Picture Time and Secret Code

Hello there!!

Its been quite a while since the last time I wrote you.. meanwhile I have moved, said goodbye to Cor and Carsten, drunk milk from a coconut on the beach, made a churrasco (BBQ) on the roof, visited a favela, gotten used to the rythm of the city, hot temperature and salty food, started to practice capoeira, cannot function without a biggg lunch at 12 oclock anymore (including the rice and beans!!) and in short started to build up a new life here...

I have had a lot of fun and done a lot of fun things, met interesting people and had interesting conversations, although, apart from Priscila and her wonderful family :), I havent have really made any reaaaaal friends yet.
Because although Brazilians are really nice and friendly, and easy to talk to and laugh with, actually its kind of hard to really make friends. Why? Supposingly due to the 'Secret Code'. Yes, apparently all Brazilians have some kind of a secret code, and how it should be interpreted differs per person. What?! Let me try to get it clear with an example... if someone tells you 'hey, come and visit me in my house!', actually doesnt really mean that they do expect you to come to your house, it rather means that either they just try to be nice to you or, other option, maybeeeeee some day, in some time, you could organize something and maybe then you can come to their house! (emphasis on maybe). So, its a little bit confusing right?
I have already met a lot of interesting and nice people and they were like 'yeahhhhh lets go to a party in uni in the other day' or 'lets meet up for a coffee, I will call you, definitely!' .. but then they never call, or, something people here are also very good at, cancel the appointment in last moment. (They have actually invented a verb for it: 'furar' hehe, and someone who does that a lot, the king of 'furar', is called a 'furão'.) Oh well. I guess its the downside of their relaxed nature, right? :P

Anyway, the advantage of it, is that Brazilians are full of surprises. Nothing goes like its supposed to go or as it was determined in advance. Every day is full of surprises. (good! I like surprises!) Even professors in uni show up late (which is actually not a surprise anymore..) But, you can also start talking to a person next to you in the queue for lunch, just out of the blue, get involved in the most interesting conversation ever and end up spending the rest of the afternoon together, wandering around the campus and taking a coffee. Or, in the other night I went to a samba concert, where a classmate of mine performed, and I was busy pretending to know how to dance (even though subtilly said its just NOT in my blood :P together with a Spanish exchange student who also sucked at it, so we were, as a good Portuguese friend of mine would put it, 'the worse dancers of the florest' hehe), but then, out of nowhere, two girls grab my hands and try to teach me the moves! Ahahaha. After a while other friends of them join as well, and me and the Spanish guy get invited for someones, who I didnt even talk to, birthday party next week! Yay! Haha. Welcome to Brasil ;)

The weather is really nice lately! I am going to take advantage to get to know my neighbourhood Vila Madalena a little bit more, wandering around (as this neighbourhood is very famous in São Paulo, its supposed to be very gezellig with its many bars, restaurants, small parks and art studios! Plus its very safe, its ok for me to come home alone in the night by bus. Yay :)) and later on I might go to a free filmfestival, which is happening here around the city :)

Oh and I uploaded some pictures at the respective stories. Will update you more later!

Tchau!!!