A dream

First let me exclaim and shout from the rooftops that I went back to capoeira last night!!! So happy! These past two weeks have been rough for me - busted knee that prevented me from playing capoeira, the flu that made looking at the sun painful and caused me to be too tired to go anywhere for 2 weekends in a row with headaches that made the idea of playing the drums or going to a show abhorrent, and apt hunting that consumed all of my energy since I was walking an average of 5 miles a day for a full week (on a bum knee) and spending $R 20 a day on phone calls. Anyway, apt hunting + no drumming, no shows (altho I did try to go to one or two that were, of course, cancelled), and no capoeira make me very sad, lonely, cranky and feeling unproductive. Thankfully I am healthy again and today I have maracatu!!!

Anyway, looks like my landlord will give me a huge discount for summer! (as she should). Actually not a discount, more like a lesser increase. So thats not a discount is it? It's a price hike. So I'll just be stuck to deal with construction for awhile. Still, I'd love to have a roommate, and I think I may have identified one, so maybe I'll move anyway soon, but at least I don't HAVE to. And I found housing for carnaval (capoeira school) so I should hopefully have finances to eek that out.

Anyway, I had a dream last night that I think summed up a lot of these sentiments. I dreamt that I was heading to a drum practice, and taking the city elevator up to the historical center, which I do all of the time. Well, this elevator costs 5 Brazilian cents, but now since tourist season was arriving, they raised it to R$ 3, at least for tourists. So here I am trying to explain that I'm NOT a tourist, and that I have a temporary resident visa and a registration and that I live here and they shouldnt be charging me this. So they agree but I need to prove it, altho I'd still have to pay $R 1, so I'm fumbling around for a copy of my passport, and the line is growing (as I'm chastising them for being jerks and causing it to be so) and I can't find it blah blah. My pyschologic interpretation is that I'm getting pissed off with what seems to be really unfair treatment for someone whos been here so long, and also that I WANT to feel like I live here, but even in things that I frequent often or have been a part of for awhile- i.e. capoeira, swing do pelo, or just general citygoing, I still am treated/seen as at least somewhat of an outsider, and am not fully incorporated into life. Which, I guess is how it is. I am going to buy a pair of GingaMundo pants one of these days!

Oh, there's an international film festival going on here, so I caught a Spanish flick with a friend. She's Spanish so I guess she understood, but i was under the impression there would be at least Spanish (if not Portuguese) subtitles, so I thought I'd be ok. WELLLLLL not only was it in Castillian Spanish (I have a hard time understanding the accent), but there were no subtitles, AND there was this wierd acoustic effect of a really bad echo, rendering even the French lines in the film unintelligble for me. (The English ones I got. . I'm not that dumb). It was also a really dialogue heavy movie about, I think, people in an office (for awhile I thought they were STUCK in an office) doing. . something .. i think trying to improve their company. Or maybe it was about a spaceship. You see, I don't actually SPEAK spanish. heh. But it was free, and made even free-er since I walked the mile uphill, and then back to save on bus fare, and I like pretending Ihave friends.

So last week, due to my illness I figured that the only thing I could tolerate would be a film (and not a drumming show with people dancing wildly, where i would be enticed to dance wildly despite my knee, resulting in certain further injury). So I went to what I THOUGHT was a French film. When I got in there I was shocked to realize that my French had gotten SO bad that the language sounded like indiscernable mush. Then I finally realized it was Dutch (it was a film from Holland, or maybe Belgium, but it was in the French Alliance). It was the Dutch version of Set it Off, with 4 female friends becoming bank robbers due to financial issues. Both even featured a bank robberette falling for a cop. In both, 1 friend got away scott free, but in the Dutch version the other 3 got like 4 years in jail, and the escaped friend got to keep the money and move to the US, whereas in Set it Off the other 3 were killed, and Jada Pinkett-Smith had to move and change her identity. It's because they were BLACK! Kidding, I dunno. The Dutch version was also a comedy, so I guess you can't have the protagonists dying. It also was lacking the amazing soundtrack of Set it Off, but Brandy, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan and Tamia don't get together for just anyone. Actually, now, they are all washed up hasbeens, so they just might. (Didn't Brandy kill someone recently? Accidentally of course, unfortunate for everyone, but she's having legal issues with that right now)

Wait this is a blog about Brazil.. sorry!

Yesterday I tried to go to a French convo session, which I thought was open to the public, but I got tossed at the door - apparently just for students. Jerks. Now I'm torturing my Francophone friends with my French until I get my fluency back. (Thanks guys!) I need to hit the Portuguese books too, but my French studies have YEARS on my Portuguese studies. Saturday I'm going to a play, we'll see how much I understand. I think it's a kids play tho, so hopefully it'll be only SLIGHTLY above my level. . .