the Brazilian Carnivale got me pregnant

OI DOS BAHIA [HELLO FROM BAHIA]
Just left Salvador, Brazil. Let me recap 8 days of ship life: sleep, food, class, nap, class, food, tanning, reading, nap, food, mingling, food, reading, sleep. What a life! We do get a little antsy however – but it’s good because I am expanding my circle of friends. Classes are pretty easy. (Side note: I am beginning to really understand how loud and forthright I am in my speaking. I am definitely cast as the crazy NYer.) FABS => We had the opportunity sign up for clubs and I signed up to be adopted and have parents on the boat. I got a lollipop at my door with a note saying “HELLO DAUGHTER – it’s Mama Mary and Poppa Michael.” Michael is a professor and they are my new (but not the TRUE) parents and they are so odd that it is wonderful. I see Mary all the time and she says I’m her favourite daughter. Victor is a part of the same family so we are now brother and sister. There are six siblings. We are all having dinner again on Sunday. So cute.

Now – on to Brazil!! Let me preface this by saying how much they tried to scare us with stories of Brazil. It is Carnival – the week long celebration of Marti Gras and Salvador is one of the top places in the world for Carnival celebrations – so it is a little crazy. But they are telling us things like we are going to be held at gunpoint or stabbed with a knife. Granted, some people were mugged but they were stupid and went somewhere sketchy. Obviously, if you are drunk, leave your group and go into a dark alley alone – you’re not going to come back with all the money you had in your pocket. In fear of having my camera stolen, I didn’t take it out at night (so unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of the night performances and insanities.) A lot of people have had their cameras, camcorders and IDs stolen.

I, however, was fine and met so many fantastic Brazilians. The first day, Andrew and I walked around and went up to the upper part of Salvador. The hills are close to the shore and there are aged houses nestled within the mountains. It’s beautiful. There is an elevator that takes you up to the upper part of the city. Because it’s Carnival, it’s free. [Woo!] So we went up and looked around. Salvador is known for its large Afro-Brazilian population. HISTORICAL NOTE: When Yoruba tribe was sold here as slaves from Nigeria, they were forced into the Portuguese Catholic culture. In order to keep practicing their traditions – they disguised [syncretism] their traditions with Catholicism… otherwise known as Candonba. Some slaves escaped and lived in the mountain and practice their martial art to protect themselves from slave owners. In order to keep teaching children – they disguised it as a dance called Capoeira. The music is drums and this weird instrument that looks like a bow. A boy in the modelo mercato taught me how to play it. All day I explored with some people. I took a 15 minute nap around 5:00pm to prepare myself to party with Jammil in the Trio Electrico.

Nothing could have prepared me for this INSANE night. During Carnival, they close down streets and parade with large trucks with bands on them. In order to be in the parade, you have to buy a shirt for $200. I bought one with SAS and a group of us went. We had these BRIGHT NEON ORANGE shirts and felt like we stuck out like a sore thumb. Once we got closer, we saw dozens, then hundreds then thousands of people with the same shirt. Everyone was buying beers left and right – the most popular is Skol and it costs about the equivalent of a dollar a can. The boys were in heaven. So once we got into the ropes of the parade, I became separated from my friends but found some SAS boys. Then the music started so they took me in and protected me. They were so sweet. The music was soooo loud and everyone is jumping around like LOONS!! Now I’ve been in mosh pits and I’ve crowd surfed… NONE OF THAT COMPARED TO THIS!! We could barely move. Then it started to rain a little. By the end of the night, we were drenched in sweat, rain and beer (everyone would pour their beer on the crowd.) Crazy crazy dancing. Throughout the night we found and lost more SASers. Someone said that there were over 5,000 people in our parade because Jammil – this Brazilian band – is very popular. I learned a few dances from a group of girls [zou zou zou zouzou BABA zouzou BABA zouzou BABA]. And – sorry mom and dad – but I think I’m pregnant by some brazilian boy. They loooove blue eyes down here and I might have had sex with a Brazilian and not have even realized. It was soooo crowded! They would just come up to me and kiss me – or in better terms, lick my face. My boys kept trying to protect me and the other girls and we had to kiss our boys in order to ward off Brazilians. Two Brazilians picked me up and licked my stomach. So then Jason ran up and pulled me away. Now let me put this in a time frame: I had to meet with the group around 6pm. We arrived just as the parade started at 7pm. The parade didn’t end until 2am. We danced and moshed for over six hours!!! I have never felt so tired and thirsty in my life but it was so worth it! Towards the end, when everyone was too tired to dance – I got m y second wind and made friends with this brazilian boy who kept telling me that I dance like brazilian. Score for blending in! [kinda.]I didn’t get back to the ship until 3:30. We all smelt so bad hahaha and was caked in dirt (or at least I thought it was dirt… now I’m not too sure… erlack)

