Caipirinhas and I don't see eye to eye

For the uninitiated, the caipirinha is a cachaca-based alcoholic drink (cachaca being an extremely strong Brazilian version of rum).  It is the most popular distilled alcoholic drink in Brazil.  The drink is traditionally made by crushing up pieces of lime and sugar in a glass, then mixing in ice and filling the rest of the glass with the previously mentioned cachaca.  It can also be made with vodka and pretty much any fruit the barman can manage to pulverize into the glass.  The strawberry one is particularly good - especially since it completely masks the taste of the alcohol.


Caipirinha is an extremely potent drink.  If you haven't been to Brazil, you may think that you've already tried it at some snazzy West End bar and it wasn't really that bad.  Trust me, that wasn't a caipirinha.  In England, there are specific measures for shots of liquor that pubs and bars have to stick to.  In Brazil, there are no such measures.  Here, they don't serve caipirinhas in piffly little whiskey glasses, they serve them in what looks like a half-pint glass (sometimes bigger).


Anyways.  I went out to a very cheesy gay bar on Monday night.  As I surveyed the 18/19-year-old clientelle and listened to the godawful American pop music pumping out of the sound system, I thought to myself: "I'm going to need a lot more alcohol in my bloodstream to enjoy this".  So, I decided to order a caipirinha.  Apparently I ordered one with vodka (or so I'm informed).  I drank it sort of quicklyish and started enjoying myself a bit more.  I then began slurring, the room started spinning, I went out for a cigarette and felt nauseous, and finally I went downstairs and fell asleep at a table.  My girlfriend had to physically accost me for my swipe card at the end of the evening(/morning?) to pay the bill.  I do remember watching a bit of the drag show.  She did a stage dive.


It seems that every time I have a caipirinha (or two) I end up falling asleep.  That happened on Friday when I had two of them....and back in March when I had three.


Basically, I need to steer clear.  I'm supposed to be going to The Week on Saturday night and falling asleep on the dancefloor is never a good look.

Motels in Brazil

What do you think when I say 'Motel'? (Don't answer this if you're Brazilian).  The first thing that comes to mind is probably something like this:

If you watch 'My Name Is Earl' you'll know that the character Earl and his brother Randy live in a motel suite together.  The word 'Motel' is short for "motorway hotel".  The concept was begun in America in the 1920's, hitting it's peak in the 1950's & 60's, and then went into decline with the increase in popularity of chain hotels.


The original idea was simply to supply cheap accommodation to motorists travelling along highways on long journeys.  Motels appear frequently in American movies as cheap, sleazy, dirty, trashy places to stay.  They don't have a good rep.

Motels in Brazil, on the other hand, are a very VERY different kettle of fish.  Their primary purpose is not for sleep.


I shall explain in context.  In Brazil (and most of Latin America), it is very common for children to live with their parents until they are married.  In the past, this meant leaving home in your late teens to early 20's at the latest.  These days, a lot of people stay with their parents until their mid to late 20's.  I've even heard of a couple of people still with their parents into their 30's.  I find the latter weird.


This all means that if you get yourself a boyfriend/girlfriend before you're married (which is everyone), it is quite common that neither party will have somewhere private to 'consummate' the relationship.  Most Brazilians will not have sex in their parents home.  And before you say "well neither would Europeans/North Americans": YES they WOULD.  I've done it.


So, Brazilians are quite accustomed to using Motels.  I suppose in English we would normally refer to these as 'adult motels' or 'love hotels'.  I don't exactly know the history of the Motel in Brazil, but I'm assuming it started with demand for somewhere nice to carry out an extra-marital affair.  


These days, it is a perfectly socially acceptable and totally un-embarassing way to add spice to a normal marriage or a relationship (you don't have to be cheating on someone). Some motels have suites that are so large and fully-featured with things like pool tables, flat screen televisions, games consoles, DJ decks, disco floors, jacuzzis, swimming pools, saunas, etc that people just rent them out to have a party.


The experience of going to a motel is so incredibly relaxing (no noise, no interruptions) that people often go just to escape everyday life for a few hours.  You can rent a motel room/suite for a period of a few hours or as long as overnight.


The suite I went to (don't worry, I won't go into graphic detail) had it's own garage, two floors, round four-poster bed, huge bathroom, two flatscreen televisions (one on each floor), home cinema sound system, CD player, radio, fridge, dining area, deck with lounge chairs, massive jacuzzi and sauna.  We actually spent most of our time in the jacuzzi chatting.  The decor was a bit corny in places but the jacuzzi made me completely forget about it.  There aren't words to describe how incredibly relaxed I felt after 4 hours.  The only thing that would have a similar effect would be Valium.


Motels are common throughout Latin America: it's not a particularly Brazilian phenomenon.


Personally, I absolutely loved the experience.  Next time I'm taking a suite for 12 hours... 4 hours wasn't enough!

How to leave a Brazilians' home

Brazilians as a whole can be quite superstitious.  They have all kinds of traditions/superstitions related to Catholicism, native Brazilian culture/religions and African culture/religions imported via the slave trade.  (N.B. most things we now refer to as 'Brazilian culture' originated in African culture, FYI).


I have seen a few interesting traditions/superstitions being carried out here.  One of the most dramatic happened when I was in Rio.  We went to the beach one morning and there were white flowers strewn all around, which appeared to have been washed in by the tide.  Short of a tanker ship full of fresh flowers capsizing out at sea, we couldn't work out what the hell was going on.  We then observed a few random middle-aged women walking up and down the beach selling white flowers to passers-by, who then walked up to the sea and threw them in.  The amount of people throwing white flowers into the sea increased as the day wore on: there were streams of people walking towards Copacabana beach with a bunch of flowers in hand in the evening.


