Today we went to a favela in a part of São Paulo called Brasilandia. For those of you who don’t know, a favela is equivalent to “the ghetto” in the United States. São Paulo is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, so you can imagine how nervous we were to be going. The reason for our visit was to explore a local NGO as part of our Government and Civil Society course, and the NGO we decided to visit was called Criança Esperança. Basically, this organization provides a safe setting where children from ages 8 to 20 can participate in extracurricular activities while learning critical social skills. Some of the activities include soccer, capoeria, dance and music classes, and graffiti lessons. I found it very interesting that graffiti is promoted as a type of art rather than a form of vandalism. I guess they would rather have their vandalism looking pretty than just a bunch of cuss words. I really enjoyed this field trip because we have a lot of theoretical discussions in class, so it was finally nice to see civil society in action.
After our visit to Brasilandia, I hurried back to FGV to get ready for our first volleyball match of the season. I was really excited because I actually got to start, but the downside to this was that I was playing middle blocker. Haha. For those of you who know anything about volleyball, you know that middle blockers are generally the tallest players on the team, and for men’s volleyball that means you are usually taller than 6’4’’. Along with being too short, I also had never played middle blocker even in practice, so I am sure it was quite amusing watching me and my gringo self trying to figure out this position and rotation.
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