Party Time....Excellent!

On our nearly-last night in Campinas, the other MAGIS group threw a party in the city and invited us to join them. It was the Junina Festival, which celebrates the month of June in Brazil. (I know it was July. Just deal with it.)

The Junina Festival is basically a large hoedown. Everyone wears straw hats, the girls put on ridiculous pink blush and fake freckles, the gents who are clean shaven get eyeliner goatees, and we all dance the night away drinking hot wine.

FYI: Hot wine is great if you like red wine and hot cider.

During the party, there is a skit performance of the "Hick Wedding". Here in the US, we might call it the "Shotgun Wedding". You know the story; the father is upset because his ugly daughter is pregnant, and he forces the man to marry her, but the man doesn't want to, then another woman comes along, is pregnant by the same man, is much prettier, and so the man wants to marry her, then tries to marry both, and eventually another man comes along for the ugly daughter and both couples are happy. This was hilarious to watch, and afterwards all of the partygoers pair up and do the wedding dance.

After two rejections from Tom and Tomas, Delaney and I found partners in our Jesuit friends; Stephen and Juan Diego. Note: this picture is of terrible quality because I had a crappy camera. I apologize.

Delaney and Stephen

The wedding dance lasted a good 45 minutes because someone let Jucelio have the microphone and he kept adding sections to the dance.  It was great fun, but by the end of it I could barely stand.

It was at this party that I also discovered Pacoquinha, which is Reese's Peanut Butter, basically. SO GOOD.

I left my heart in Campinas, Sao Paulo

I arrived in Campinas on a Monday afternoon. I left Sunday morning. I was only there for a week, but it was a week that changed my life. I've told you a couple stories already, but no amount of stories will truly portray that week.

• For those of you who haven't seen me recently, I have blue hair. It's also purple, green, and white. I specifically touched up my hair the day before I left for Brazil because I knew that children liked colorful hair and it would be funny and whatnot. On my first day, one of the children asked me if I was a singer or a rockstar. Mind you, none of the children spoke English. And again, I don't speak Portuguese. So all of the conversations I speak of took a really long time, and involved lots of miming and inference. Therefore, many of my assumptions about what some brazilian people were saying to me may be entirely wrong. But this one was not. A girl asked me if I was a rockstar. She also asked me if I knew Chris Brown. Not personally, no. But I'm in a band, so I'm kind of like a rockstar.

• Everyone was fascinated with my sunglasses. All of the children (and Juan Diego) wanted to wear them and take pictures of themselves in them.

This is one of the kids in my sunglasses:

And this is Juan Diego in my sunglasses, along with Delaney and Edward in their own:

• We had a field day of sorts, and Susan and I were both on team Amarelho (yellow). We decided that just a color wasn't a good enough team name, so we renamed our team the "Zags".  It was adorable teaching the kids to cheer, "let's go Zags!" However, Jucelio misinterpreted the meaning of the word "Zags" to mean something along the lines of "line up here". And so he tried to tell the English speakers to "Zags" and nobody understood and it was a moment of hilarity.

Team blue was victorious the first field day:

• Tom and I had an interesting talk about the constellations in the southern hemisphere. Tom looked it up and discovered that from where we were in Brazil at that time of year, one an only see three stars of the Southern Cross, and only on the deep horizon at sunset. Needless to say I didn't see the Southern Cross.

• So many young adults from the local community came and helped us with morning prayer and evening Mass. I know I'm going to leave some out, but Jordy, Júlio, Lidiane, Bianca, Leonardo,  Otavio, Fabricio, were some of the people that came every day and it was such a blessing to meet these people, and now I'm leaving people out because I'm forgetting names. Sorry!
  

Não fallo Portugés.

That's a phrase I became good at saying. WYD is over, and I am sitting in the Rio airport waiting to board my first flight. But I am going to continue blogging in order. So here are some great stories from my week in Campinas:

 I was lied to by Juan Diego about how to spell patata palia. It's Batata Palha.

 Juan and Tom are smoking buddies. They found a nice cozy place out of sight of the kids to go smoke. it just so happens to be on our front porch. One day, Tom was nowhere to be found. Juan and I were sitting on the bench, and Juan asks me, "where is mr. Flaherty?" 
I reply, "no idea".
-silence-
J: do you smoke?
C: oh no.
J: well.....today is a good day to start!

I did not smoke with Juan that day. Or any day.

