O Primeiro Post (The First Post)

Hey all, I'm sitting here in the eXtreme lan house cyber cafe by our hotel, Bergson Flats, listening to Brazilian radio and being confused by everything on my screen except for the text I'm writing because its all in Portuguese! Jim, Zach, Gina and I are having a great time so far. Our days have been really busy; we usually wake up at 7:30 and eat breakfast, then are on the Universidade de Caxias Do Sul campus by 9, though we're on Brazilian Time so its really more like 9:15. Everyone has been so welcoming and accepting of us bumbling Americans, and it's really surprising how many Brazilians know English and can speak it back to us.

The food down here is amazing! Their 'fast food' is so inexpensive and tasty, I think the hardest part of leaving will be leaving the food. Every day we wake up to a concord breakfast of freshly brewed Brazilian coffee (its strong) and fresh fruit, my favorite being banana with cinnamon.

The traveling wasn't that bad coming over here, we took the red eye to Buenos Aires from Atlanta which was probably the worst, but we got in to our hotel and had the rest of the day to recuperate, so by now there's no jetlag or anything. Our bags were lost for a day, I never thought I'd miss a pair of jeans so much.

We've been making the rounds at a couple different classes, and have made some fast friends already! Last night we all went out to the bar Mississippi, an American themed Blues/Rock/Jazz bar and drank Brazilian beer with a group of people from one of the classes.

Before I left I didn't really know as much what we were going to be doing down here, but we're here to take an ethnographic look at what a day in the life of a Brazilian college student is like. The higher education system is in some ways completely opposite from how it is in America. Instead of having the most prestigious and elite universities be private institutions like Harvard or Dartmouth, the best universities are public ones, receiving money from either the Brazilian government. The primary reason for this is the Vestibular exam, which every high school graduate wanting to go to college has to take. Unfortunately, a very small amount of people are accepted into the program, because the public institutions can only hold so many students. The opposite end of this is the private institution, which receives close to no money from the government, and are often streamlined for students going straight into the workforce. Going to college simply to learn is not an option for Brazilian college students, which I feel very lucky to have been able to do. We're working at the University of Caxias do Sul (cai-she-ass dough sool), in the state of Rio Grande Do Sul, the southeastern most state of Brazil. It's a private, not-for-profit institution; a whole different classification of university that needs a whole nother post.

But, Brazil is really coming up in the world, its part of the rapidly developing economic superpowers of the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC) and I feel so privileged being able to not just come here as a tourist, but also learn something as well.

It's rainy and cold here, going to be 5 degrees centigrade tomorrow. I feel right at home! Well, I have to go back to the hotel now, the place is closing. Hopefully next time there will be some pictures. Talk to you soon, Dan.