[Updated 7/4 with borrowed photos, links, and minor update to description of Rio Scenarium]
I started Portuguese lessons this week at Casa dos Caminhos language school in Ipanema. The school’s history is quite interesting – it was started by a Dutch guy, who was working at an orphanage near Rio, to teach foreign volunteers how to speak the local language. The original orphanage shut down, but the language school still serves as a means of financing charitable activities to serve poor and at-risk youth and teens. Local children are brought to the school in the afternoons for tutoring and such, and there’s a project in a rural area a few hours away in which volunteers are given room and board (probably funded by the school) in exchange for their help in building eco-friendly housing. I have a lot of admiration for the guys who run the place, and I find the story of the school and the organization inspiring.
I was a little late to start the lessons, so I had a private lesson on Tuesday afternoon to catch me up and started with the rest of the group on Wednesday. There are two other Americans in the class – one from LA and one from Phoenix. There are 3 Brits – one who’s married to a Brazilian woman and the other two are a couple who just graduated college (actually, this was their only week of class, so we won’t be seeing them again) – one Japanese woman who happened to study English at UCSD and who is married to a Brazilian man, one Romanian woman who’s got a Belgian boyfriend here with her, and a Latvian guy. It’s quite the diverse group!
The teacher speaks Portuguese almost exclusively in the class, which is great because I’m constantly getting to hear what the language sounds like and match it up to the words that are being spoken. I’ve actually started to be able to pick words out of the jumble of sounds I hear coming out of people’s mouths. I don’t know anything about how the Portuguese pronounce their words, but the Brazilian pronunciation is totally foreign to American ears and sounds nothing like the written word would suggest to American eyes that it should. For example, “gente” is pronounced “ZHEN-tchee” and “til” is pronounced “tcheeyou” and “nos” is pronounced “noeesh.” It takes some getting used to.
The school also has various activities in the afternoons the students can participate in, like Samba lessons, movie nights, beach volleyball, etc. Friday nights are caipirinha nights – first caipirinha is free. They basically set up benches, chairs, and a bar outside on the sidewalk and throw a party for the staff and students. Lots of folks showed up, and I made some new acquaintances among the other students and the volunteers working at the building site who had come in to town for the weekend (mostly Dutch and British guys). It was very well done and I really enjoyed it.
Everyone was planning on going to Lapa last night, it seemed. Lapa (which is where I’m staying) is located downtown and is a center for night life in Rio de Janeiro. As an acquaintance who used to live in Rio told me, Copacabana and Ipanema have the ritzy club scene for the tourists and wealthier Brazilians, other areas of downtown have a grittier club scene that serves mainly lower income Brazilians, but Lapa is the place where everyone comes together to mix and mingle. It certainly had a very authentic vibe. Ground zero is the Lapa Arches, where all kinds of vendors set up selling caiprinhas, beer and food and where people generally go to hang out and be loud. The rest of the action is in the bars on the west side of the Arches, and the place is hoppin’. There were thousands of people out in the streets (though fewer than usual, I was told) and there was a real party atmosphere.
I was curious what everyone was going there for – for a particular reason or just to look around or what? – and arranged to meet up with some folks later in the evening. I was down at the Arches looking for them when I stumbled across one of my classmates – the Romanian girl and her Belgian boyfriend. Just a few minutes later, the British couple came passing by, and suddenly we had a little group. After hanging out at the Arches for a bit, we decided to go to Rio Scenarium, a very popular club just a few blocks away.
Rio Scenarium is a serious nightclub and popular among both Brazilians (at least the ones who can afford it) and foreign tourists – I’d guess the mix was about 30 foreign/70 Brazilian on Friday night. The place is beautiful – it sits in a historic building that is kept in beautiful condition with what looks like original wood flooring and banisters, historic interior design and antique decor. It has 3 floors with live traditional music (Samba, Bossa Nova, etc.) in the main area and at least one separate area with more modern dj’ed music. When you go in, you have to give them your ID, which they enter into their computer system, and then they take your picture before giving you a “ticket” – it looks kind of like a long, skinny menu, but it’s what you hand to the bartenders whenever you order a drink. They enter your order into the system, mark it on your ticket, and you pay for everything at the end of the night before you leave. If you lose your ticket, apparently the fee is quite high.
I was kind of looking forward to checking out Rio Scenarium because I understood it to be a place where people actually dance actual Brazilian dances on the dance floor, but that’s not what it was. It was a nightclub, replete with drunk and obnoxious bachelorette party and all. I forgot how much I dislike nightclubs, and feeling like a 5th wheel didn’t help. I find nightclubs to be very lonely places, at least as a single person. You might find some company, but you’re not going to find connection. People are either not interested in you at all or they’re interested in you for the wrong reasons – as an object, a tool for satisfying their own worldly desires, whether that’s getting attention, drinks, money, sex, whatever.
I write colloquially about the collective “you,” but please don’t imagine I intend to speak on your behalf. This is my experience, and perhaps that experience is unique to me. I expect ill will from the people I meet in bars, and I find it. Perhaps my own negative bias attracts that kind of energy.
At any rate, I stayed at Rio Scenarium just long enough to realize I wasn’t having a good time. Fortunately, it was only a few minutes walk back to the apartment.
I also started taking dance lessons this week. Renata Peçanha is a zouk and Brazilian ballroom (Samba, Bolero, Soltinho) dancer and dance instructor here in Rio who was recommended to me by the fabulous Shani Mayer in Los Angeles. We had a private zouk lesson on Tuesday morning. I haven’t danced Zouk in over a year, so it was a fantastic refresher to get me back into it. And Renata speaks English, which is great. I also had group lessons with Renata on Thursday night – a Zouk lesson and my first lessons in Samba, Bolero and Soltinho. Samba and Bolero are quite similar, though Samba is danced with smaller steps and to faster music, as far as I can tell. I found it interesting that Samba, Bolero and Zouk all have the same basic step in form, though the execution and feel are very different. The basic step for all these dances is two 1-count steps followed by a 2-count step, or quick-quick-slow. Soltinho is actually related to swing dancing, with a step-step-triple step base, kind of like a Brazilian Swing dance. All the students were super friendly, encouraging, and eager to help me learn the dances.
After the lessons on Thursday, I went to Lindy na Lapa – Lindy in Lapa, the local Lindy Hop dance event in Rio. The club is just around the corner from my apartment, which made it very convenient. The group was small – maybe a dozen dancers in total – which wasn’t surprising, but it put a smile on my face to see Brazilians dancing and enjoying Lindy Hop (and even Balboa!) here in Rio. I was surprised to find another American there – a guy from Texas – and another man from Italy. I guess it didn’t occur to me there might be other foreigners looking to get their Lindy fix while in Rio.
I have been really lax about my spiritual practices this last week. Almost no meditating (and a strange determination to avoid doing so by any means necessary) and very little present-moment focus. Between language lessons, travel to and from school, dance lessons, food shopping (grocery store shopping is a serious ordeal here, which I will try to describe in a later post), cooking, writing, and whatever else I may have going on, I have felt pressed for time and have not prioritized my spiritual health. Even when I do have time, I manage to find all kinds of distractions to keep me occupied, and my mind is chaotic and all over the place when I do practice. I’ve allowed myself to get pulled in too many directions and it’s taking its toll. Time to refocus and scale it back to what’s important.
TL;DR: Language lessons. Dance lessons. Life lessons.
