Shock and Awe

Over the last week I´ve had a bit of a roller coaster experience with culture shock. So fasten your personal safety device, hold on to the bar in front of you, and the ride will now commence!

Last Monday I was feeling pretty blue (which is, by the way, an inadequate metaphor in Brazilian Portuguese, as ´blue´here expresses happiness). The blueness (in the American sense) hit me pretty hard when I attended 6 o´clock mass at the Catholic University that evening. I know I´m not allowed to receive communion in the Catholic church, so I did what I´ve been told to do in American Catholic churches, and went up to the front with me arms crossed over my chest to signify that I would like to receive a blessing. The Padre tried to give me bread (wafer = bread?) anyway though! I was like a deer in the headlights--I tried to reemphasize the placement of my arms, but he kept coming at me with the wafer anyway! After a few seconds holding up the rest of the congregation from receiving their share of the Body of Christ, I had to flat out say´(in Portuguese), `I´m not Catholic!` He was flustered, and just said, `Oh, a blessing!´(Upon speaking with him later, I found that crossing one´s arms here signifies that one would like to have the bread placed on one´s tongue). I was signalled back to my seat. I ended up weeping discreetly. Because I work separately with the youth during the morning service in my church back in Tallahassee, it´s been several months since I´ve received communion. It hurt to feel far from my God, to know that I could not take part in this act of intimacy with Jesus, to thank Him for His sacrifice and receive its power in my very being. This led me to think about how much I missed my friends and my family. I found myself dwelling on the sentiment that no one here really knows or understands me. I felt lonely. And it was time to be an exciting special American guest to a college English class! Woohoo! Beth, the former collegue of my FSU Portuguese professor, who is pretty much managing my professional life here, helped cheer me up. She reminded me that I will make new friends here, that the very students who were about to arrive for the class were eager to get to know me. I proceeded to meet some very cool students, which did make me feel better. I was especially glad to meet Neto (NEH-too), a very nice fellow student who speaks good English and will be hosting me in his home for the second half of my stay here in Brazil. Living with Neto and his mother promises to give me some good practice with my Portuguese (as Neto´s mom speaks no English) and acquaint me with life in another area of this big city. I also have an open invite from Neto to frequent the gay bars in town, so I´m sure it will be an interesting time!

Tuesday I had a bit of a meltdown. I came home late after attending a lecture at the University and was overwhelmed by the realization that I had made a bunch of commitments to people that I hadn´t writen down, that I didn´t remember! (For those of you who will get this and laugh:`I have amneeeesia!´) I desperately tried to explain to my host mother, Véra, what was plaguing me. In retrospect, it was hilarious; at the time it was extraordinarily frustrating. I didn´t know the word in Portuguese for ´commitment,´ so I tried to say to her in a number of ways that I had told people I would do things, but then forgot. The peak of misunderstanding, which led me to retrieve my dictionary and look up ´commitment,´which is compromiso, by the way, was when Véra tried to guess what I was getting at and suggested `--vícios? Você tem vícios?´ Or, ´--vices? You have vices?´(I think my attempt at the past participle of the verb to say sounded somewhat like the Portuguese for addiction, which may have led here down that road). I asked if we could go upstairs and make a little calendar that I could use to give my life some order. We ended up staying up talking for another hour and a half and really connected and enjoyed ourselves. I felt good.

The next day I plummetted down to fall more or less in line with the prescribed stages of culture shock in a book I´ve been reading called Teaching in a Distant Classroom. First comes the Honeymoon Phase (which had clearly passed), then the Rejection Phase (I reject you, new culture!), the Colonization Phase (in which one is prone to seek out members and sentiments of one´s home culture in the new place), and finally, the Adjustment Phase. The description of the Rejection Phase in the book was pretty funny to me. I didn´t see it happening to me. I don´t tend to get angry, and anger seemed like the cornerstone of this stage, feeling resentment towards the host culture and thinking that it´s inferior to one´s one. But alas, I felt angry! I found myself in the car with Beth and her husband as they took me to meet with the NGO coordinators, thinking to myself, If you think I can remember the name of one more Brazilian street, or monument or fruit, (which all have these crazy names I am incapable of remembering), you are WRONG. I even found myself tired of trying to speak the lanuage well. I just wanted to stay shut up--I´m not even going to try to speak with a good accent. Beth´s husband is one with whom I particularly took (take?) offense. He doesn´t think I can understand anything. He uses metaphorical language and often speaks under his breath, so at times he is correct--I cannot understand him. But at other times he has spoken to me at length about things that I understand very well, on occassion, things that I have researched in depth for term papers at FSU. I nod in understanding. I tell him I understand. I reply with appropriate comments. He then proceeds to tell other people in front of me that he doesn´t know how much I understood, or that I don´t understand a lot of things. Yarrr. I found myself wanting to colonize, as the book would put it, longing to hang out with people who spoke English, people who seemed to get me, like Fernanda. I found myself wondering what I had gotten myself into--how on earth am I going to make it here for 3 months? This is much longer than my other international excursions, and I lived with other Americans during all of these other experiences! The sun goes down at 5:30 here because it´s ´winter.´ I want to be in Tallahassee where it´ll stay late til 8 or 9 this time of year. This bites. Why am I even here?

