Mugs of wine

The state of my room often feels like a good indicator of the state of my mind/heart. Recently the room has been pretty messy – the kind of messy that I don’t really know how to clean up or where to put things or in what order to wash the articles of clothing lying on the floor.

I feel right now like this will transfer into my writing here, but I guess sometimes I need to just push through. I can’t sweep the floor until I put all the junk away – control the disaster first, organize later. Throughout the week I’ve even had a few verbal quips run through my mind that have made me excited for my next post, but I’ll be lucky to remember any of them at this point… or remember how I had conceived them in a written context. With this blog on my mind I’ve been surprised at how my brain works in overdrive (even when I don’t want it to) to represent the stimuli that I am taking in daily as metaphors and turns of phrase and pictures and allusions and gifs.

Yup. I made my very first gif, and now I don’t remember at all how I had intended to use it.

Whatever this was supposed to be, it's fabulous.

Wow it been 20 days since the last post –-- no wonder I have no idea where to begin. So here is a spewing of stuff:

• Spending a lot of time doing events with an organization that brings together exchange students to Rio from all over the world in order to participate in cultural and other events in the city. This group has been a huge blessing! I’ve met some awesome girls from all over who are kind, welcoming, funny, and the right amount of crazy. Holler at my two brave Brazilian Ana babies whose maturity made me believe that they were at least a bit older than myself. The past weekend I went on a trip with this group to the beach city of Búzios, which is located a few hours outside of Rio and turned out to be the experience of a lifetime. I have never seen beaches and water so clear and gorgeous and pristine. My friends and I inadvertently picked the best room in the hostel. Private beach. Free breakfast. Free boat tour to said awesome beaches. Saw a stranded penguin. Toured the town and other beaches with 3 friends in a should-be-illegal buggy. Didn’t kill anyone in the buggy.

hello hostel yeeeee boi

Brazilians almost let me drive this thing - never driven a manual transmission in my life.
Recipe for death.

•  I love Wednesdays. One class at 11am, then the day free. This past week I walked to a restaurant with a friend after our classes, bought an açaí and listened to the fine musical stylings of a man playing guitar across the street. As he was packing up to leave I ran over to give him a few bucks and struck up a conversation – he gave me his business card and I now am obsessed with the idea of hiring him to play for my hypothetical birthday-party-on-the-beach.

Rainforest goodness. Recipe for life.

•          I’ve been late to my first classes every day.  One Tuesday that I was feeling especially guilty, the professor happened to post on the door that class would commence 30 minutes late that day. Situations like these make it difficult for me to distinguish real time from Brazilian time. I think I am slowly understanding more of what my professors are saying – I’m only taking classes in Portuguese, so it is a challenge to grasp actual academic content, not to mention process and engage with the class. If I learn a new word, I call the day a success.

•         Went to a beach town on Saturday and had pretend surf lessons. The “instructors” pushed us into the oncoming waves and said “get up!” Fall, rinse, repeat.

•         This Sunday was amazing – I went back to a church that I had visited before (as a result of a miraculous encounter with someone who knew the WORD [after we met in a Bible/Christianity class that I almost didn’t go to because I knew I would need to drop it] and brought me to visit his church), and had one of those moments where the sermon spoke directly to me. “The more you seek personal satisfaction, the less satisfaction you will find in Jesus." The service was followed by the afternoon spent with some awesome ladies from the church getting to know their neighborhood, eating good food, and eventually joining in their ministry at a nearby hospital praying for children and their families. Awe. Some.

This blog is a bagunça.

The End.

[By the way, the title is a reference to a goodbye dinner I had with one of my friends who was only here for the summer + a bit. Looking at the menu with the intention of ordering a glass of wine, my friend read English translation: “mug of wine.” So girl orders a “caneca de vinho,” assuming the phrase had been adopted to signify a classier liquid-carrying object. (Wine seems very simple here – Red or white? Dry or smooth? End scene.) Turns out if you ask for a mug of wine, you get wine in a coffee mug. And there was much laughter.]