Vida Brasileira: Got to admit, it's getting melhor

Day 2 in my homestay, but I didn't spend much time at home. I went all the way to a street in Centro called 25 de Março, a shopping area with every kind of inexpensive knick-knack you can imagine from backpacks, jewelry, clothing, and umbrellas (which is what I bought during the small hurricane that lasted 40 minutes.) Pictures below are ripped off of google since I didn't bring my camera.

Thankfully it wasn't THIS crowded today, but a lot of people in the street and in the shops.

I went with another student to get phones from a Chinese girl named Lany. She has been in Brazil for 10 years running an import/export business of jewelry, and her building is above a shop on Rua 25 de Março. I imagine much of her jewelry is sold in its wholesale form to the stores below to tourists and locals alike. Last week when I was living with another host family, Nicholette - another student - and I were looking around the "best" mall in Sao Paulo: Iguatemi. Lany heard us speaking English and stopped to ask us where she could get some English lessons... in perfect English. As soon as she found out Nicholette was from New York she wanted our contact info so we could go out together. Being new to Brazil, neither of us had phones and offered our emails instead, to which Lany replied, "I'll lend you both an extra phone!" Great, all I need is the SIM card so it works, right? Nope. Lany gave me that too today when we went to visit her store and pick up the phones. That easily saved us over $100 each. If it hadn't been for the monsoon of rain that sometimes happens between 5 and 7 p.m., she was even going to take us to dinner.

This is brings up something about Paulistas (the people of Sao Paulo) that is undeniably true: they are the nicest, most selfless people towards strangers that I have ever met. I have almost lost count of the number of times that someone has gone out of their way to do something unnecessarily nice for a gringo who speaks no Portuguese. On Super Bowl Sunday, when Nicholette and I were trying to get home using the confusing bus system, we had not one but TWO different total strangers go out of their way to help us. The first, Mildred, passed up her bus home to ride our bus with us and make sure we got onto the right connection. All we did was ask her if she could point us in the right direction, and suddenly she was our best friend. As she put us on a connecting bus, we weren't sure if we would know the right stop to get off and connect to a third bus. As we frantically asked Mildred to tell the bus driver to warn us before our stop, another complete stranger immediately said "We will help you." (Lucky us, all these English speakers..) He got us off the bus at our stop, and he and the girl he was with got on to our next bus with us to make sure we got home safe. What can I say?

The other night at club near Vila Madelina, myself and another student named Karen were having a drink when a couple our age that spoke English overheard the conversation. We started talking about soccer and sports, exchanged contact info, and went on with the night. Two hours later as we tried to pay our tabs and leave, Karen couldn't find her card from the club that had her tab recorded on it. With perfect timing, our new Brazilian friend asked if he could help, we explained what happened, he worked some magic with the club, and they let us out the door. Lucky, lucky, lucky. But also, I can't help but think that the people I've been meeting are just genuinely friendly, easygoing people.

Ok, more pictures.