Minha Filha~!

Yo!

So! All is well!

On Sunday (my second day here), the students of the program got together in the morning for an orientation, and.. everything sounded so exciting! We`re going to take a tour of the city on Friday, potentially take a boat to the nearby islands on Saturday.. and.. yeps! We get the official itinerary (including homework assignments, boo!) on Thursday, since that will be our official first day of class! Why THURSDAY, aka quinta feira? You`ll just have to scroll down... questions will be answered later..

After the orientation, we met up with our host mothers! It was super cute. The program director cut some postcards from Salvador up in two, one half given to us, the other given to our mother.... so when we found them, it was a pretty cute moment, seeing people putting together their postcards, making the postcards complete!

Anyways, my mother is SUPER nice. I forgot that I had put down that I was vegetarian on my application form for the program, so my host mother (Marlene, Marla for short!) can cook vegetarian! yaya! However, I DID tell her that I want to experience Bahian food, and that I`m willing to eat meat, so.. she`s been really good about cooking traditional Bahian food with meat in it from time to time. (she`s not vegetarian, herself, so... all is okay!)

Everyone knows that I`m SUCH a foodie, so.. no surpise that I`m going to talk about it NOW. On the first morning, in the hotel, we had a breakfast similar to American/Western (eggs, sausage, bacon, toust, fruit..), but a couple things I found interesting was that they had boiled bananas (probably plantains), tasting VERY much like a sweet potatoe. I really should find the name for it, but they also had a tapioca pudding type of thing, but it was more liquidy (porridge-y?), but it was SO yummy with its vanilla creaminess, especially with a pinch of cinnamon on top.

My host mother`s food has been REALLY good, too. For my first breakfast, we had some toast, scrambled eggs (but.. they were pretty salty??), coconut yogurt with some granola, a chocolate-banana smoothie (smoothie= `vitamina`), fresh guaranà juice (a type of berry).. and.. yeps! This morning, we had some fresh pineapple juice and mango juice, and also had this thing that apparently not many Brazilians enjoy.. it was basically a cornbread (or, couscous?) made over the stove, with cheese melted on top, which you eat with butter, or pour on some milk and sprinkle sugar on it, and eat it with a steamed banana... oo! Another thing here, the coffee`s been strong, but great! It`s so strong that most people are just expected to drink it with milk, so a coffee pot`s usually prepared.. with heated milk right nearby! I love cafè oles, and order it all the time in the US, but I wish they just had simple coffee and heated milk, like they do here!
For lunch/dinner, we`ve had a Brazilian interpretation of yakisoba (I told her I love yakisoba, and her husband is Japanese-Brazilian, so... she knew what I was talking about.. kind of??haha!), pancakey (almost pupusa-like taste, YES!) things with soy meat, feijoada (a black bean stew with meat in it, goo~d), acarajè (a Baian thing, that`s basically corn bread with dried, seasoned shrimp and spiced lentil pastes (MM! making you hungry?? me TOO.)...
And, of course, at every single meal, we`ve been having dessert... Brazilians sure like SUGAR! I actually had a little bit of a light-headed ness/headache, today.. perhaps because of dehydration, but, I think also because I`m sensitive to too much sugar.. But, anyways! We`ve been having a fair share of sweets! For example, there`s this cake that`s made of cornmeal, which you eat with dulce de leche paste. My host mother`s also prepared a chocolate cake- which, I surprisingly like (most people know that I dislike cake.. a LOT.) , since it is pretty moist, and it`s topped with shavings of real chocolate (not icky frosting). Today for lunch, we also had a chocolate fondue with bananas and grapes, which was.. HA! Heavenly! I LOVE chocolate, so I`m definitely in the right country, ahha!

We live in an apartment (the 13th floor, oh no! haha..) on Sete de Setembre, a pretty major road in Salvador. The school that I`m attending (ACBEU) is just down the street, probably 10 or so minutes away, so I can walk to school, everyday. `There`s a lot of things nearby, such as a Geology Museum (the good ol`memories of being a corepresenative in the Rocks and Minerals competition in Science Olympiad DEF came back to me!), Art museum... and further down the road (a bit of a walk, but.. i need the excercise to burn off all these calories from eating so much!) is the beach, Praia de Forte. There`s a ton of artistic grafiti on the walls down to the beach, so it`s a nice walk. I`d really like to take pictures of it, but, so far I haven`t been too successful since taking my camera out REALLY labels me as a tourist, and local bums just come towards me like a magnet! eek! This definitely is a city where you want to walk with somebody..

What else..? Oh! To answer the question that I posted, before. So, Wednesday is a holiday/festival in Brazil, called São Joao, which I think I`ve already explained, but is basically a festival that celebrates harvest.. farm stuff.. and people EAT a LOT of CORNmeal stuff, go to listen to music, go out, drink, dance~! But, like holidays like Christmas.. people like to party a lot on the EVE of holidays. So, Tuesday is a holiday, too. But, people usually go to visit their relative in the countryside to celebrate the harvest, so.. people need time to travel. Thus, Monday is a holiday, too. So, why not just throw in Saturday and Sunday, too, since it`S the weekened? And also Thursday and Friday, since those are the days that people usually go out with friends, anyway? So, that`s the reason that I don`t have my first day of class until this Thursday.
SO! Basically... it`s a WEEK of celebration. They`ve had concerts every night (like the one I went to on Saturday) at Pelourinho.. people have been lighting fireworks/firecrackers in the streets at random times (they REALLY surprised me at first - they go off even during the DAY, and sound like a car REALLY back-fired/ bomb-like!). So, anyways... tonight, I will go out with my host mother and her friends to join in the festivities!

More to come, muito amor.