Beaches of Rio: A Case Study

Whenever I go to the beach in Rio, I can't help but think about Balnearios, a movie I watched for my New Argentine Cinema class last semester which is a mockumentary/anthropological survey of Argentine beachside towns.  Although I didn't care for the film, one particular scene really stuck with me in which the narrator, director Mariano Llinás, describes the people of the beach.  El panchero, con su caja de metal (the hotdog vendor with his metal box), el heladero, con su caja de hielo (the ice cream man with his box of ice), and so on for ten minutes, chronicling the characters of the beach in excruciating detail.  The beaches in Rio remind me of this scene, as I always sit and marvel at the delicate social balance taking place near the ocean. Here are some of my observations:

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The Vendors

The beach is crawling with roaming vendors, selling anything you can imagine.  You can sit on your towel and just wait for someone to walk by shouting the items they sell, wave at him or her, and then buy your desired snack or drink.  There appears to be a kind of beach vendor camaraderie-- yesterday one seller didn't have the drink I wanted, but went and found another seller who did and brought him over to me.  Pretty good service!  

My beach-going experience is much tamer than it was a few years ago, as officials started cracking down on different vendors at the beach, prohibiting portable grills and some fresher foods in preparation for the World Cup and Olympics.  They also banned pets and playing some sports near the water during peak times.  (You can read the full article from the New York Times from 2010 here.)

Got to the beach and forgot your swimsuit?  No problem!  These men with bikini umbrellas walk the beach, happy to sell you a suit or two.  Some will even take credit cards.

The matte leão sellers carry two large metal drums on each side and put a little of each into the plastic cups they carry.  The drink tastes like an Arnold Palmer (lemonade + ice tea), but I think the tea part is supposed to be like mate, a strong tea concoction they drink religiously in Argentina and Uruguay.  The man in the background with the large bag is carrying iscoito globo, small circle shaped cookies.  They are a beach trademark, although I have not tried them yet.

Shrimp vendor.  I don't know how I feel about buying seafood from someone walking the beach, but a lot of people seem to eat it.  (Photo by André Vieira from nytimes.com.)

The sidewalk (note the signature Rio sidewalk design) is lined with quiosques, small stands that sell a variety of drinks and snack items.  They might have french fries or algados (any kind of salty pastry item which could have meat or cheese inside).  This is also the place to get your coconut water in the coconut itself-- those are too heavy to be easily carried around the beach.  

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The Beachgoers

The beach is one of the few places where people of all social classes mix.  One of our tour guides explained that going to the beach is one of the last remaining "free" activities that poor people can do.  Therefore, at the beach someone who lives in a comunidade (social correct term for favelas) sitting next to someone with an ocean front apartment.  You'll find people on the beach tanning, enjoying the water, or playing one of many crazy Brazilian beach sports.  

Typical swimsuit for the women of Brazil.  Called the biquíni do dental (dental bikini or dental floss bikini), this style of bottom is popular for women of all ages and body shapes.  

Leave it to the men of Brazil to find a response to the small swimsuits of the women.  As with the ladies, men of all sizes will wear the speedo-style suit.  I would like to note here that I bought my first two-piece swimsuit in probably ten years shortly before coming to Brazil, and my bottoms are larger than the men's swimsuits.  

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(My photos are from Google images.  Photographers, thank you for letting me use your photos for an educational post on this blog.)

Leveling up at PUC

So what exactly am I doing in Brazil?  I like to think of it as studying abroad from my study abroad program.  I am actually here to enroll in an intensive Portuguese class at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, in which I will take six credit hours of Portuguese in one month.  This is equivalent to a year’s worth of study at IU, so my plan is to knock out my two 300-level Portuguese requirements this month.  There are only four or five students in the over 200-person group of international students who are only doing the intensive program and not staying for the semester.

For our first day at PUC (pronounced poo-key), we had an extensive orientation.  The woman leading the session told us about life in Rio, the academic system, and our intensive course.  Some of the information was not relevant to me, as I am only staying for the month-long intensive course, but I patiently sat for all three and a half hours with everyone else.  As lunchtime was approaching, they dismissed all the boys. 