Thursday and Friday were incredibly busy! Both days started off around 8:00 and didn´t come to a close until past 10. I was exhausted. I had to come up with a basic outline for the classes at Arte e Vida. I had to sing and play one of the songs I´ve written on a small outdoor stage at the University, (I followed a group of seminary students singing gregorian chants for 20 minutes though, so at least the timing of my act was favorable!). I had to attend several long evening lectures that I wasn´t really able to engage with. On Friday I tagged along with Neto to the 2 English classes he teaches. This was really enjoyable, as his first class was at a soccer camp more or less in a jungle in a nearby town. I got to see some tiny monkeys (that looked more like squirrels), observe and add to Neto´s teaching, eat a tasty meal, and be a small celebrity amongst some Brazilian soccer dudes. We went by bus which was very exciting (yay, quasi-independence!), and later I got to walk from the site of his second English class to the Catholic University by myself (yay, legitimate independence!). I got lost, sweaty, and was wearing some flip flops that grew uncomfortable as the day progressed, so it was kind of a bust, but it was a step towards feeling like a normal human being. It was a long day though.

Saturday started early. I went with Beth and Fernanda to visit an NGO here that has formed an orchestra out of kids from the roughest slum in the city. I came worn out and reluctant to work with this program as I have already committed to give a total of 8 classes/week at Arte e Vida and 4 classes/week at the Catholic University. Considering I don´t really know what I´m doing, I am going to need a good chunk of time to prepare for these classes! I want to teach well, to be present with my students, and also with my host family and the people I am forming friendships with here. The children´s orquestra was incredible though. I´m so impressed. Kids playing orchestral instruments conjures up painful noises in my mind, but this was truly amazing. The program has done a fantastic job at training these students and providing them an environment where there is discipline and they can catch the vision of really succeeding. The orchestra´s star violinist, a 17-year-old boy named Inaldo, is going to be doing an exchange program in Prague this year. He would like to improve his English because of its widspread international use. It looks like he will be able to attend a class I will be giving on basic/survival English at the Catholic University, so I will not have to set up another class with kids from the orchestra unless my schedule and my heart propel me to take on more. If you want to check out this cool program, their website is http://www.orquestracriancacidada.org.br/english/.

After visiting the orchestra I spent the afternoon at Beth´s apartment with her family. They let me take a nap there because I was so worn out. I woke up and found myself falling back into anger and frustration over lunch. Fernanda had invited her friend Rafael over. He´s a real jokester who likes lively conversation; I wasn´t really his cup of tea. It made me feel like crap--I couldn´t express myself easily and he didn´t really have the patience for me that so many others here do. I didn´t get his jokes; Beth´s husband´s assertions that I don´t understand anything began to flourish. I glared at him as a half-joke. We cleared the table and I started to tear up. Humor is such a big part of who I am and I can hardly express it or receive it here. I hate feeling useless, that I´m stupid, that I´m not understood, that I have to take naps at people´s houses because staying awake is a bit too much for me. Basically, I had a pity party. Then Beth and Fernanda were able to sympathize with me, sharing some of their similar experiences while they were in the United States in the 90´s. They encouraged me as fellow Christians too. I felt better and went out on their porch to voluntarily brave more conversation with the menfolk. These conversations were very nice, and I was very glad I hadn´t given up. I went home with a second wind and colonized a little by taking a shower with my music playing on my iPod with my little speakers which I really like to do in my bathroom in my city, Tallahassee. Véra and her husband and I went out for sushi for dinner, which was also wonderfully familiar, and we had a long talk about the evangelical movement, philosophy, and society. It was great. I enjoyed being asked about some of the things that most interest and define me, and getting to know the opinions of my family here.

Today, Sunday, I went to a Baptist church for the first time in Brazil! I was invited by a girl who I met at the University. She is really sweet and I appreciated the opportunity to go to church with a friend. We went to a short Bible study for young adults, where the pastor gave us two Bible passages to compare and then left the room. In his absence I was goaded into singing and playing the only worship song I know in Portuguese, the one I have written. Then we attended the service, where the pastor gave a sermon on the evils of television for our children, keeping with a theme about family that the church is doing this month. Seeing as I don´t have children, or usually a television, I did not find this sermon particularly relevent, but it was a good intro into another part of the Brazilian church. My intention at this point remains to visit various churches in the city so that I can learn more about the different manifestations of Christianity in Brazil, and not to settle down at one unless I feel it is beneficial or necessary. Today this plan of action was further buttressed by the fact that one of the male church members opened the door on me while I was on the toilet after the service. I was using the tiny upstairs bathroom, with my friend fixing her hair right outside the door, when the door was opened and my white bum-bum americana (pronounced BOOM-boom) was on display. My friend did not protect me from the intruder. Thou shalt close and lock the bathroom door. With the whole communion mishap and this bum-bum incident, it would seem I´m really coming in with a bang to the Brazilian church scene. Perhaps at the next church I attend (which will likely be Presbyterian or pentecostal) I can just show up naked or throw poop or something. I gotta keep up my reputation, here.

If you have taken time to pray for me, thank you. This type of experience is hard in the beginning and I really appreciate your support. Please praise God with me that He knows why I am here and what He is doing; praise Him that my Portuguese is improving, that I have not experienced any kind of sickness thus far and that I am being prepared to do everything I need to do here. Please pray that I would have insight into teaching English from God (the Teacher) and from my classes at FSU, and that my heart would be at peace as I make my preparations. Please pray with me for my attitude to improve, for me to be less hard on myself, and for me to love those around me very well. Finally, please pray for my safety as I will be venturing out on my own more and using the buses starting this week.

Tchau! Beijos! (Bye! Kisses!--the standard Brazilian farewells)
Claire