An Expensive Mistake, among other things

I caught my first gecko in Brazil!

This last week has been strange and a bit difficult to get through in good spirits. It is my last week at Iracambi, as I have decided to leave this Thursday, December 12th. I feel like my stay has been the perfect length; although I am sad to go, I am ready to move on and see more of the world. My next destination is Fazenda OuroVerde in Serra Grande, Bahia, but to take a bus directly from here to there would mean over 24 hours of bussing in one stretch. That does not sound very appealing to me, and thus I have decided to break up the journey and travel first to Vitoria, a city on the coast of Brazil, that is at about the same latitude as Iracambi. I will leave Iracambi around 7:00 on Thursday morning and arrive in Vitoria around 7:00 that evening. I have decided to stay there until Monday the 16th and take the overnight bus to Ilheus which leaves at 6:30 in the evening and arrives around 9:30 the next morning. I will then take another bus to Serra Grande.

My original intent in traveling to Vitoria was to learn how to surf. I found a hostel online that offered surfing lessons and equipment for a reasonable price. I found it through a certified booking agency, it looked clean and simple from the pictures, and I was talking to the owner online. All seemed to look good, so I went ahead and booked it and bought the bus tickets. As I was looking up how to get there from the bus station using Google Maps, I decided to click on the reviews, just to see. What I saw there chilled my blood. Several people talked about how the place was dirty, the owner was a drunk who fought with the neighbors, disrespected the guests, and approached women inappropriately. I quickly decided that I could not risk staying there, as a young woman travelling alone. I called the booking agency to cancel and get my money back, but they told me that the hostel's cancellation policy stated that you could only get your money back if you cancelled 30 days before your stay. I was very upset, mostly with myself.

Now, I had bus tickets to this city for 4 days and no place to stay. I had made a couchsurfing account a few months back but had never actually stayed with anybody, and decided that this was a good time to start. I added information to my profile and contacted a few hosts. Two got back to me, and I decided to stay with a 55 year old woman named Junia. She is also new to couchsurfing and speaks only Portuguese, but she has 2 good references and some pictures up with one of the people who stayed with her, who has couchsurfed many other places. I was determined not to fall prey unknowingly to an unsafe situation again due to lack of information, so I videocalled her. We talked and she showed me the room I would be staying in. As far as I can tell, everything should be fine. I do have a fallback plan however, in case that somehow also goes wrong. Rogeria knows someone who lives in Vitoria who taught her how to surf, and he has offered to take me out for a day of surfing. He has also offered for me to stay at his house, which I hope I will not have to do.

Another spirit dampener is that I found out I have been rejected from Stanford. My initial reaction is disappointed, but not surprised. I have talked to several people about Ivy League colleges, and the opinions have been very mixed. Some say that the education you receive there is no better than the one I would receive at a small, unknown university. Ultimately, it appears that the benefits are bragging rights, an impressive resume, and the connections you make with influential people who also go there. A part of me also feels relieved. Being accepted to Stanford would have meant feeling obligated to go there, even if other colleges sounded more appealing to me for various reasons. Making any choice other than Stanford in that case would be considered by many to be the "wrong" choice. In other words, applying there was worth a shot, and I accept the result.

Iracambi has a yearly meeting where they talk about how the last year has been and what the goals are for the next year, and this was a big one, since Iracambi is 20 years old! This year, it was taking place in Limeira and members of the community were invited for the first time. On Saturday morning, we were told breakfast would be at 6:30, so we were all ready to go at 6:30. We were told we would leave at 7:00, 7:30 at the latest. Breakfast was ready at 7:00, and we left around 8:15. The entire day was a lesson on the fact that you cannot rush Brazilians. The meeting went decently. It was conducted in Portuguese and I had a little trouble understanding everything that was said. After the meeting, around 11:00, they were going to bring lunch to the meeting space and we were all going to eat together. Lunch ended up arriving around 1:00, much to our frustration. We (being the volunteers) then expected to pack up the space and drive home. However, we ended up waiting for a number of convoluted reasons, and ended up leaving around 2:45. For me and the other volunteers, this was quite trying, as most of us are used to a greater level of punctuality. It is a process of accepting that things simply take longer, and the more relaxed you are about it, the less frustrated you're going to be. That being said, I am not that good about being relaxed about it.

(slideshow, pictures from the meeting)

On Sunday, 2 other volunteers and I decided to go with Deivid and Arielle to a Brazilian barbecue, known as a Churrasco. I'll set the scene: people sitting around in plastic chairs talking, loudspeakers in the back of a car blaring the same 4 songs on loop at a deafening level, meat being cooked on a grill and being brought to the tables on plates, and plastic cups with beer in front of every person that are refilled as soon as they are halfway empty. We got there around noon, and around 3:00, the people I went with were decently drunk. I didn't want to be drunk; I just wanted to finish my cup or two of beer and call it good. However, the people I was with kept refilling my cup, so I began to put it under the table when they picked up the beer bottle, at which point they would laugh at me. Finally, my solution was to just stop drinking beer entirely. They also grilled some cheese on a skewer, which I liked, and said they were going to grill some vegetables. They proceeded to bring out an entire plate full of eggplant, which is, for those of you who don't know, my least favorite vegetable. Things got a little better when we decided to play some pool at the slanted pool table, especially when Deivid and Alex, who were both quite drunk, decided to play. However, I spent most of the time there waiting to leave. I think I just need to accept the fact that I don't like parties and stop making myself go to them.

That night after dinner, we went on a small night hike. About 5 minutes into the hike, one of the dogs that had come with us was pawing at his face, and we realized he had bitten a porcupine and had spines all over his nose and lips! With multiple people holding him down, we were able to pull all but one of the spines out. We also saw several frogs, an opossum, a tree rat, and a nighthawk on the hike. When we approached the nighthawk, which was sitting on the road, it began to fly around in a strange way. It then flew towards me and hit me in the face before flying off and crashing into some bushes! It then flew away, seemingly unbothered. One of the other volunteers explained that nighthawks will behave like they are injured to lure animals away from their nests.

More cool animal sightings.

From now on, I will be finishing up my time at Iracambi. I am attending my last planting tomorrow and giving my presentation about my stay here on Wednesday (every volunteer does this before they leave). So that's that! The first part of my gap year is almost over!