even trying to summarize Mirtes in a short blog post is extremely daunting, but here goes.

I left Esther the Nazi Pimp's House with enthusiasm and excitment because 'Gary' and I had just met a lovely Brazilian girl who just happened to have an open room in a beautiful apartment in Leblon and she wanted to rent it to us, for $400 reais a month! Only $400 reais a month and no Nazi slurs, smoke-scented panties, or man boobs!!!

Homeless for the weekend, Gary and I decided to head to Ilha Grande to pass the time before we could move into our new apartment. The weekend was amazing and we took some gorgeous photos.

Upon returning we got our first lesson in Brazilian's flakyness cultural understanding of casual commitments. Meaning, the Brazilian girl ditched us and I was left homeless. Literally, bags in the taxi and nowhere to go.

That's when Mirtes (Meer-chez) flew in and saved the day. The caring and selfless evangelical saint that she was, saw my desperity, and offered me a bedroom for the discounted price of $2,000 reais. I repeat, what a Saint!

Let's talk about the bedroom. The term "quarto" was really quite a stretch as I would have chosen "veranda" or "outdoor mosquito breeding ground with a crankable curtain-wall". She also took some liberty with the term "bathroom with hot shower", because all I saw was a hose sitting in the sun...


She assured us that rain wouldn't enter the room, but upon arriving home the next day to all of our precious belongings strewn about the house and a million fans on, it was clear that the veranda had flooded. My computer would have died had I not already killed it with a bottle of nail polish remover at the Nazi's house.


Mirtes had a few basic rules: no smoking, no drinking, no foul-mouths, no boys, no girls, no music, no unpure thoughts, NO GAYS! Did I mention we lived on Farme? We just nodded our heads and swore up and down that we were good evangelical girls. Well, needless to say it only took a few days for us to stumble in drunk at 3am in neon wigs and body paint for Mirtes to get suspicious...and that's when the hoarding began.

This post is already getting long and my brain is overflowing with ridiculous Mirtes stories, so I will save them for another post (or 10), such as:

-Mirtes sings about Cocaine

-Mirtes' panties in my bed

-Mirtes builds a cubicle in the living room

-Mirtes' Bible Bootcamp

-Mirtes' son's sex CD

and my personal favorite

-Mirtes gives the pedophile a key to our bedroom.

Better Than Crack

To say that I’m addicted to coffee would be the understatement of the year. However, it is so not my fault. You see, I spent 3 years filtering coffee with a plastic cup and a paper towel, before moving up to a French press (que chique). Then I arrived at my work here in Rio where they have endless amounts of fresh, steaming hot Brazilian coffee every day! I just cant help myself, so I help myself to 2 cups of coffee and make it through days like this.

Turns out there was a slight confusion and I don’t know what an espresso machine is. Yeah that’s right, go ahead and hate, Ive been drinking 2 cups of espresso everyday for the past 6 months, I should probably be dead…don’t worry, I paid big. After this Halloween’s special treat, I had to cut back on the caffeine, and I felt it.

Damn.

Thanks to my good friends Neosaldina and Chocolate, I made it out alive, and I have lived to tell my tragic story. Every 1 in 6,000,000,000 people do not know the difference between a coffee maker and an espresso machine…don’t be a statistic, get educated.

Homestay 1: Esther the Nazi Pimp

When I first came to Brazil it was through the exchange program at my University. My school here in Brazil (PUC) set me up with a family where I only had to pay $400 reais to rent a room. Unfortunately, there were and still are some MAJOR flaws with the whole home stay situation (such as, absolutely no criteria other than “must have ceiling fan” and no feedback from past students who have stayed there). As luck would have it, I ended up with a bunch of Nazis…literally.

Esther, my home stay mom, was about 50 years old and waited on her husband hand and foot. She forced me to bring bananas to school everyday, which I insisted I didn’t want (don’t get me wrong, I love bananas, but when the bruise to yellow ratio is 9:1, im not down). I hid the bananas in a purse in the corner of my room (the infamous “banana bag”) which later filled with a few million families of fruit flies and banana mush. I never threw it away.

Esther’s husband was about 150 years old and undoubtedly fled Nazi Germany after the war. He only wore boxers, spit on the ground (don’t worry, Esther mopped it up right away), and liked to smoke cigarettes in my room while I wasn’t home…there is no other reason my panty drawer would smell like lucky strikes! He called me Mary and my (girl) friend Gary. The first thing he said to me was “How are you going to shoot that monkey Obama while living in Brazil?”

Esther and her husband did not approve of my boyfriend. So Esther set me up on a blind date…without telling me. She woke me up at 6am, brought me to someone’s house, rung the doorbell, mumbled something, and left. I expected some nice old lady to invite me in for coffee and pão de queijo, but what I got was a shirtless 40 year old man with a scorpion tattoo on his breast...yes, breast. When he went to his room to put a shirt on I made a run for it. Fifteen flights of stairs. I packed up and left her house the next day.

In retrospect, I think my banana bag was the perfect going away gift. Like a classier version of a flaming bag of shit on the front porch.

It you can believe it, home stay #2 was even worse. Stay tuned for "Mirtes - the homophobic hoarder".

The Monolingual Translator?

I work part time at a travel and tourism company here in Rio as the in-house translator. Well, technically that is what I am supposed to do, but nobody there thinks they need a translator, soooo I get paid to drink coffee and doodle.

You see, my coworkers (read: patricinhas) think that 1 summer in Miama studying English trumps my 22 years and a bachelors degree in Linguistics. Totally makes sense right? No! And the strange thing is, it's not just my coworkers. It's my boss too.

Granted, all bosses have superiorty complexes because they are, well, superior to their employees. But, to tell your translator her translation is wrong because it doesn't sound right in Portuguese....how does that make any sense?

I realize that "bancos do rio" doesn't make sense, and it should be "margin do rio"...but that does not mean that "banks of the river" has to be "margins of the river" in English. You see, they are two different languages.

At the end of the day, I don't care if her site looks unprofessional because she wants to use her craptastic English. I mean, who needs an in-house translator when your employees provide your site with glorious gems like these:

-"Cum drink a yum-yum in the hotel's slave quarters"

-"The church is filled with little negro angels"

-"The STD room has a contagious energy"

Yes, keep insisting your English is better than mine because those descriptions are F.A.B.U.L.O.U.S!!!

And, to the B$%*& who was under the impression that the translator (me) wouldn't understand portuguese, and asked a coworker right in front of me if I was a lesbian: No, i'm not, but if I were, you wouldn't make the cut!

I'm Coming Out

Alright, it's about time. I've been creeping on the ex-pats in Brazil clique for awhile now (read: months and months)...and now that I am on first name basis with a few of you (without your knowing it) I feel it is time for me to come out of hiding.

This first blog post feels a little strange, like I'm going to look back at it and be embarrassed, but here goes. I guess I'll start with an obligatory introduction.

I'm living in Rio. I came to "work" but really I don't care much for my job and I don't know many people here, so it's looking more and more like I'm here for my boyfriend. I lived here in 2009 for a year while I was on an exchange program through my school UCSC where I studied Linguistics and Portuguese. After graduation, I packed up and moved to Rio.

My original plan was to teach English, but I haven't quite gotten to that yet. I work part time as an in-house translator for a tourism company in Leblon (shhh don't tell the brazilian gov't) and I do freelance translations (kind of) and article writing to pay for my overly expensive vacation rental, because renting an actual apartment in Rio is like trying to get ahold of the federal police by phone....impossible.

So this is the end of my Coming Out post...I'm excited to join the clique...start the hazing!