Global Girl

Simonal- Ninguem sabe o duro que dei – Directed by Claudio Manoel, Calvito Leal, e Micael Langer (2009)

Watch the trailer here!

Yesterday night I went to enjoy a Saturday night date movie with Leandro at the Unibanco Arteplex, one of the two artsy cinemas in Botafogo. (The other being Estação Botafogo). We went to see the movie Simonal: Ninguem sabe o duro que dei. Wilson Simonal was a great Brazilian entertainer and singer during 1950s and 1960s. The story of Wilson Simonal not only gives a feeling of Brazil in the 50s and 60s during the height of his career, but also depicts the sharp dichotomy brought about by the military dictatorship in 64, and especially in the 1970s. The film sheds a unique light on Brazil’s military dictatorship while simultaneously revealing the great entertainer that Simonal was.

Simonal was a mega-star not only in Brazil but also internationally. He had the opportunity to sing duet with Sarah Vaughn. He illuminated his audiences singing songs that people could enjoy and dance to in his shows and in the clubs. Simonal physically involved the audience making them feel as if they were crucial part in his shows, even treating a full house at the Maracanazinho (15,000-30,000 depending on who’s telling the story) as if it was a small live audience for a television show.

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This book is pretty funny, and I would recommend it for a few laughs after being in Rio. Be catious about using it as a guide, as you might end up just making a fool of yourself.

For someone who would like to believe that there is such a thing as a global citizen, feeling like a gringo really puts a down on one’s day. A pet peeve of mine is to feel like a tourist, and I believe that other tourists probably would agree with me on that one. I hope this post doesn’t seem superficial, but feeling like a foreigner when you are in a foreign country is something that happens to all of us, and we all have our ways of dealing with it. Many turn to subconsciously playing the game of the unspoken contest of who is less gringo, and I can admit that sometimes I’m guilty of this too.

This post is just for fun and to release some rather superficial but annoying feelings that I have bottled up because of my shame for having this itch of hating to be a gringa. But I believe that other people also feel this way sometimes, and so I am going to go ahead and get the discussion out in the open so we as gringos can accept our eternal gringodom and get on with our lives. Enjoy:

Arriving at the Galeão airport is always an amusement. Brazilians and visitors alike drag themselves off of the plane from a night of cramped sleeping and bad airplane food, (generally dried up gnocchi overcooked chicken and slimy greens). There are some Brazilians returning to their homes with as many bags as they can possibly squeeze onto the little cart, boxes of Johnny Walker black or red, and bags from Disney world. These Brazilians generally seem to be the majority, but this is purely due to the sheer amount of luggage. I would say that generally there are more foreigners coming to take advantage of the beach, caipirinhas, and samba.

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I took Spanish all throughout High School but once they offered a short course in Portuguese and for some reason it sounded interesting and I signed up. A couple of years later, when I came back to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to go back to Tulane, I worked as a bar manager in an Italian restaurant. A large influx of Brazilians mostly coming from Boston had moved into the area because of the new work opportunties. Construction jobs and restaurant jobs were desperately seeking out people who would work. The restaurant where I worked decided to start a visa program bringing Brazilians in for a short period of time to work as cooks in our restaurant. They could speak Spanish much better than English and so I would communicate with them in a Port-espan-glish language. Well within months my Spanish had remarkedly improved. One day I decided that I should take advantage of the opportunity and learn Portuguese. I showed up to work and asked the Brazilians to stop speaking to me in Spanish, only Portuguese.  I took a class at Tulane to improve my grammar. That next summer I decided to do an internship in Rio and really tune up my Portuguese. That was all it took. I was hooked. After three months in Rio, I was already scheming to go back. Although I had already missed all the study abroad deadlines at Tulane, I convinced them to allow me to participate in study abroad. They didn’t have a program in Rio, and so I wrote a persuasive essay explaining why I should be able to study at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro and not another program that Tulane sponsors. I finally convinced them to let me go! Since then I have spent about a year and a half in Brazil. I feel as if I have my own little family there in another culture across the world.