October was filled with so many wonderful and different things, that I don’t even know where to start. Things here are starting to feel like everyday life, and I’ve found a routine, although it still contains too many different things to be mundane. My portuguese has gotten to the point, where I no longer feel like I’m completely dependent on other people or my phone, and by now I can have conversations pretty naturally. Truly I am happier here, than I had even dared hope to be, and everyday I’m grateful, that I was lucky enough to get such a good city, family, school, class, friendgroup and everything.

As I said, October has been an eventful month, and the only place I can start is at the beginning.

October 2nd was the first round of the Brazilian election. I didn’t know a whole lot about brazilian politics before I got here, but it’s been super interesting to see how it works, and especially at this election where the country is so split. The situation almost remind me of the american election in 2020. The two main candidates are Bolsonaro: a far right wing politician, who’s also the current president, and Lula who’s more left wing and a former president who unfortunately got exposed for being quite corrupt. My whole family on both sides loves Bolsonaro and so does a lot of the older and richer population. My sister is the only family member who prefers Lula (or actually prefer none but see Lula as the lesser evil) and so does a lot of my friends along with the younger people and working class. Here people can vote from 16 years old and it’s mandatory from 18, so a lot of my friends at school are really involved and talks a lot about politics.

At the first round I went with my sister to vote – both to see how it works and to function as her excuse to get out of there quicker. Basically they need people to work at the election places, and these people are chosen at random, so our deal was, that if anyone asked, I was 15, didn’t speak a word of portuguese and definitely couldn’t be left alone, so she couldn’t stay.

It was interesting to see everything but at times also a bit overwhelming to see how serious and at times angry people got. I do like politics though, and my dad (who also enjoys it a lot) had from the beginning promised, that we would discuss it, when I could speak better portuguese – a goal I’ve now reached. We definitely don’t agree about a lot of things, but it’s really interesting to hear his point of view, when his whole perspective and experience is so different than my own.

Praia do Forte

It was also in October, that I went to Praia do Forte: a very famous vacation place here in Brazil.

It started when I went to my grandpas birthday and met the daughter of one of his friends, who has two daughters who’s both been exchange students too, and one of them is part of the Rotex in Sao Paulo, where she normally lives. They had holidays now and where both visiting family in Salvador and planned to go to Praia do Forte for a weekend with two friends, and they invited me to come along.

I had only met them once at the birthday party, so I was definitely a bit nervous, when they came to pick me up, and I didn’t really know what to expect, but it has honestly been one of the highlights so far.

All three girls where former exchange students, and it was nice to have someone to talk to about how things were going, and how I was doing. The guy was a friend of theirs from Alaska who was visiting Brazil, which meant that for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t the person who spoke the least portuguese. They were all older than me too (around 20-26) so it was almost like I became the little sister of the group (again), but they were all super sweet to help and include me, and while I love my family here, it was quite exiting to get to travel a bit with people closer to my age. Especially because with the way the whole resort is build, we could easily walk between the hotel, beach, restaurants and shops, and it felt like getting a bit of my freedom and independence back just for a weekend.

At Praia do Forte they also have something called project Tamar, which is a non profit organisation working on saving the sea turtles. They have plenty of pools and room for turtles who has been wounded and need recovering or are too permantly damaged to return to sea. Most of it is due to plastic pollution or other human factors, but they also had among other an albino turtle that couldn’t stay in the sun and had a special sheltered pool.

They also help the baby turtles find their way to the water or grow up safely in their pools, until they can be released. Because there’s so much human activity, the babies can get confused by the lighting and end of walking the wrong way and get exposed to animals or other dangers.

School and Friends

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m starting to get a more close group of friends, that I’m spending more time with out of school and party with, but I still meet new people all the time.

One of these friends is a girl who arrived in the class after me, after having changed from another class. Her name is Fernanda, and we quickly became pretty close, not just because we were the new girls (in fact another girl returned after having been a year in USA after me too), but we got along very well and shared interests like music, theater and other things. She was also kind enough to help me a lot with translating, pronunciation etc. and she’s been showing me both brazilian food, candy and even cafes, art galleries etc.

Being out with her for the first time was quite fun, as it reminded me of something, I by now am pretty used to. After having walked for a bit she turned to me and asked; “why is everyone staring at us?” clearly thinking something was wrong with her. I couldn’t help but laugh and try to explain, that no matter where I go, people are staring, talking, asking questions etc.

At school it’s settled a bit more down now, when I’m not as “new and exiting” anymore, but I still feel it. It can be small things like half of the school knowing my favorite chocolate, or just rumors spreading absurdly quickly. None of them are bad, so me and my friends have reached a point of just making fun of it. I’ve even joked with my friends about, how they should make a newspaper, because I would love to read about all the things I’m apparently doing without knowing it.

The other exchange students

Some other friends that I spent time with in October was the other two exchange students who live in Salvador – Estelle from France and Levke from Germany.

We’d been talking about doing something for some time, but finally our schedules aligned. While we had been told back in our host countries, that we shouldn’t spend too much time with the other exchange students (or just that we at least need to spend time with the brazilians too, as that’s the best way to learn about the culture) it’s really nice to have someone who’s going through the same thing at the same time. It’s nice to have someone who relates to the things you miss about Europe, or who also find certain things weird in Brazil. Of course it’s also nice to make friends from all over the world and learn about their cultures too.

The three of us had only met each other one time back in Aracaju with the other exchange students, but we’d been following each others journeys a bit on social media, through the groupchat and in the online portuguese classes.

Estelle also happens to be the one, that I’ll swap families with after new year. Everyone traveling with Rotary will have 2-4 families throughout the year to learn about the culture from different angles. I’ll have three: my current family, Estelles family and my third family, which is my current uncle and aunt.

The three of us met up at Levke’s neighbourhood (a secured neighbourhood so we could walk freely in the streets and park) and had a picnic in the park. All of us brought two kind of foods and one kind of drink from Brazil to show the others, and I think all of us ended up trying some new things.

Afterwards we went back to Levke’s apartment, that happened to be the top floor, which meant we could watch the sunset over the city and ocean from the rooftop. Her mom also made strawberry juice for us, while we talked about everything we’d already done, wanted to do or things we could do together here. 

Family

Even though I’ve been very busy in October and spent a lot of time with friends, I also did a lot of things with my family. As always there was a lot of birthday parties and family gatherings, which I really enjoy, and by now I can actually talk to the people there and aren’t dependent on my phone or family.

At one of those parties – my grandpas birthday – I also ended up singing the danish version of happy birthday for them.

In October we also had holiday called Dia das Criancas (Day of the children), and because of that occasion the symphony orchestra from Bahia did a special concert with only music from movies. Originally my sister wanted to take our younger cousin and me, but the cousin got sick, so it was just the two of us.

The whole band was dressed up as characters from movies, and they played everything from James Bond and Star Wars to Disney songs. When they played the Jurassic Park theme, they even had a guy dressed in a dinosaur costume, who ended up getting completely drowned by the children. During the whole Star Wars theme they also had people dressed as the characters fighting with light sabers and more.

All the Disney songs where in portuguese, so while everyone around us was singing in portuguese, I was singing in danish/english and my sister in english/portuguese/german. It must certainly have been interesting for the people standing next to us, but with the thousand of other people singing, I doubt anyone could really hear it.

All in all it was an amazing evening and definitely one of the highlights so far.