Okay, So I take it back, well sort of. I don’t really care if I don’t have much of a night life while I’m here in salvador, but I wish that was my choice and not because of circumstance. I’m so tired of trying to get back and forth to this house in Paralela. I wish I had just opted for an apartment instead of a homestay, but the homestay sounded nice, they just neglected to tell me it was practically in another city. The taxi home from the pelourinho was hella expensive. The guy originally said 40 reais, but a friend of a friend got it down to 30 reais. It’s still not okay. I’m going to have to eat less (which is turning out not to be an issue really) and use my food money for cab fare so that I can at least enjoy part of my night life here. [AND: as I’m sitting here in an internet cafe writing this, some man sitting beside me is looking at a whole bunch of naked and half-naked pictures of women and other creepy ass fotos—what is my life coming to??]
So I try and tell myself to make the best of this situation, but it’s not helped by the lack of any central bus info (as is the situation in most of brazil), or by the fact that no one really knows the buses all that well that I know. It took me an hour and a half to get into the city today—pretty shitty. And I was almost late for class last night because I took the bus that took the most indirect route possible to get to a certain place and then ended up running to class to get there on time (which was all pointless since no one got there on time).
So now as far as my eating situation goes, it’s pretty bad. They give us this nearly 1200 reais stipend for three weeks: 400 for living and 300 should go to food. When I got to my house she said she doesn’t cook, so I can eat out or buy groceries to cook myself. Cool, 300 reais get to stay in my pocket to be budgeted as I would like. Only not cool. There’s no real grocery store nearby, and I spend all of my time OUT of the house trying to get to where I need to be in the city, and stay there all day, so buying groceries and cooking is pointless. AND eating out is becoming a struggle because I end up being told to go here and there and not knowing how to get here and there and so miss meals because of this. Let’s examine what I’ve eaten this week: Monday-juice and a hamburger, Tuesday-mango juice, caja juice, a bowl of açai, and an acaraje (the first solid thing of the day), Wed-a cup of yogurt and granola, ramen noodles, a cup of juice, and more yogurt and granola for dinner, Today-yogurt (no granola), cup of juice, and a hamburger (which I could barely finish)***
***Now that’s the key part of this. The first really thing I’ve eaten today that wasn’t fluid, mind you I’m still dehydrated too, I need to go buy some water, I couldn’t finish it. So clearly, my stomach is shrinking in addition to training capoeira and working myself out from just walking around bahia/being lost in bahia. I couldn’t finish a simple hamburger. Well at least something good may come out of it—I may lose some weight finally if I just stick to an all juice diet with maybe one solid thing each day. I mean the juice is good—it’s real fruit blended with water and maybe if I opt for no sugar it’ll be even healthier. What do you think?
Pictures from Dia da Consciência Negra:
like black butterflies 