attempting to blend in

Last night, Jenny and I went out with one of her friends, Louis who is from Rio and attended PUC for undergrad, but is currently getting his masters degree at the University of Illinois. He drove us around our neighborhood hotspots and we had drinks at an outside bar/pizza parlor. It’s like Antonios but WAYYY better! There are restaurants like this and juice bars everywhere where huge crowds of young (and old) people gather outside. There is usually a bar with a few tables outside on the sidewalk and everyone else crowds around on the sidewalk and street drinking and talking. It is a really fun atmosphere! It was still about 80 degrees at 11pm and the cold Brahma was much appreciated ☺

This morning we got a tour of PUC, the university I will be studying at for both an Intensive Language class for the next 3 weeks, and the regular semester, which begins in March. We have all of February off for Carnaval and the tail end of Brazilian students summer. I plan on experiencing Carnaval in Rio but hope to also travel around the area with the extra time.

PUC is a private Catholic university in the southern region of Rio. It is actually located in my own neighborhood, Gávea. In contrast to the US, public universities in Brazil are actually more prestigious than private universities, in general. However, PUC has a great reputation and many of the countries biggest business owners have graduated from there. The campus is literally in a jungle. Vines, trees, and a small river run in between campus buildings. They say you can even spot monkeys in the trees if you get lucky. I’m going to bring bananas to class everyday now.. just in case ☺

PUC has many partnerships with large companies and corporations such as Petrobás, a large Brazilian oil company. The businesses sponsor buildings and programs for students to do research and develop new products for the companies. Students who are interested in starting their own businesses can even rent offices to run out of. I was very impressed by the community involvement and initiative of the PUC students.

After orientation, Jenny and I attempted to join the outside world via buying cell phones. QUITE an adventure. First, we needed to exchange money. Logically, we thought a bank would do this for us, and we entered a revolving door at Itáu. I pushed the door and just as I got completely inside the door, it locked. I was stuck inside!! As I struggled to decipher the big sign on the door in front of me that explained that the door was something of a metal detector which required you to put all your electronics through first, a security guard came over laughing and let me in. All that trouble, and they didn’t have a cash exchange! We left embarrassed as the two security guards continued laughing at us ☺ We then entertained yet another security guard inside the mall by asking him where to exchange money. He could tell we were completely confused. He directed us to a travel agency upstairs which had yet ANOTHER crazy ass door!! The doorman told us to step in one door and the door behind us closed. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic or I wouldn’t survive here! He kept putting his hands up in a pushing motion so we tried pushing the door in front of us. Apparently his hand signal meant “wait” not “push.” I can’t even understand sign language, much less Portuguese ☺ Eventually the door opened and we successfully exchanged our money. Whew!

On to the next adventure… finding a cell phone. Among the things I have found surprisingly expensive in Brazil are peanut butter, sunscreen (I spent R$31, or about $20 on a small bottle) and electronics. Hence, we didn’t really want to buy a crappy new cell phone for $80. We were told we could “unlock” our AT&T phones and replace the SIM cards. Although I thought this may or may not be legal, we tried our best to convince 3 different stores to “unlock” our phones (in broken Portuguese, of course). Long long long story short: no luck. We decided to give up for the day and ended our afternoon drinking coconut milk on beautiful Léblon beach.