"We're Brazilian, we don't give up.:"

Another school visit…this time to another favela but one that was about 40 min outside of downtown Rio. Another view of poverty in Rio. Life is not easy here and infrastructure is certainly not great. Malnourished wild horses grazing around dirt patches near the street…this was something I hadn’t seen before. It was obvious to me as we walked up to the school that it was going to be one of the poorest that we saw. It was very small and the students said that the structure of the school is one thing they would really like to change. As we walked past some of the students they chanted “Ghana, Ghana!” to us as a joke. Ha. NOT FUNNY. Haha. We visited a 9th,10th, and 11th grade class. I was interested by the students’ disapproval of the quota system that exists for letting minorities into university. They do not want to be “let in” to the universities because they said that this does not give them any pride and that the private school kids very much look down on students who get in through the quota system. These kids feel very inferior but amazingly are still so determined to work hard and change their reality. When asked what they do if they don’t do well on the Vestibular (their version of the SAT that they HAVE to pass to get into university) the first time, one kid said “Try again. We’re Brasilian, we don’t give up.” Unfortunately, the quality of instruction that these students receive, combined with the fact that they have 16 different subjects each week and only 4 hours of class a day means that I remain skeptical about how much they are actually learning…and this is evident in how unlikely it is that most of them (most because there are always your bright students who manage to rise above) will go to university. I will save the rest of my thoughts on that for my “final musings” later.
Anyways, I pretty much won over a fan club at this school and as Doug says he felt like he was walking around with Jessica Simpson. I mean all I did was answer their question about what we like about Rio so far with “bailefunk” (which is the type of dance that they all like to do) and immediately won some street cred I guess…..because when we walked out of another class later one of the girls ran up to me and hugged me and wouldn’t let me go and said “don’t leave!” and then they all wanted to dance with me. Oh it was so funny, they were giving me gifts, asking me if I was married, and teaching me some funny little dances from a tv show they like called Panico. Luckily one of the girls spoke some broken English so with my little bit of Portuguese combined with that I was able to talk to her and this group of kids and answer the questions they had about education and mainly college in the US. They really want to know what it is like there and what kind of opportunities kids in the US have. I was also thrilled to hear that so many of them love biology!
One thing that has come up at every school we have visited as a question from either the students or teachers is about gangs and violence in our schools. There is a pervasive perception here that we have a lot of violence and bullying in our schools in the US. While this is true to an extent it seems like they are somewhat misinformed about the prevalence of it so we always have to spend some time clarifying what the reality is.

I am really trying hard to learn as much (even though it’s only a little) Portuguese while I am here as I can. We have had 4 language lessons now and I am thoroughly enjoying them. Plus, meeting people and making contacts is motivation to learn more of the language so that I can communicate with them…especially since I think I want to do some collaborative projects (i.e. mock trials, social issue analysis) with my future students and students in Rio. Don’t take this personally because obviously I miss all of you and there are many things I look forward to enjoying back in the states (cheap PB and cereal, chips and salsa, tap water and tennis on tv…to name a few!) ….but I started thinking about how I don’t really feel homesick here…..homesick in the sense of feeling really displaced from where I “belong.” In fact, I would venture to say that even after living in Savannah for 2 years, I feel more at-home here in Rio after two weeks than I did there. There is just something about this place….the food, the music, the beaches/mountains/nature, the culture, and most importantly the PEOPLE that just relax me and make me feel like….well, ME. I like it.
Joyce is here this week to help us with our projects and so we are all going to eat dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant on the beach tonight. Should be fun! Only 8 days left here for me! Crazy how fast time goes….