November is a hard month for me, It is filled with so many things I love about Wisconsin/home. Halloween traditions, my birthday, elections, Thanksgiving, the colors of the trees, the first snowfall of the year, warm clothing, mulled wine, snuggling under a comforter with coffee in one hand, the other arm around the shoulders of another person. Ok, I'm super emotional, I get it.....I grew up with 4 sisters....
Starting with almost November, Halloween always hits a soft spot for me. Something about not participating in American traditions that you do every year is kinda hard to look past. Some of my best memories of autumn involve carving pumpkins. Unfortunately the pumpkins here are very small and very hard. Imagine carving a coconut or something of that size and density of shell. Well in any event, I woke on the 30th of October and the first thing on my mini-feed was a post from my American exchange student friends from Colorado, Kimi, who was also feeling the homesickness of Halloween, and asked if anyone would be interested in having a tropical Halloween and carve WATERMELONS with her. Without hesitation, I replied yes, I will pick up the watermelons and meet you at your place tonight. Needless to say, she was more than thrilled to have company in this very "Americans-in-Brazil"endeavor. I arrived with the watermelons, she had already made pumpkin-chocolate-chip cookies, and we got going. As we were taking out the watermelon guts, and stuffing our face with them, I said I was probably just gonna make a face like I do every year. Kimi, who won a pumpkin-carving competition last year for carving a monster from "Where the Wild Things Are," basically fainted at the idea of "just making a face." She had planned on making a face too, but had already picked out the design for the face of Obama. She is serious. In any event, I ended up making a sun, and I think it turned out pretty cool! She tried making an elephant face, but something went wrong so she went around the whole watermelon, making cool designs and called it "acid-trip." It was such a small gesture, for her to invite me to carve watermelons with her, but it was EXACTLY the night I needed to kill a little bit of homesickness. I am very thankful for that. Here is my watermelon.....
A week later I turned 21.............
I woke up on my birthday feeling like a million bucks. My b-day was on a Wednesday, the first full day of Obama's second term, the first full day of Tammy Baldwin celebrating being the first open LGBTQ representative in senate. Needless to say, I was gleaming. I could have been mistaken for a 6ft tall, 170 lb, blonde fluorescent lightbulb. Went to the gym, then ate lunch with Luan at UFMG, went to classes where my classmates sang Happy birthday for me in Portuguese. These are the lyrics:
"Parabéns pra você!
Nesta data querida
Muitas felicidades ROBERTTTTTTTT
Muitos anos de vida!"
And after classes.....well.....I DID turn 21......and I don't care that I'm in a country where the drinking age is 18 (AKA the rest of the mother effing world)....I DRANK. Gasp. Quite a bit actually. Well enough that I didn't remember the pasta that I made when I got home from the bar. But I won't go into the nitty gritty details....I think my grandmother reads this blog.
On the weekend, I was planning a small get together with my closest friends to drink and dance, but little did I know that my roommates had something much better in store for me. 4 in the afternoon rolls around and my roommate, Jefferson, ORDERS me to go to my room and says that I can't exit until he says I can. So, I decided to take a nap, woke up an hour later, still couldn't exit. Around 8 pm I was getting pretty restless and hungry, and was expecting people to show up. Then, all of a sudden, I could hear music BLASTING from the common area of our house, and laughter of familiar voices. FINALLY, around 9:30 pm, Victor, my other housemate, orders me to count to 5 and enter the living room. I go in, turn on the light, and all my roommates are standing there, in a room completely decked out in Red, White, and Blue balloons, candies, cakes, brownies, and brigadeiros and everyone starts singing happy birthday. It was honestly such a beautiful moment. Then they gave me my present, which truly captured the spirit of a 21st birthday. It was a roulette game.....of alcoholic shots. Gosh, they know me so well! Afterwards, my friends started to arrive and the party began to take flight. The music was perfect, I danced allllll night, we had flour fights, we hugged, we kissed, it was such a great night. And it was equally as fun to clean up the next day! (not). Here are a few pics from the party:
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| My roommates and I |
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| Drinking Roulette |
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| Flour Balloon attack |
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| Dancing Forro with Maria |
If you have made it this far in my post, congratulations. A million and one things have happened since my last blog post....but these things are much too personal for a blog post.....(GASP! what could this huge news be!?!). Needless to say, I don't know what the expression actually means, but I am frickin' happy as a clam. In portuguese, one would say, "estou apaixonado." Look it up.
Quando Eu Fui Chuva. When I was Rain - Follow this link and listen, this song is beautiful and the lyrics are perfect. I listened to it about 9 million times since I heard for the first time.
Nostalgia and homesickness: Conquered. Until next time my loves!!! Miss you all so much!
-Ardge
Nostalgia and homesickness: Conquered. Until next time my loves!!! Miss you all so much!
-Ardge
