When it rains, it pours

Some days are awe-fully wet here in Recife... I guess we´re in winter here, when it rains everyday. My dilemma—I take the bus (or several) between my home stay (which is wonderful) and the NGO´s office, which are about 7 km apart. I recently moved in to this house, and so far the commute has been pretty easy; after lunch I leave for work and walk about 15 minutes, and then catch one bus to the office. But when I´m coming back in the evenings I can´t walk cause it´s dark out, so I have to take 2 busses. Well, yesterday I left work at about 5pm, and unfortunately it had begun to pour down rain. I was able to borrow an umbrella, and I began my journey. Went to the bus stop but wasn’t sure which bus to take (oops). So I got on one, got off (wrong one). Talked to a girl, and got on another. After about 10 minutes, the bus took a turn that I realized was the wrong direction, so I got off again. This time I got off at a place where there was A FOOT of water, and as I waded through the water to get back to the street to catch another bus, I couldn’t help but laugh at how stupid I looked wading through the water. So I got on another bus, which a lady assured me was the correct one. I got on and it actually went in the right direction!! BUT I got off to early… the bus was so crowded I couldn´t see out the windows… so then I got on another bus, went about 5 more stops to where I wanted to be. But then I had to catch one more bus that actually took me to my house… so I walked two blocks, during which I was splashed multiple times by cars driving by. I couldn´t help but walk down the street laughing—it was just so funny to me that I was getting soaked. Anyway, I finally got on my 5th bus of the evening, and it was my last. I got home, dried off, and sat down for café com pão y quejo (coffee, bread, and cheese) and laughed with my home stay family (they thought it was quite clever that I had gotten a plastic bag to wrap my purse in so my stuff wouldn´t get wet). I guess some days this experience could leave you really frustrated—but I thought it was really funny… and was really thankful that I was wearing capris and sturdy sandals that could get wet and stay on my feet!

I think this story might represent a lot of what Brasil has been for me so far—some rainy days, confusion, adjustment, but there is almost always some redeeming experience that reminds me how much I am enjoying my time here. It might be simple things such as coffee everyday, Brazilian cuisine, succeeding at Portuguese (some days), learning how to dance forro(pronounced foho), or bigger things such as working with pregnant mothers and having the chance to participate in training for traditional midwives. Either way, I´ve had to realize that learning can be a slow experience, its not like my crazy time-crammed, hyper-active nursing student schedule in the US. Life and learning doesn’t work on my time-table here, so I have had to adjust. Here learning is taking lots of forms: learning about the anthropology of birth has been a big thing, through books I´ve had access to here, and conversations with the anthropologists who work with the NGO; learning about Brazilian culture is a full-time endeavor, mixed in with learning Portuguese… but I have been blessed with some amazing people to guide me through both of those processes (mostly through my home stay family); learning from pregnant women who want their wishes in their labor and delivery to be respected and upheld; and next week I will travel west, into the interior of Brazil, to do interviews and research with midwives there!
Pictures are coming soon!! Beijo,
Leah