Unfortunately, Rio is a city where women are not always treated fairly, and I agree that having a talk with just the girls about certain safety precautions is probably (and regrettably) a necessity.  However, the way the staff at PUC went about doing it did not sit well with me.  They distributed a pink booklet with some recommendations, like don’t walk around with lots of money or expensive electronics.  These were obvious and good practice for anyone, but some of their advice was not thought through.  For example, one recommendation was not to wear our hair in ponytails because it is easier for someone to grab.  If someone is trying to abduct you, they can grab your hair in or out of a ponytail, as well as grab your entire body.  The way they went about this talk was needlessly worst-case scenario-y (sharing fairly specific stories about former students).  I have already lived in a large South American city for five months and know enough Portuguese to communicate, and I left feeling unsettled and unsafe. 

After lunch in the cafeteria, we had our Portuguese speaking evaluation.  As I am only staying for the month-long language intensive and not the full semester, I had not already completed the written exam, because for some reason they weren’t letting the intensive-only students do it online.  First I took that exam (mine was all fill-in-the-blank while the other students who got to take it online had a multiple-choice exam; not fair), and then had my oral interview.  I explained my current language predicament—I came directly from speaking Spanish for more than five months and not practicing Portuguese.  I also have taken two years of university-level Portuguese and have been pre-approved for Level 3 by the Portuguese department at IU. 

I learned a great deal about Brazil in the fight to get in Level 3 of Portuguese.  I was first put in Level 2 (equivalent to 200 and 250 at IU), a class I had already taken.  On the first day, I talked to the teacher, who informed me that there was another test to verify our level that we would be taking that day; to advance, I needed to get 90% right.  I sat down to take the exam, and I recognized all the material—pronouns, use of the different types of the subjunctive, irregular verbs, and direct and indirect object pronouns.  The problem was that I could not remember how to form the verbs.  Next to many of the sentences where I did not remember how to conjugate the verb, I wrote what verb tense it should be (past subjunctive, preterit imperfect, etc.).  When I got my exam back the next day, I got about 50% of the actual answers right, but I was almost all correct on labeling the verb tenses.  I sat through class from 8:30 – 1 incredibly bored—we were reviewing material I had already learned.  I knew there was no way I could do this every day for a month, especially keeping in mind that IU would see my work in Level 2 as a repetition of courses I had already taken and not give me credit for it.

Still determined to get to level 3, I went to the international student office (I arrived at 1:03 after class, but they were closed for lunch from 11:30-2 p.m., of course), and found the highest up person I could find and explained the situation.  This man explained that the only people who could help me were the Portuguese teachers; I asked where their office was, but he said they had already gone home for the day (it’s 2:10 p.m. at this point).  Very discouraged (and a bit teary), I went to my specific program’s office, where Matt, the director, helped me locate the right person to talk to on Friday and coached me through what to say.  The most important thing, he cautioned, was not to question their evaluation system and never put any blame on the evaluations. 

At 8:12 a.m. Friday morning, I found the classroom where the head teacher, Adrianna, was supposed to be.  She wasn’t there because there was a staff meeting, so I wandered over there and asked for her, saying I had an emergência acadêmica.  She came out of the meeting, and I began to explain the problem.  Adrianna, in true Brazilian fashion, began to say how awful the American university system is for putting such strict limits on the courses we can take and how PUC’s courses measure our true levels.  Thinking quickly (this was not what I prepared for), I started tearing up from frustration, doing my best to explain in Portuguese how I came for the intensive to specifically take Level 3, how it was a course I could not take in Argentina, how I was not going to be able to get a Portuguese major without this class, how I would not be able to graduate with a Portuguese major in four years, and so on.  It was clear she understood the situation, as she gave me a big hug and told me she would talk to my Portuguese teacher. 

This scenario further solidifies my theory that in South America, if you find the right person and cry, you will get what you want (within reason of course).  My Portuguese teacher pulled me out of class to say I was moving to Level 3 and gave me a big hug and wished me luck.  The new class was much more appropriate for my level; I will need to study extra this first week, but I feel challenged instead of bored.  I talked to the new teacher during the break explaining my situation, and she said that she had lived in Buenos Aires for six years and knew how speaking Spanish messes with your Portuguese.  I felt so much better knowing she understood what was happening with all the languages in my head.

Brazil: First Impressions

I arrived in Brazil on Friday, and since then, I’ve been having a lot of cultural adjustment and shock.  From the beginning of December until the middle of February, I have been and will continue to be traveling and seeing new places (I promise I’ll return to the blog posts about my trip to Peru, Bolivia, and Chile soon!).  In the span of about 10 weeks, I will have been in six countries, spoken three languages, and lugged around way too many things.  While I love to travel and experience all the world has to offer, I do like a little bit of structure and predictability. 

