graffite. (grah-fee-chee)

yeah we are representing "power" or "resistance" ..not really sure! haha

Meet Carbonel!
He is our internship contact at CCJ. He works with a media project that does photography, videography, to raise awareness. He is also a master at graffiti & today he taught us how to do it! haha! Look out provo, I'm going to be bringing some brazilian graffiti skills home! Yesterday, Vanessa gave him some gifts from BYU & he loved it. He put his shirt on right then so we took a picture cause we were kinda matching. We also learned that the word "cougar" comes from Portuguese. (Even though there is no such thing as a mountain lion in brazil..I think)


Here are some examples of their work:

I love photography like this-realism. It tells a story of peoples battles. 

Anyways, today we had a chance to paint the room & then practice our graffiti skills.  I think we were all pretty much in shock when we were told to just start painting the walls in the room!  It was pretty tough because we had NO idea what to draw- practically none of us are artists and we were asked to paint ON THEIR WALLS! I kept thinking (I hope they paint over this after we're done) but I'm thinking they are planning on keeping it there.. Anyways, we had to paint something that represented us in recife? Well Doug had the great idea of doing a running man so he posed and we started painting and then I asked the question "What is he running to? Is he running away from something? He has to be running towards something or else this makes no sense at all!" So we stood their dumbfounded a few minutes before deciding exactly what our message was going to be. Well.. we turned our running man into a track runner with a baton. So part of our picture is a man passing off the baton to this man, and basically its showing one person passing on his knowledge to the next, and taking what he knows in order to share and give to the next person so that he can do the same thing. Pretty soon after he takes what he knows and "runs with it" he will also pass it along. Pretty good right? Yeah, I was impressed.

Pra frente Recife means- move forward recife.

Here is a picture of Carbonel in front of his own work:

At least here in Recife,  Graffiti is a way to really express yourself.  It is considered a real artform, and not in the way that people view it in the US. That is kind of a shock to me to look at graffiti in a different light-as a way to express yourself and not something that is seen as vandalism. A lot of times their messages are really powerful.  The other day, we watched a video documentary called "I am from Bahia" and there was a graffiti artist who talked about his art. Many times he painted a cow, because cows are only meant for one thing-to feed. Cows live and they die with only one purpose and that is to feed others. He said that is how it feels sometimes to be a baiano.

Other updates from our Study Abroad
-One of my favorite parts about being here is listening to Vanessas lectures. I am not kidding! They are so fascinating & I learn SO much about history & also new vocabulary. Today we watched a video about the people that live in the Sertao (dry lands-which is currently in their worst drought in 30 years) & about the lives of the people there. Vanessa told us all about how the people in the Sertao and how they are a mix of indian, black and white and brazil considered them an impure race (the ideas related to darwinism) so they figured if they ignored them, & didn't help them or support them, then in 4 generations their race would die off..because white was considered the pure race. Well obviously it didn't work out like that..so the people of the dry lands have been these people who were kicked to the side, ignored, left out to die in the desert for being impure & so they have tried to create a name for themselves. Living in such a dry desert is a hard way of life (imagine death valley of california) but they have tried to overcome their obstacles by their faith & through music.

-Every night my host mom makes the most extravagant beautiful meals! She even goes out of her way to make us a nice breakfast every morning. They are leaving in 6 days and I'm dreading them leaving! I can't live off of PB&J like the rest of these boys. I don't even like PB! HAHA

-I started officially getting eaten by the mosquitos. I started using deet yesterday & so far so good.

-I started creating two videos of our recife trip-one that is mostly clips of jordan and I (go figure!) and one of our group so that they also have a cool video to remember themselves by. So I have gotten a little video camera crazy these days & have limited the photo taking but I have 2 cool videos so far. I figure if I work on it a little each day, by our goodbye party it will be awesome! Yippee!

-We were invited to a candomble party which is really huge here in the northeast. Candomble is a religion from Africa where they call spirits into their body and fall into a trance, they also make different offerings & sacrifices & there is a lot of music involved as well. We learned about the various religions like this such as black magic, white magic, voodoo stuff etc in my Portuguese 355 class. Well, this stuff is real and practiced in Brazil. Although it is interesting to learn about these various aspects of religion in brazil, we will not be attending.

ohh & I forgot to add- we will be going to the sertao in a few weeks! I am actually really excited & I know you are all thinking "who cares about going to the desert?" but this is probably going to be the biggest eye opener of my trip, seeing people in these kind of conditions than anywhere else..We are going to the favela tomorrow so maybe it will be worse there. I don't know. But I am still excited to see the desert in Brazil.

Until next time!