Chegamos! We arrived!

Woah, don’t let anyone fool you that its just a hop and a skip from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. We left at 2:00 EST and arrived at 4:30 p.m. EST! Long day of travel for all of us.

We’ve already racked up a few firsts for the group:

1. Mini pão de queijo bowls (thumbs up from everyone) 
2. Havaiana flip-flops duly equipped by everyone (thumbs up again) 
3. Acarajé da Dinha - the famous bean fritter in Rio Vermelho
4. Veveta! Famous singer/entertainer/queen of Brazil Ivete Sangalo held her own Carnaval de rua fora de época. We caught a bit of the festivities! 

That’s a lot to take in for day one!

E lá vamos nós!

And just like that, we're off!

The first week of short term flew by with intensive sessions in the classroom to prepare for our trip. We looked at foundational texts on the construction of race, gender, and sexuality within Brazil, asking questions like "what makes one Brazilian, afinal das contas?"; "how have the land and peoples of Brazil been sexualized, racialized, and gendered over the years?" We also worked through classics like Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in 20th Century Brazil (Green 1999) and Travesti (Kulick 1998). These texts were complemented with nightly screenings of Orfeu Negro (Camus 1959), Madame Satã (Aïnouz 2002), São Paulo em Hi-Fi (Steffen 2016), and Bombadeira (Carlos de Alencar 2007).

Next up, a long red eye flight to Guarulhos International Airport and an afternoon flight to Salvador da Bahia!