I left Argentina Friday morning and flew to Rio de Janeiro for a month-long Portuguese language intensive.  The same people who run my Buenos Aires program, CIEE, run the program I am on, so I know what to expect on the management end.  Our program started Saturday morning, so Friday I had the afternoon to myself.  Like every time I go to a new place for an extended time, I am very upset and disoriented.  This is the first time I have travelled internationally on my own, meaning there was no one to get me from the airport and I didn’t know other people who were traveling.  While I am fully capable of getting a cab and finding my way by myself, it’s still a nerve-wracking experience to know that you are completely on your own if something goes wrong.  After a healthy dinner of passion fruit juice, a cheese croissant, and a churro filled with dulce de leche (I was missing Argentina), I was feeling slightly better. 

In my walk to eat, I went down to the beach and took note of what people were wearing.  I recently bought my first two-piece swimsuit in years in preparation for Brazil, but it appears it will not do—my bikini is still about 50% larger than all the other swimsuits I saw on both women and men.  It appears that one rouge wave could leave the entire beach naked. 

Group photo of almost everyone on my month-long study abroad program in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.   

Saturday morning I ventured over to the hotel that was hosting our orientation; this hotel was air-conditioned, a necessity in over 100-degree temperatures.  I started meeting the other students on the program, and started to feel a lot better.  We had sort of a general orientation to things in Brazil, and then we went out to a pizza place for dinner.  It appears Brazilians are into hardboiled eggs of all sizes on their pizza (Mom, you’ll have to come try some!), as well as delicious dessert pizzas with chocolate and strawberries.  Afterwards, I went with some other students to a bar—it wasn’t that I desperately wanted to go out on the first night, but I understand from my first few weeks in Argentina that the first days are key friendship-making time, so it’s important to put yourself out there in all of the activities. 

On Sunday we learned how to take public transportation and saw where we will be attending classes and the CIEE Study Center.  This study center is a definite improvement over the one in Buenos Aires for the mere fact that it has both a usable kitchen and hammocks.  In the evening, we were taken to our host families’ homes.  I am staying with another student, Hannah, in Copacabana with our host, Maria Amelia.  She is in her early or mid-sixties and used to teach gym classes. 

Maybe I have been spoiled with living with Delfi and having a really great homestay experience in Buenos Aires, but when we arrived at our apartment, it was clear that Lia (her nickname) wasn’t ready for our arrival.  I am staying in her room since I am only here for a month (she has moved to another small bedroom), and she hadn’t finished removing her items so there was a place for me to unpack.  She had wifi but didn’t know the password (she also suggested we go to the restaurant next door and ask if they knew how to make a new wifi- this does not make sense).  We had to ask for towels and where to put our stuff in the bathroom, she did not have keys for each of us, nor did she have any breakfast food for us to eat the next morning. 

None of these things in itself is a big problem, but all together, it was a little challenging personally.  I think knowing what a good and prepared homestay should be made me more aware of the problems.  Lia said that her mother has been ill so she was on the phone all day taking care of things for her, which I can appreciate, but it just seemed like she had done nothing to prepare.  All of these things got resolved within twenty-four hours, so in the grand scheme of things this was not a big deal.  In addition, my stress was compounded by the fact that Lia does not speak any English—thankfully I had Hannah here, and as a team we were able to figure most things out.

We have already had class orientation, and I’ll write more about that in a few days once I start class.  For now, I am struggling to get all my Portuguese back—at the moment, I am stumbling through life here using portunol (portugues + espanol) which is getting me by.  People have been helpful when I ask what stuff is called, and I can feel my abilities coming back each day.  It still doesn’t take away the weird feeling of being in Brazil.  I am used to Buenos Aires, which I can now say is neat, tidy, and organized compared to what I have experienced so far in Brazil.  For example, yesterday I went to buy a cell phone, which involved no fewer than five steps: First I told the woman at the cell phone counter which phone I wanted, then she left and returned with a piece of paper with a number on it, then I went and paid for the phone, next I took the receipt from the cashier back to the phone counter, and finally she went and brought me the phone.  After getting the phone, I refused to leave the store until someone explained to me how to put the SIM card in, which involved begging the other phone representative to stay after his shift ended to help me. 

I’m sure in a few days once I’m at class and more in the swing of things I will feel a lot more comfortable.  Today’s plans are to enjoy Copacabana beach (just three blocks away!), drink out of a coconut, and not get sunburned before class starts tomorrow.  Até logo! Until next time!