One of the parish youths from SantaMonica in Campinas, Jordy, resembles Nate Reuss. Google Nate Reuss, and then imagine him as a 14 year old, and you have Jordy.

Jordy looks 14, but he's 17.

Ok time to board!

A few lessons learned.

This past week, I lived at a children's center in a very poor, gang infested, drug-selling neighborhood of Campinas. Centro Vedruna, it is called. The center was begun and is run by five wonderful Carmelite nuns, and this past week has been an experience I hope to never forget. I have just arrived in Rio today, and so my regular posts will (hopefully) resume. But I am on my way to meet with my Vedruna group, and so for right now I will just share a few lessons I learned this week:
 1. Brazil has the greatest thing in the world; a dish called patata palia. Basically, it's miniature French fries.
2. You don't eat patata palia one at a time.
3. Brazilians use their fingers when eating WAY less than I do. Like, not at all.
4. I found a language I like less than Spanish. It's called Portuguese.
5. Jucelio's name is Jucelio, not Josef.

Jucelio is also a party animal.

6. No matter how handsome he is, never try to go drink for drink with a large Slovakian man. You will lose.

Pictured: large Slovakian male (right) with Big Tom.

7. Rice and beans go with everything.
8. There is more sugar in Brazil than anywhere in a child's imagination of heaven.
9. But still, the food is fantastic.


 Time for dinner, which probably consists of sugar built to resemble food, and some rice and beans.

I don't know what to post today.

We had mass with the Father General of the Jesuits! We walked to the park! We went to the bar and had a Coke! I met with my small group for the next week. We played that game where you have to say your name and country and then say everyone's names and countries who went before you, and naturally I was last, so I had to know everybody's names, and when I got them all right, they applauded me. Had reflection time with the Gonzaga group! Danced salsa with Susan! It's 10:30, and my small group leaves at 6 am! Goodnight!

Time to be a Tourist

Today, we went on a great tour of Salvador! After lunch, we were loaded onto buses and were guided around the city. We learned tons of great history about buildings and churches, met the mayor, started a flash mob, made the national news, and there was even a parade in our honor! The sucky part is that none of that is true. Well, the parade bit is sort of true. With 2,000 people walking through the streets of Salvador, the police had to shut down a couple of lanes for us, and so cars waited and people watches us walk by, so it was kind of like a parade. What really happened is after lunch we walked through the slums of Salvador to get to the historical center and then to the Catedral Basilica and Terreiro de Jesus. We weren't guided by people that knew the history of the city, so we just looked around. Once at Terreiro de Jesus, we waited for 45 minutes, and then performed a flash mob to the MAGIS theme song and to another song in Portuguese that I don't know. It was a lot of fun, but we practiced for it in the square where we performed it, so that was weird. Also, my whole group was tired after walking and rehearsing, so when it came time to actually do the dance, only Kyle joined me. Bt we did make it on the national news, and we had a five minute segment, which I guess is good because it means that the news stations had no other important things to report, like riots. After our flash mob, we walked for another 2 1/2 hours, and got back after dinner was supposed to start. So we got no free time, but it was ok. After dinner was the Nations' Festival, which was a cultural show from a bunch of the countries at MAGIS. My favorites were Mauritius and South Korea. That just ended, so I'm going to bed. Check out our flash mobbing on the MAGIS website! http://magisbrasil.tumblr.com/ TTFN; ta ta for now!

How many pilgrims does it take to use up a bottle of DEET in one day?

It's 1:15 am in Salvador. I have yet to sleep since my last post three hours ago, and here's why: It all began with playing some card games out in the lunge. We made some new friends, Larissa and Fabio, both Brazilians. It was getting late, and so Caroline and I decided we needed to go to bed. As we washed our feet and tucked into our sleeping bags, Caroline let out a hushed yell of frustration. Her toiletries bag had seemingly melted all over her backpack, and was sticky, smelly, and everywhere. That's where I get involved. I got up to he her empty the contents to find that the bag hadn't melted in the sun as we had thought, but her spray bottle of 100% DEET had leaked into her bag, eroded the bag at the seams, and begun eating away at Caroline's other belongings. OH NO! I instinctively grabbed the whole toiletries bag and ran outside to dump the contents, bringing with me my wet wipes to clean it up. 5 wet wipes later, Caroline came out in her socks with a bag to put her stuff in, but it was too weak. The DEET began eroding away at the stolen airline barf bag (clean), and so she ran inside to find another suitable container. Meanwhile, it began to rain. No, not rain. Pour. Within 30 seconds I was soaked through, in my only pajamas, smelling like DEET and holding Caroline's toiletries. She found a MAGIS official, who gave her a plastic trash bag, and for now that seems to be holding up. I threw away her old toiletries bag and the cracked bottle of DEET. We thought the worst was over, but boy were we wrong. Upon examination of my hands, I came to discover that the DEET had shriveled up my fingers and palms, causing old scars to resurface and dry out everything. I washed my hand and they are better now though. Now I'm in my sleeping bag, exhausted, wet, still smelly, no longer sticky, but thankfully we caught the mess before it ate everything. The lesson for the kiddos at home: 100% DEET bad. Very bad. Day one still isn't over, and I've got more crazy stories. Stay tuned.