I slept until about 2:00pm without even realizing it. Relaxed a little then got dinner with some people. I had no clue of what I was going to do that night then everyone was asking me so I went with some people that I went with the night before and dragged Andrew along for extra testosterone protection. We took a taxi to Barra – another part of the city. There were a dozen of us. We made our way through the streets and found where the parades were coming through. We all starting chatting and drinking then a truck came by and we started dancing like loons. Eventually, one of the locals started to do some Brazilian dances so a bunch of us tried to imitate them. They were fun. Eventually we started to talk to them – well, communicate. No one speaks english so everyone was using our broken spanish to TRY to communicate. They signaled that they wanted us to teach them some American dances – so we taught them the Sprinkler, Fish Hook, Shopping Cart, Lawn Mover. They thought the Sprinkler was a gun and it took a lot of effort to convince them that we americans are not as violent as they think. Patrick (the birthday boy) did a great intimidation of the fish stuck on a hook and they loved him and kept feeding him Skol. Somehow, we started to kick around an imaginary futbal. In a group of 10, we were passing around an imaginary ball… it was hilarious!! They were all trying to out-do each other. Somehow I started to talk to one man named Alessandro. With his lack of english and my lack of Portuguese, we had a good conversation! He told me that he is married with twins – boy and girl. One can’t see in one eye and the other has a lip problem. But he told me he loves them anyway. I told him about NY and the ship. Every time some sketchy people came around, he moved us back onto the sidewalk and told us to keep our money in our shoes, not our pockets. Alessandro made a motion to some locals we were dancing with, telling them not to hurt us. He was fantastic. Kevin got mugged while he was peeing by 15 ten-yr-olds. He never told any of us that he was leaving our spot. He’s okay – just shocked that ten yr. olds could do that. The night was still great though – we bought sparkle masks and neon tool wigs. I got a necklace for kissing some boy (sorry olds!) As it got late, it turned a little shady and the local boys weren’t being very friendly towards us girls. Thank God we had an equal proportion of the genders so we had pseudo boyfriends. For some reason, we were singing Feliz Navidad on the ride back. Shaun paid for the cab and bought us all Carnival ribbons. We stayed up until 5am.

The next day I was up at 8:00am to go to the circus. There is an after school program for street children to learn how to perform in the circus to keep them from begging and prostitution. Because it was Carnival, the kids weren’t there but the trainers were. They are all in the mid-twenties and were so friendly. Only our guide spoke english and she translated when she could, otherwise, everything was communicated through hand signals. We learned to juggle, walked the tightrope, jumped on a springboard into a trampoline and flipped in the air, climbed a rope and spun around, the trapeze, and rode the unicycle. It was vair vair fun. We were laughing and beaming the whole time. And I was with such a cool group of people: Victor, Sarah, Cait, and Brian. The trainers were so sweet and patient. It’s so nice to see kids my age working with such underprivileged children. They started out on the street too but joined this program – and turned out fine. They are working their way through school. It made me happy to see. When we got back to the ship Vince, Sarah, Alex and myself chilled on the top deck, drinking smoothies, tanning, and looking out onto the city. I am not getting much darker (or burnt) however – I am sprouting freckles everywhere!! Afterwards I took a nap then got dinner with Sarah and Zander then got ready to go out to dinner for Patrick’s birthday.

There were twenty of us and only one of us knew the address so we were trying to figure how to get there when this MAXI TAXI pulled up [so cleverly named by Marc]. Swear to God – all twenty of us fit into this taxi! It was a huge van with four rows of seats – it was like a mini bus. We were a mix of different people so everyone was getting to know each other (conversations start up quick when you are suddenly crammed into a cab and sitting on some boy’s lap.) Finally we arrive at this Steakhouse (I wish I would have known that earlier) and it’s GORGEOUS!!! It’s super fancy and clean. It was buffet style and the waiters come around with all kinds of meat on a kabob and slice it off for you. After seeing this – I am making more of an effort to become a vegetarian. Sarah and I are already so we just kept ordering drinks and picking at the side meals. We were content. It was craaazy. We ordered champagne for Pat and cheered “SALUJE” and then the brazilians in the restaurant started screaming and chanting and singing! It was this high class restaurant and everyone is running around screaming!! Sooo funny! Oddly enough – a few of our professors and the dean were the table next to us. Shaun ordered them a bottle of champagne and they cheered for us. The Field Director (aka the Most Annoying Woman on the Planet) was wasted!!! She kept trying to sit with us and talk about Carnivale and boys. Sarah and I were crying from laughter (and probably fear – she would not leave us alone). The boys kept ordering drink after drink. The bill came and it took about a half hour to sort out (I won’t even BEGIN to tell you how much it was). However, it did not put a damper on the night – because some people bought some of the boys shots. We were there for about four hours, eating and drinking and laughing. We got our Maxi Taxi back and crammed into it. The van probably weighed about 300 pounds more the return ride. Our driver put on music and “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” came on and I don’t know how we did it but: I was sitting on Tyler and we just got up and started dancing – then Pat was dancing then everyone in the van was dancing!!! We were all hitting heads and falling but it was hilarious!! We got back and some people decided to go out still but I had to be up early the next day so Sarah, Kevin and I smoked some Cubans on the back deck and watched Garden State instead. Good times on the ol’ ship!

