"We don't tell prejudice jokes here"

These last few days have been both interesting and very, very busy. Though we weren't doing our research and service learning over the weekend, we still had organized activities. My last entry left off at the beginning of. . .

Dia Cinco (Day 5):
On Saturday afternoon we went to a jacare (caiman) farm nearby and saw all sorts of "wildlife," or rehabilitated wild animals that weren't quite turned back out into the wild but rather were allowed to live as semi-domestic animals on the farm. After briefly exploring the farm's vast array of birds, wild dogs and other animals we grabbed a bucket of cow tongue and went to feed the jacares. We each took turns dangling cow tongue from the end of a stick over the jacares head until they ripped it off. That was an interesting experience. After that we took a sunset horseback ride through a cow grazing area and then snacked on fried gator strips until dinner was ready. After dinner we took a night walk through the woods to look for wild animals. We saw a couple capybaras, a tamandua (a tree climbing animal in the anteater family), a bird that's so good at camoflauge that you can only tell that it's in front of you by the reflection of it's eye, some sleeping fish (who knew that fish sleep?) and a frog. We returned to the ranch for some maite before heading back to the hotel.

Dia Seis (Day 6):
We got up early Sunday morning and went to a nearby town to a farm with several waterfalls on the property. As soon as we pulled in we saw a family of monkeys hanging out in front of our van. We then took a brief tour of the various waterfalls before jumping into the river. Several of us decided to play in one of the waterfalls and allow it to push us downstream, and slid down the river as though it were a waterslide. Things turned a little scary, however, when we attempted to walk across the rocks in front of the waterfall and I lost my footing and fell between two rocks. I was under the water for a while and took in a lot of water. So, that was a little scary. I was pretty shaken up about it, so I didn't go back in the water for the rest of that day. My muscles seized up as I was fighting my way back to the surface, so I was also pretty shaky for the rest of the day from that. But, after lunch on the patio back at the farm I relaxed in the hammock, went hunting for monkeys (unsuccessfully) and returned back to the hotel.

Dia Sete a Dia Nove (Days 7-9):
These days blur together somewhat. But, on Monday we returned back to our sites. On Monday I worked with several teachers and the same group of students. We learned
geographia, historia, and matematicas. The most interesting observation I made that day was in history class when the teacher was discussing World War II and the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was interesting to hear an unbiased view of America's role in the war and slightly embarrassing at the same time, knowing that I was there representing the country that cost so many people their lives for generations to come. After that we worked tirelessly into the night on our unobtrusive observations and mapping exercises of Miranda.

On Tuesday (Dia Oite) I had a wonderful experience at the school. I met Zeni, the Portugese and English teacher who I'm supposedly going to be working with for the rest of the time that I'm at the school. She immediately seemed excited to have me there to help her with her English, especially her pronounciation. At some point she stepped out of the classroom and I had the attention of the kids for myself. I told them that if they helped me to learn Portuguese I would help them learn some words in English. Suddenly the air in the room felt lighter. The kids stopped giggling at me and my poor Portugese and we began exchanging words in Portugese and English. They invited me to sit with them at recess and we spent much of the day talking in Portugese and English. I gained so much ground that I decided to capitalize on the momentum and do my free listing experiment the next day.

Wednesday, however, all momentum seemed to be lost. The teacher suddenly seemed as though she didn't want me there at all. The kids were just as excited to learn as they were the day before, but the teacher kept putting off having me in her classroom. The only difference between the two days is that on Wednesday I had a grad student from Campo Grande with me who teaches Terena teachers how to teach English. Our theory is that she was afraid that he was a spy sent to make sure that she is teaching English correctly, because she doesn't seem to know too much English. So, a different teacher took me around to some classes and helped administer the free lists. This went awful, because the idea is to see which animals the kids think up first on their own, but the teacher suggested certain animals to them, and this could have interfered with our results. So, even though I got 30-40 pieces of data I still need more to try to correct for this. I was super frustrated about all of it yesterday, but today I have more perspective. That's just one of the pitfalls of scientific research.

Dia Dez (Day 10)
This day is technically still in progress, but so far the day is going pretty good. Today is Corpus Christi, so businesses are all shut down and the streets are filled with decorations made from rice, maite, cedar chips, bottle caps and other natural and recycled items. We didn't go to our sites today as a result, so we have been able to have our first real leisure day since we left Florida. Some of us helped to decorate the streets. We also walked through the streets looking at the artwork and found a really great family-style restaurant with delicious food and sat, talked, ate and most importantly laughed for nearly two hours.

And I conclude with a joke by our friend Diego from the universidade:
"A prejudice joke walks into a bar and says, 'bartender give me a cerveja.' The bartender says, 'I'm sorry we don't tell prejudice jokes here'". . . I guess you would have had to be there.