An awesome Rotary weekend in Maragogi, and other life experiences

This past weekend for me was spent attending my Rotary orientation at a beach called Maragogi, about 2 hours from Recife. This was a get together with all of the inbound exchange students from the district, and it was alot of fun! The beach itself is very beautiful, and we did alot of swimming. (This is much better than the beach in Recife, where you can´t go swimming because of sharks.) It was funny though- I was surprised that the water was so salty, I guess I forgot it was the ocean, as this was the first time I have gone to the beach here. Previously I have only been to the beach one time, and that was a long time ago, so I didn´t really think about it, I guess. :) It was really nice, though. It was really fun to meet all of the other exchange students. I believe there were about 30 total, from all over the world. I met alot of really cool people, and even some who live in Recife who I had not known previously. Hopefully we can get together agin soon.

Most of the meetings during the weekend were conducted in english, with some Portuguese/Spanish translation for the few people who didn´t speak english. Most of the people actually didn´t speak very much portuguese, if any. The students from Mexico spoke more portuguese, because they also spoke spanish, which is similar, and several other people also spoke some, but not many. I felt really lucky to have had the opportunity to study before comming here, even if only for a short time. It helped alot. I was able to talk to everyone with a mixture of english and Portuguese, as a few people didn´t speak english, so that was really neat. I only wish that all of the exchange students could get together more often.

When we were first arriving our bus broke down about 1km from the hotel, and we walked the rest of the way there. It wasn´t far though, so it was actually kind of fun. :) Besides going swimming at the beach, we also played soccer (everybody plays soccer without shoes here), had meetings about the rules of Rotary and the exchange trips; hung out with everyone together, played games, and saw a capoeira show. Capoeira is a Brazilian dance which is based on martial arts, and is really really neat. After the show, we were invited to come learn how to dance. Later that same night, a group of Forro dancers came and performed / taught us how to dance forro. This was awesome - I danced alot! Everyone was sad to leave the next day, but it was still a good weekend.

After we got back on sunday I went to a concert at a club with Bruna and Iga. This was fun, but I was very tired from the weekend. On monday I had my portuguese class very early in the morning, It was a miracle that I stayed awake for the entire class. :) After that I came home and slept, then I went to basketball practice that night.

Yesterday I didn´t have class, so I went to a market with Maria Clara, Bruna, Eduarda, and one of Clara´s friends. The market was in the old part of Recife. It was huge with many people. Clara said that the name for this kind of crowd is "vouku-vouku" (i´m probably spelling that wrong but oh well...) it means lots of people milling around. :) It was intense, but fun. There are lots of shops as well as little booths with vendors selling pretty much everything: prepared food, arts and crafts of the area, clothes, shampoo, fabric, discount items, meat, etc. There is one part of the market which has lots of little stalls under a big, permanent canopy -- kind of like a giant building with no walls. This is where they have the butcher shops, fish, vegetables, and arts and crafts. It smells very bad. While we were there, a big chicken got away from one of the stalls and flew up into the rafters. All the people there gathered to watch/cheer/laugh at the people trying to catch the chicken. It was great. :) They did eventually catch the chicken, however, and all the people went back to what they had been doing previously.