Primeiras aulas e o maior shopping de São Paulo

I'm slowly breaking out of my host/guest and director/student babysitting relationships. I went out on my own (with friends) for the first time today!

I'll start with yesterday. It was the first day of both our Portuguese Language and Brazilian Culture classes (aulas). Ana Paula drove me to class in her car and picked me up at the university afterwords, so I felt very taken care of, but kind of chaperoned. In any case, it's nice to not worry about safety in transit on my first few days.
My language teacher, Sérgio Duarte, is 45 years old and has a PhD from USP (the best university in Brazil) in Applied Linguistics. He's a certified translator and English-Portuguese interpreter, in addition to having a good working knowledge of Spanish and French. He's translated tons of documents for official use in São Paulo and for US and UK law firms. Pretty impressive guy, plus he's extremely patient and warm. If anyone wants a visual reference, he actually looks a LOT like that Brazilian guy in "Love Actually" that Laura Linney is in love with. I think the actor's name is Rodrigo Santoro. Anywho, the teacher and the class are both extremely interesting. All the program participants were split up into several different levels of skill, and there are six people in my class, which is nice because I don't feel as embarrassed when I make a mistake.
The CIEE offices are in a smallish two-level apartment, and my class is upstairs in a room with a window facing what would be the backyard if there weren't another apartment behind it. Our classroom window is always open, so we can hear everything that goes on in that apartment--it's pretty weird and cool at the same time. Because while I'm learning about all these different linguistic idiosyncrasies, hand gestures, slang, and speech habits of Paulistanos, I can hear the washer/dryer buzzer of some random person and smelling their laundry detergent and listening to their radio as if I were in their house. It feels almost too intimate that a stranger's life can be so exposed to me, but then, that's Brazil. And not that I've been spying, but I can also see really well into people's apartments in the building across the street from Ana Paula's from my bedroom. It's like "Rear Window," where I see all these different people living different lives stacked on top of one another. Sounds creepy (I swear I'm not), but I think it's one of those things I'll always remember about living here.

After Language class, we all walk to some restaurant in the neighborhood para almoçar, then on to PUC for Brazilian Culture class. Our class is in the Predio Velho, or Old Building, which is very pretty and colonial (complete with concrete crucifix in the quadrangle), compared with the New Building which is apparently very '70s ugly. Our professor is Wilson Honório da Silva, and I've come to respect him a great deal after only knowing him for a few days. He is 46 and was born in the favelas, or slums, to extremely poor parents and went on to get a scholarship to study at USP. He's now an author and co-founder/coordenator of the USP Center of Black Conscience. He fought against the Military Dictatorship in the '70s, personally contributing to the establishment of the United Workers' Socialist Party (PSTU).  He is also gay, and a self-proclaimed Marxist. It would be a gross understatement to say that his perspective on Brazilian culture is interesting. He speaks extremely fast and the acoustics in the room are awful so it's sometimes hard to catch certain words, but I can understand almost everything, and his lectures are enlightening to say the least. I feel like I'm getting VIP access to all the crucial issues Brazilians have been/are thinking/talking about for centuries.
Another funny Brazil-y thing: for two consecutive days during this class, there has been some sort of party or celebration or show consisting of extremely loud music out in the quadrangle, which is right outside our room. It was so loud that Wilson had to shut the door and even then, the noise was distracting. I have no idea what they were doing out there, and when I asked the student director sitting next to me today, she shrugged and said, "É PUC." "That's PUC" for you, I guess. Maybe tomorrow I'll pretend to go to the bathroom and sit outside for a minute to watch because I'm always disappointed when class is over and the quad has completely cleared out. I'll keep you updated.

Yesterday after classes Ana Paula picked me up and took me to the mall because I needed a few things from the drugstore and it was close. It wasn't just any mall, though; it was the biggest mall in São Paulo. It was actually enormous. And the best part is that malls here are called shoppings. Not the action, but the actual building. As in, "Let's go to the shopping." Hilarious. Anyway, she called her brother Alex and he met up with us for some ice cream. He is really funny, and he and Ana Paula have a very sweet relationship. He actually went to PUC, so he was telling me all about the university and comparing it with others in Brazil. Ana Paula went to Mackenzie Presbyterian University (also in São Paulo), and she had a lot to say about it too. Alex is a lawyer so we broached the subject of politics, and I explained how consistently drilled into my mind it has been that it is extremely risky to discuss religion or politics with Brazilians. They both assured me that it's OK when you're with friends, and that Brazilians are not so sensitive. So I guess it depends on who you ask. It was fun getting to see Ana Paula interact with her brother and listen to her talk about her country.

Today's classes were just as exciting as yesterday's, but I won't bore you with details. What I was most excited about today was that after school... I didn't go straight back home!! I called Ana Paula to tell her not to pick me up because I was going to Avenida Paulista with some friends and then to see a movie at six. I was happy to hear that she had no problem with it, and she offered to pick me up afterwords if I needed her. So we hopped on the treacherous rollercoaster that is the ônibus and rode for about 10 minutes to the Avenida. There's a mall there that we went to during our stay at the hotel and a few people needed to buy cell phones and some just wanted to shop, etc. It also has a movie theater, and Wilson had told us we have to see the new biographical movie about Lula. He hated it, but we have to see it. Well. I understood maybe 40% of the dialogue, and I haven't studied Lula all that much yet, but it did seem slightly over-dramatized/romanticized. I think Lula may have paid the director actually. In any case, it was my first experience seeing a Brazilian movie without subtitles of any kind! Movin' on up...

Later on, I had a frustrating hiccup with my debit card, and my house key broke off in the keyhole upon returning home. Booo. Luckily, Ana Paula is wonderful and said she would help me call the bank tomorrow, and that she would have another copy of the key made, no problem at all. I'm really glad I didn't get stuck with a host who's snobby or distant or has five children. Many of my friends have told me they have families like that. Graças a deus!