Hello All!


So, since i last wrote...last weekish i think? my life has been goooood. I´m now all settled in with my new family in my new town, Caetanópolis. The town itself is really really REALLY small, only 40000 people, which in brazil is teeny, but the advantage of this is that everyone wants to meet me and knows who i am, so i´ve already made friends fairly easily. Another advantage to Caetanópolis is that my host family is really great. As opposed to most peoples host families, who are forced to host exchange students because they have a child studying abroad, my host family just wanted to have an exchange student, so they are really excited about me living here, which in turn makes me want to get along with them and try harder and all that jazz.



PLUS my famiy has children that actually live at home, a son Lucas who´s twenty-three, and two daughters, Viviene who´s my age and Mariana, who´s thirteen. That´s nice for two reasons: i already have friends that live in my house, and i can just attach myself to their friends. My brother has this group of friends, who call themselves Trash (which is pretty dumb) but they´re a nice group of people, or at least i enjoy their company, so it doesn´t matter. And, i´m pretty sure they´re the only group of hipsters in the entire country of brazil, which is really nice, because overall, brazilians sort of come up short with music and movies, but they don´t. It´s pretty sweet.

And, yet one more advantage about Caetanópolis is that i get to work here! As i am very very poor, that is very very nice, and extremely helpful. I´m going to be teaching some English classes here, and i´m both excited and slightly nervous for it.

The other simultaneously exciting and nerve-wracking thing that´s happening soon here is carnaval, which starts friday. I´ll be doing it here in Caetanopolis, which i was sort of dissappointed about before i actually got here, but now i figure i might as well make the best i posibly can from it. Ít promises to be interesting at least. Although drunken brazilian men are the bane of my existence here, and there are going to heaps of them there, so glllll. (potentially) We´ll see.

Anyhow, just so you guys know, i´m happy and jazzed and doing really well. And i hope the same for all of you!
lots of beijãos e abraçãos tambem
mary

so, after a bit of a break, i´m back to tell you all of my life in brazil!!
right now is a really chill time in brazil, because it´s january summer holiday. school is out, and a LOT of people are traveling to the coast to go to the beach. UNFORTUNATELY i am not one of them, but it´s all good. i´ve been spending my holiday n Belo Horizonte, with a bunch of different people, just going out at night, going to birthday parties, going away parties for the aussie exchange students, and stuff like that. it´s been pretty nice.
also, because of a series of events caused mostly by me, i´ll be moving out of timoteo. i guess i really already have, because i haven´t been in timoteo since right after christmas, and i won´t be going back before i move to my new city, Paraopeba, an hour outside of BH. I´m very excited to go there, Marco Aurelio, my counselor guy for the district, tells me that the family is excited to recieve me, and they have a twenty year old daughter who went on exchange to denmark a few years ago. I´m REALLY excited to meet her, because i´ll be working with her at the english school she works at, so hopefully we´ll be good friends. I´m not entirely certain when i´ll leave bh for paraopeba, but it´ll be soon, i think.
the other exciting thing on the horizon is carnaval, after which i have a feeling brazilian life will return to how it was before i left for the northeast, i.e. school and all that stuff. i have SEVERAL different things i could do for carnaval, i´ve been invited to go to salvador with joal, claire´s older brother, who gets here in a little more than a week, and also to go with my current host sister, natalia, to diamantina, in minas gerias, or i might go with rotex to guarapiri, on the beach in espirito santo, OR i might go with my friend mira and her host brother some where else in minas, i really don´t know, but i´m excited for three days of craziness! all of brazil is excited about it, whenever i meet brazilians, they ask me where i´m going for carnaval, and if i´m excited, so i hope it´s good. It´s from febuary fifth to the eighth or ninth, so it´s soon!
i should also probably say about my holidays. Christmas itself was actually really just sad and depressing. Brazilians just do something totally different, my family didn´t do any sort of gift exchange or anything, and so overall, it was just a sad day. i tried to make the best of it though, and hang out with my family. New Years Eve was FAR superior. By that time, i was back in belo horizonte, staying at my friend brendan´s house with my two other friend´s lexi and mira and the four of us went to his host parent´s party, which was this huge affair, two thousand people, lots of champagne and an open bar with food and all that, and everyone was all very chic and mira lexi and i spent hours getting ready, and we went and had a good time. It was the first time i´d been to a party like that new years, it was very fun, although we had to leave earlier than usual, around four, because Brendan was a bit too drunk to handle the party anymore. His family got home around nine. It was great.
So, that´s it for now. Lots of love to you all, and beijos until next time!
mary