After some googling, we found out it all had to do with the Afro-Brazilian religions of Candomblé and Umbanda, created by the slaves.  It has something to do with the goddess Yemanja, Queen of the Ocean.  On February 2nd they give her offerings for good luck, healthy pregnancy, etc.  Basically most people do it out of tradition/superstition.  It was a very beautiful thing to watch happening.  People of all ages and generations were taking part.  I should have taken pictures.


Something not quite as religious is the superstition around guests leaving the home.  When you leave a Brazilians home, you wait for them to open the front door for you.  You DO NOT open it yourself.  This is because of a superstition that states that if a guest lets themselves out of your front door, they won't return again.  I sometimes wonder if they allow people they don't like to let themselves out on purpose so they don't have to see them anymore.  I would, if I believed it were true.


I am constantly almost letting myself of people's homes.  I usually get my hand on the door handle, freeze and withdraw sheepishly apologising "sorry, it's all yours".  I'm not kidding, they NOTICE it if you open the door yourself.  They give you a LOOK - it's a mix between horror and surprise.  


Yet still after 5 months I haven't got the hang of it.  Oh well.

Nice things about Brazilians

I'm making this list to balance out my bitching....and because everything here is true.

1. They smile a lot.  When someone catches your eye on the bus by mistake they don't scowl, they smile at you.  When you buy something from a lanchonete/shop/supermarket and say "obrigada" ("thank you") they respond "de nada" ("you're welcome") and smile at you.  When you're squashed into a metro train like a sardine at rush hour, people catch each other's eyes and smile as if to say "funny, isn't it?"  Here if someone you don't know smiles at you, they're simply being friendly - which is what Brazilians do best.  Additionally, they have very broad & genuine smiles that takes over their whole face.  I've never seen a fake smile here, which I'm used to seeing frequently in London.

2. They live for the moment.  The French have a term for it ("joie de vivre") but the Brazilians are the ones who really have it.  One Brazilian I know summed this up rather well: "We all have problems: I have problems, you have problems, everyone has problems.  But, today is Sunday; let's worry about our problems tomorrow, eh?"

3. They don't sweat the small stuff.  Situation: someone slams into you quite hard by accident walking the opposite way in an underground station - what do you do? A) scream "FOR F*** SAKE, WATCH WHERE YOU'RE F***ING GOING YOU F***ING C***", or B) ignore it and keep walking.  Brazilians choose option B.  Little things that would drive any european into an indignant rage just don't bother Brazilians. Examples: someone else's dog barking and lunging at you as you walk past, someone opening the window on the bus when you're sitting right under it and it's pissing down with rain outside, queuing for ages at the supermarket, queuing for ages at the bank, people being a rude and condescending, people speaking loudly on their mobiles on public transport, people playing music too loudly on their headphones (also on public transport).  Brazilians don't get wound up about this stuff.  I think this is part of the reason why Italians and Brazilians don't mix well (although they are both equally emotional): Italians get wound up about everything and Brazilians just don't.

The Help

Yeah, I know there's a film out at the moment with the same name.  I haven't seen it yet, but from what I gather it is somewhat related to the content of this blog entry.  Whatevs.

Incase you didn't know already, I am working as an English Teacher here in Brazil.  It's really hard to classify people into 'classes' in Brazil, since the gap between the rich and the poor is a massive gaping canyon, and classifying people is never a good idea.  What you need to know for the purposes of this blog is that Sao Paulo is the economic hub of Brazil (and South America in general, for that matter).  There are a lot of wealthy, rich people living in this city and they live very well.

However, you don't need to be a multi-millionaire to have help around the house.  We live in a one bedroom apartment and we have a maid come once a week to completely blitz the place, wash our bedclothes and defrost the fridge/freezer when it needs it.  In London I would never have been so extravagant.  I would have done the bloody cleaning myself, it's only a one bedroom flat for chrissakes.  Here, having a maid is not considered an extravagance - some people consider it a necessity.

I have mentioned before how labour is cheap in Brazil.  For most people here who are what I would normally categorize as middle-class in England, it is very normal to have a maid clean your house.  Most of the students whose homes I teach in have a maid (or two) who comes in every day.  I've been to a couple of homes that have a live-in maid.  When I tell them I have a maid that comes in once a week, my students often ask me: "What do you do the rest of the week? Once a week isn't enough!" The general consensus is that I should have a maid clean the flat twice a week.

The first apartment I stayed in did have a maid twice a week & apart from cleaning, she cooked rice, beans and some Bahian (as in, from Bahia - a state in the North East of Brazil) specialties once a week for the owner of the apartment.

A lot of larger houses and apartments were (and many still are) built with a maid's bedroom near the kitchen & service area, hidden away from the rest of the home.

It's all a bit Ancient Rome/Pre-war England, really.  A significant amount of people in this city spend their lives having everything done for them: dry-cleaning, laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping - the list is endless.

However, as a student said to me last week (she employs two maids at her house), this state of affairs cannot go on forever.  The Brazilian economy is experiencing a massive boom on a scale never known before.  Brazilians have never had this much money or opportunity.  The army of maids, valet parking attendants, cashiers, doormen etc will not want to be doing these jobs forever.  As the price of living increases in Brazil, they will demand higher wages (as they should: they are usually paid minimum wage, about £250 per month), they will (hopefully) receive a better education, they will have higher expectations of their lives - basically the whole hiring of 'help' will become something less and less accessible.

It's very interesting to be living in a country that appears to be right in the middle of a modern Industrial Revolution.  They might even end up having an actual revolution.  Errr....come to think of it: I hope not, that would be quite scary.