Tuesday I was up at 7:00 to get ready to go to Cachoeira – a village outside of Salvador. We had Bruno for a tour guide again… I want to marry him (Camille – you were right about the tarot cards, Amanda IS going to marry a Brazilian man). The man does not stop talking and it’s wonderful! ‘Something smart to say on every subject’ (if you could name that movie – you are perfection.) After an hour bus ride – we arrived at this small town and went into the market place where they sold crabs. They have to put them in mud as so they stay cool and Bruno tried to convince everyone they were chocolate covered crabs. Hahaha oh Bruno! We started walking through the town and some kids started to follow us. One girl brought toys with her to give to the kids and they were having a blast – playing games, posing for pictures. They were so much fun. We then went to a cocoa plantation where they grow cocoa beans. This land was given to these people by the Worker’s Party (President Lula’s party) to help them make a living and to help the economy. We tasted some of their pure chocolate and it was delicious! I needed milk though and I didn’t trust the goat around the corner to spot me some milk like Bruno offered (I’m serious – we’re getting married. I’ll move to Salvador and we will raise Brazilian street children to join the circus.) A lot of children were following us again and playing with us. Some of them picked us flowers and gave them to us. I have a few of the flowers pressed in my book. One little girl would not let go of my leg (the one in the purple) – she was beautiful. I let them play with my camera and they took a bunch of pictures. It’s so fascinating to them. Then we went to Cachoeira for lunch. We ate at a beautiful colonial hotel. I sat with Eric, Michael and Mark and it was constant laughs. They are from PA and VA so they understand my East Coast sarcasm (thank God someone does on this ship!) The food was authentic Afro-Brazilian food and it was good. After a long lunch we walked through the town to the river. We sat on the steps, looking out on the water listening to Bruno talk about Candoble. I was so engulfed in just where I was that I wasn’t even listening to my future husband. I am truly learning more and more so about the little things in life. I am extremely lucky to live the life I am leading; my home life and abroad life. I am so blessed that I am yearning more and more to start to give something back. But it’s not all about working in the worst places or helping the sickest of people – and it isn’t about proving it to the world by winning a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s about doing something – anything – to give back to the world all the love and fortune I have received. Off course… anyway… what was I saying before I so rudely interrupted myself? Ah yes – Brazil...

So after Cachoeria, we headed back to the ship and I literally threw on some mascara and ran back out to the door to go to dinner. Unfortunately, yet again, we went to another steak house. I think the universe is trying to convince me to give up meat completely – and I have to agree. It made me nauseous looking at all the slabs of meat on the sticks. But we know me – nothing is negative; I just took it as a learning experience. Plus I sat with Nate & Kate and Kevin and had good conversations (consisting mainly of the importance of decorative toothpicks in the restaurant. Haha! Good times, good times. Seriously – it was thoroughly enjoyable, witty conversation.) Of course the rest of the boys were drunky by the time the bill came around. Because it was only the four of us (aka the Exclusive Table) the bill wasn’t hard to divy up (also considering I had no meat.) Then everyone gathered at the bar of course. Patrick was still celebrating his birthday, the fool. Finally we got everyone to go back to the boat to get more money then go back out because it’s Marti Gras. We get back and one taxi never made it. Finally it showed up and the girls were upset – he was a jerk to them and saying really horrific things. It was around midnight so Carnival was dying down anything because it was now Ash Wednesday. Some people still went out but Shaun, Pat, Marc and I stayed behind, drinking beer in front of the boat with some Brazilians. Marc and I had these intense, philosophical, drunk, sarcastic conversations about everything – from religion to ship life. (It’s nice to find someone who agrees with me on the hypocrisy on the boat. All professors talk about equality and conservation… but 98% of the students are white and 100% of our waiters and cabin stewards are not – and – everyday our rooms are cleaned and food is throw away from the buffet. It’s so frustrating.) After a few hours we headed it. It was a good way to end Carnival. Why go out and party when you can drink Skol on the stoop of your ship?

The last day was Kat's birthday and a bunch of us went out to dinner and drank Skol all night. TWENTY-ONE SON!! We danced with a marching band and made it on the boat 30 minutes before docktime. I would not let Kat's glass be empty with beer. I'm a good friend - obviously.

So I have a mohawk right now. That will come at a later date though
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I luuuuuurve you all!
Infinite xo’s Amanda Panda