Houston, we have a problem.

Well, we had a problem. It's all been fixed now. But in Thursday morning, as I prepared for my epic trip, I received a call from United saying that my flight was MASSIVELY delayed. Great. So we rush to SeatTac and meet up with Todd, one of the leaders of my group. He and I were the only ones flying from Seattle, and therefore the only ones affected by this nonsense. But Todd sweet talked us into a couple of tickets on American Airlines (in the exit row) through Dallas which brought us to Rio an hour before the others. Nice. However, this means that we did not meet the others in Houston as planned, but we had out own epic adventure. (I apologize for my lack of creativity; I haven't slept yet.) We arrived in Dallas just as our next flit was boarding, so we went for a little jog. Thankfully, our flight went full, so we each got a row to ourselves. That didn't help me, though, and so I spent 8 hours of the 10 hour flight awake, wishing I was asleep. Todd slept great, in case you were wondering. We got to rio, met up with everyone else, and made it to Salvador. We just got to the high school where we are staying, and we have wifi here, so I'll try to post every day I'm in Salvador. That's all for now!

Great News!

Well, for me at least. I didn't completely slack on the trip to Spain! I'm still really forgetful, but I forgot that I DID blog WYD 2011! You can read those posts at . Sorry I didn't post that link two years ago. ANYWAYS, I've still been slacking on my posts about college travels and my 2012 trip to Disneyland. So be prepared to get spammed with those posts. Here's a little taste of my last Christmas Trip over the pass: Shirley (my 1997 Saturn), my good friends Anna, Sarah, and I were driving back over the pass to Seattle for the Christmas holidays. As we neared the pass, I pulled over and outfitted Shirley with her winter armor. We made it over the pass and were descending when one of the chains broke! (For those of you who want to tell me that I was driving too fast/didn't put the chains on right/there wasn't enough snow, I was driving 25 mph in a snowstorm and I know how to put the chains on. These were just old chains.) So I pull over to the side of the road, but due to traffic and other concerns, I was unable to get all the way over, so I ended up in that weird triangle between the on-ramp and the freeway at exit 42. I get out, fix the situation, and then get back into the car, which now will not move. Naturally, I go to restart the engine and....nothing. Turns out, Saturn puts the electrical harness outside of the engine block and IN THE WHEEL WELL. So my broken chain completely ripped out the entire harness. However, everything still worked but the engine, so I called my dad to come rescue us, and we watched a movie on someone's laptop while we waited the TWO AND A HALF HOURS for him. A couple of snow plows and a few nice police officers stopped and checked on us, and we were fine. But that was one heck of an adventure. More to come, most likely in reverse order!

I've been slacking.

It happens to the best of us. We go on some amazing adventure, we promise to stay in touch, then we don't. And I am guilty as charged. I told you I would write. I said I would let you know what happened. I would post pictures so you can be eternally jealous of my international antics. But I didn't. And you might try to give me the benefit of the doubt; "She hasn't been anywhere since going to college, so what would she post?" "She's probably super busy studying; she doesn't have the time!" That's all false. Since my last post, I have been to Italy, Spain, and Disneyland. I have had several (mis)adventures traveling between Spokane and Seattle, and in a month I am going to Brazil. I'm still traveling. I spend time goofing around on the internet every day, so I definitely have time to post occasionally. I have no excuse. I'm just lazy and forgetful. Mea culpa. But now is the time to create new habits. Today is the day to catch up! Well, my travel journal is in Spokane, so full catch up isn't likely, but I've got an alright memory and fantastic imagination, so you will never cease to be thrilled when reading my upcoming posts about my past adventures. Again, sorry it's been so long, and I'll do my best to be better.