Week 2: aula, happy hours, and my first churrascaria in Brazil

The second week of class was pretty standard. I’m back alone again which is nice because I basically get to move at my own pace and learn exactly what I want to learn. I’m definitely pleased with the progress I’m making as a Portuguese speaker. There are two other foreign students who study at the same time as I do in the mornings but are in a beginner course, Janghun (a.k.a. Korean Jay) and Carina, a German girl here studying and working for EADS, the company that owns Airbus. I usually get a chance to chat with them in between classes, which is nice. For the most part, I’m sticking to my routine of a quick bite to eat and some time to read from noon-1:30. On Wednesday, I wandered to a park near the school. I was expecting a standard green area with grass, trees, and benches, but it had a lot more than that, including chickens just running around freely. I was really hungry, so I didn’t stay to explore everything, but I will at some point this week. I recently discovered a solution to my aforementioned Spanish problem. One of the teachers in the school is from Mexico and she works the front desk during the afternoons as I am on my way out. I try to speak some Spanish with her every day to practice transitioning from Portuguese to Spanish (and back). It’s harder than it sounds, but I’m getting better at it. It’s just something I need to practice.

My afternoons/evenings are still pretty chill. I’m proud to say that so far I’ve completely kept up with my P90X schedule, which is not too hard when you have a lot of free time. On Wednesday and Friday, I went for a nice run in the neighborhood. There’s a long busy street called Sumaré that has a median area with trees and a running path that quite a few people use.

Thursday evening, I met Lucas at a shopping in the nearby bairro of Higienópolis. We explored the mall a bit and saw the new X-men movie. This time it was in English with Portuguese subtitles, so that was ideal. The movie itself was surprisingly really good (Does Dick W. Schulz agree?). On the way back I took a cab. On my behalf, Lucas negotiated the fare with the driver, explaining that I was American, before I got in. On the way, the driver looked at me and said in Portuguese something to the effect of “You don’t understand a damn thing I’m saying, do you?” When I responded, he seemed pretty surprised, and we ended up having a solid conversation on the way back to my apartment.

Friday night, the school had a “happy hour” at a pizza place in the neighborhood with professors and some students. It ended up being more of a happy four hours from 8-midnight with good food, good beer, and a lot of good laughs (It turns out that it’s a lot easier to make jokes in English than in Portuguese).

I spent most of Saturday relaxing and exploring the neighborhood some. Saturday night, I was supposed to go to a party at a club with some friends of Bel. At around 8:30, three hours before I was supposed to meet them, I was at home, in bed reading and just trying to stay warm (Have I mentioned there’s no heating here?). I rested my eyes for a second and the next thing I knew I was waking up to a text at 11:32. I guess my body was exhausted from waking up at 7:15 every morning for the past week, so I decided to just go back to sleep. Even though I missed the party, sleeping for 13 hours wasn’t too bad.

I woke up this morning feeling very refreshed. At noon, I was picked up by Raquel and her husband to go to lunch. I met Raquel at an HBS info session when I was interviewing there a month ago. She was a Brazilian there for a month studying English, basically doing the same thing in Boston/Cambridge that I was about to do in São Paulo. When I told her that I was headed to São Paulo to study Portuguese, we exchanged information and ended up getting a burger at the famous Mr. Bartley’s. She and her husband are a few years older than I am and just moved to São Paulo, where they work for Kraft.

Today they took me to a famous churrascaria here called Jardineira Grill. It is one of Fogo de Chão’s main competitors (Yes, Fogo de Chão is actually from Brazil. There just happen to be more of them in the U.S. than here.) It was one of the best meals I have had in a long time. For those of you who don’t know, a churrascaria is a traditional Brazilian “barbecue” restaurant. Waiters come around with different skewers of different cuts of meat and you take what you want. You get a little circular card that is green on one side and red on the other. Green means I want food. I tried so many different cuts of beef, lamb, pork, and sausages, not to mention fried potatoes, fried corn meal, and fried banana. In addition, there was a buffet of salad, bread, meats and cheeses, all of which were of the highest quality and absolutely delicious.  It was so good! It’s been 5 hours and I’m still stuffed. Afterwards we all went to Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo’s version of Central Park, and walked around for a while, before they drove me home. It’s been a great day.