Sweet relief! I'm finally moved into Ana Paula's apartment. She is absolutely wonderful. We met last night at the hotel when all the students had dinner with their host families, and it could not have gone better. Of course, I was nervous speaking Portuguese with her but she was extremely helpful and reassuring. She even brought me a present! I learned that she in fact doesn't have two separate businesses--I had thought that she had a psychotherapy practice and a human resources business, but turns out she uses her psychology training within her human resources firm. She's the headhunter and she has an employee who conducts interviews. This employee, Carolina, is actually a friend of Ana Paula's, and the three of us just went out to lunch down the street from our apartment. Carolina doesn't speak much English but we were able to have a pretty decent conversation (I found out that Ana Paula is a fan of Madonna, The Police, and Bon Jovi). Ana Paula's been helping me with my Portuguese throughout the day, teaching me which phrases and words are most commonly used for certain things. I'm loving it. She showed me around the neighborhood (bairro) a little bit, and there are tons of cute little shops and restaurants.
Ana Paula's apartment building is really nice compared to most of the other ones I've seen. There's a security guard in a box outside who lets people into the gate, so it seem very safe. She's on the 11th floor, and her apartment is super cute. Very simple and put together. She has a housekeeper who comes once a week, I think, and does the laundry, etc. I have my own bedroom with two pretty large armoires, and several drawers underneath. I'll share a bathroom with Ana Paula, whose bedroom is right next to mine.
There's no air conditioning, and it's about 90 degrees outside, but there are a couple fans going here in the living room so it's pretty nice. She set me up with a Minimodem to plug into my computer so I can use the internet at home whenever I want. We just went to buy a cell phone for me and she helped set up my minutes and everything. So sweet.
Before I left the hotel with Ana Paula this morning, all the students had to take the oral part of the Portuguese placement test. I was called in to speak one-on-one with one of the Brazilian professors, and he asked me a few questions about why I am interested in Brazil, why it is important to the world, and how much experience I've had with Portuguese. Apparently I did well, because he told me afterwords that I would be taking the higher level class, which I think he will be teaching. So huzzah! I'm glad I didn't waste three semesters of Portuguese at Vandy. The Portuguese Language class starts tomorrow at 8:30am at the CIEE office, then afterwords I have Brazilian Culture class at the university (PUC). I think they are within walking distance of each other, but Ana Paula said she would drive me to my first class, and then maybe walk with me for the first several days until I know my way around.
Ana Paula gets back in about an hour, but I'm not sure what else we'll be doing today/tonight. Hopefully just relax a little bit. In fact, I may get a head start on that right now...
Até logo!
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