A continental breakfast...why not

This week´s blog sees me writing from a different location. I would love to tell you that i am currently seated at a beach side bar, sipping a cold beer and watching a group of locals dancing samba while i muse over the last couple of weeks, but it would be a big old fib. No, as i sit here on monday morning my surroundings are slightly less picturesque. The university computer room was rightly designed for practicality rather than for architectural acclaim, but its fair to say it doesn´t inspire me with quite the same creativity as the view of the rolling hills and colourful houses from the balcony where i write at home. But given my academic surroundings, I shall take the opportunity to talk a little bit about my classes.

I am finding that my Brazilian history class is suprisingly enjoyable. I say suprisingly for two reasons, firstly because someone decided that the best time for it to take place was at 8.20 on a monday morning, and secondly because its in portuguese. However, there are several factors that make it a good class.

1. Quite a lot of cool stuff has happened in Brazil in the 500 years since it was discovered (apart from slavery...that wasn´t cool...bloody portuguese)

2. The lecturer knows what he is talking about, cracks jokes and does impressions of Iracema (a major female brazilian literary figure)

3. I understand whats going on even though its all in portuguese (polite applause)

4. Each week a group of four students gives a presentation.
Unlike England where 'presentation' means 'read out loud four pages from the book we all bought because it was on top of the reading list and had the word general in it', here in Brazil they are taken very seriously. If we take for example the last presentation I saw which was on slavery, the group spoke for 45 minutes with a fully illustrated powerpoint. In addition they made and handed out some kind of bean concoction that was typically eaten by slaves of the period. Not exactly what i fancied at that time of the morning, but i appreciated the mark earning gesture. The highlight however was still to come as the group finished the presentation with a short video interview with a woman descended from a slave. Whilst i may not agree with their method for getting this video, namely by stopping every black person they saw in the street and asking 'are you related to any slaves', the clip provided a valuable insight into the subject matter.

My portuguese for foreigners class on the other hand is unsurprisingly unenjoyable. The teacher is very nice, but as she explained on the first day, she doesn't know much about grammar....which i guess is fine..... if your not paying to learn grammar....which I am. In addition the people in our class are all at diffferent levels despite the level establishing exam we did on the first day. Im guessing that those in charge in the department, having already hit the caipirinhas, decided to facilitate their job by putting anyone who knew more than 3 words in portuguese, but weren't fluent, into my class. The only redeeming feature of the entire thing is the bizarre but irrelevant fact that  25% of the group are called Chris. (There is also a woman that looks like she might have been called chris before a rather painful and expensive operation, but this is mere speculation) 

Speaking more generally, i have began to notice some differences between my classes here and my lectures back in Bristol;

1. The earliest class starts at 7.30 am and the last finishes at 10pm (enough to make anyone feel slightly suicidal)

2. Classes can be up to 4 hours in length (enough to make anyone feel very suicidal ... especially if like me they are the sort of guy who checks his watch from about 20 minutes in)
3. If the teacher doesn't fancy turning up he won't

4. People here have a different concept of what is meant by 'class time'.
It is fair to say students here take a more relaxed approach to their lectures, arriving in general about 10-20 minutes late. However it is not uncommon for people to wander in much later (the record i've seen is 1 hour and a half). Once inside the lecture room, brazilians feel no obligation to sit quietly and listen, on the contrary people chat, flirt, wander round the class, listen to ipod's, and leave and come back later without any explanation. However there have been two moments in class that in terms of hilarity and sheer audacity, outweigh all these others.
 Firstly, about halfway through a lecture, a loud and embarrasing ringtone reverberated throughout the class. Instead of apologising and switching his phone to silent, the guy responsible answered and preceeded to have a conversation that went something like 'hi...yeah, just in class....not really....haha..yeah i know.....yeah...alright see you then...ciao' (aproximate translation). The lecturer couldn't have looked less bothered.
Secondly, in a cinema class which had started unusually promptly, a young man who had to be fair arrived on time, stood up and left the room after about 15 minutes, only to return 20 minutes later with a full continental breakfast of coffee, juice, croissant and fruit salad which he preceeded to lay out in front of him on the desk and slowly munch his way through. Again no reaction from the lecturer....I only wish i'd had my camera.

Leaving lessons behind (sadly without returning with breakfast), I finally went some way to acheiving my goal of being alternative by hitting a reggae festival at night on the north of the island. The journey alone merited the ticket price. Having asked some vaguely jamaican looking people if they knew the way to the gig, we ended up at the back of a bus where we struck up an immediate friendship with a group of thirty brazilian reggae enthusiasts, and joined them in drinking, singing and dancing.

When we got to the festival we were stopped and frisked by bouncers at the door, whom i guess were aiming to prevent anyone with drugs entering the festival. However searching people for drugs at a reggae festival is a bit like searching women for bizarrely tall hats at the doors of Royal Ascot, and judging by the potent smell of marajuana eminating from the venue, i'm guessing a degree of leniancy was adopted. The music was awesome with a group called 'Alpha Blondie' headlining, and dj's and other reggae groups playing well into the early hours. I was only slightly underprepared for the icy nightime winds as my portuguese had once again let me down. I had read the venue's online description as 'an inside arena that crates the illusion of being outside'. I subsequently discovered that it was an 'outside arena that creates the illusion of being inside.' Oh well. Overall though a great 'alternative' night was had by all. Perhaps i'll finally be accepted into the Dojo's wednesday crew in Bristol. Probably not though.

As for my new office, i am sad to report it has proved less than satisfactory. I have already been told off for talking too loudly, drinking and putting two chairs by one computer, an apparently heinous crime despite the fact that 80% of the chairs in here are currently vacant. Although i have managed to persuade the attendant not to call the federal police, i think I will be writing from home in the future.
Until then....