Pep rally: Brazilan style

So yesterday I went to what I think was the equivalent of a pep rally here in a Brazilian public school. The students were celebrating the opening of their annual intramural games with an African theme. There was fire--the passing of a literal torch with the tune from Chariots of Fire played on electric guitar! There was capoeira (the nation´s martial art), singing, tons of dancing, and a pejorative drama about American football. What really had to take the cake were the costumes. I was surprised. One dance group was dressed as the orixás, the pantheon of gods worshipped in the afro-brazilian cults here. A warm-up act for this group, theatrical worshippers of the orixás, was a group of teen girls in various animal print push-up bras and short skirts, popping, rolling, and trowing confetti at the African gods. I was like, ´Dang! Am I the only one who´s uncomfortable with this?´ Other groups put on similar performances, soliciting cheers from their peers in the audience when they did overtly sexual moves.

I´m finding that Brazil is in many ways more similar to the US than I expected. The clothes aren´t that different, the college students still like to drink, the food has similarities, etc. Perhaps most noticably, the media is nearly all imported from the States. Yesterday I heard a song by Sting that is very beloved of my family, and some Adam Sandler movie was playing on a little TV of a street food vendor who give me a napkin upon which a squiggly attempt at Spongebob Squarepants was telling me to ´Come back always.´ I don´t want to get into how bad most of the American music is that´s hitting the radio....sooooooo baaaaad...Lady Gaga is one of the better ones........The point I´m trying to make is that there are a ton of similarities. Globalization has in many ways had its way in Brazil. However, some big difference I´m encountering are in the areas so clearly manifested in the pep rally. Religion and sexuality have a different presentation here, at least very different from what I´m used to. (Maybe it´s just because I don´t have a TV!) I thought the value of multiculturalism and pluralism was fairly high in the US, but it´s much higher here! People talk to me every day about how certain people are very conservative and others are more open, clearly giving value to the latter. This sort of talk is even used in the discussion of priests in the Church. It´s interesting--I value openness and loving people, especially people on the fringe; I´m probably among the most liberal and agreeable of people back in my circles of friends at home. But here, much of my thinking is very conservative. I value truth and the Lord who created everything above Tolerance for Tolerance´ sake. God helps us to love one another, and I hope Love will proceed me, not my conservative stance on a number of things.

Sex is powerful here. It ´s hard to be a woman here. There are so many beautiful women everywhere! One friend was telling me the other day that my city is infamous for having a high female:male ratio. She put the ratio of 9 women to 1 man out on the table; I don´t know if this is accurate, but WOW. I get to opt out of this mess because I´m not looking for a Brazilian man, but for the women who plan to spend the rest of their lives here, it must be extremely hard to find a fulfilling relationship! With the masses of gorgeous women here, I think I would feel dispenable. And that turns out to be the case much of the time; the men here are infamous for cheating and committing sex-and-run offenses. I have met a number of very good married couples from Véra´s family, though, so perhaps some of what is infamous is exaggerated, and may also pertain more so to the youth. It´s must be hard to be a man here. So many beautiful women...a small representative population wearing animal print push-up bras and shakin´ it at the high school pep rally. I know that men´s attention is being solicited.

Woo! I love reading my own thoughts and feeling like a Puritan! Things are going well at the Catholic University so far, by the way. I´m meeting way too many people and promising to do way too many things involving English, so surely some of them will happen. And the meeting with the NGO here is actually supposedly tomorrow.


Here are some pictures...

Here we have some folks dancing in the lower left, with the pejorative American football skit members in red and blue above them, the African pantheon on the right, and their nearly-naked worshippers mostly hiding outside the frame so they don´t make you stumble! ;)















THIS IS SO COOL! I totally would have had school spirit in high school if we had fire!

If you click to enlarge this photo, you can see me in the upper right corner wearing green, looking pale, like a boss.




Sweet capoeira moves!















Love,
Claire