and, finally... A NEW POST!

Yay! I'm not dead!

Don't give up about looking up this blog just because I don't update it on time... just... remember that I'm Brazilian! lol

I'll start with my first appearance on YOUTUBE!!

I made a deal with my chemistry teacher, now we are going to have Chemistry Specials! Take a look!



OK, we are kinda leaving winter now (not exactly yet). So right now is 78F....
The problem is... RIGHT NOW IS 10P.M.!!! I'm melting here on my Ohio State shorts! Come on! It's winter! (yeah, I do miss snow and good, normal, cold weather).




Got Banana?

That's a result of me and my brother watching TV... About 17 dead bananas...
We eat a lot of fruit. In Brazil we have a lot in common to Europeans. (LOTS OF) fruits, fresh bread bought every day with fresh sliced cheese, ham, bologna (ours is better than there... an invitation to the bologna lovers). Here in my house we always have banana, apple, orange, mandarin oranges (mexerica, try to say that!), mango and then sometimes cashew apple (yeah! there is a cashew apple! - it doesn't taste like apple, we call it fruit, but...), papaya, strawberry, kiwi, pineapple... and so on...



ok, now I'm impressed... There's this whole freakin' huge website about Cashew! Wow... And they say it's native from Brazil. If you have like 185 minutes totally free, it's (not exactly) worth reading:
http://www.fao.org/AG/ags/agsi/Cashew/Cashew.htm



Do you remember my cat destroyed my keyboard some posts ago? well... he loved this computer...

Ok, now, what about some chemistry and... HOT DOGS!



Yeah! Our chemistry project: colored hot dogs!





I loved this one:





We made this next one to look like rotten... and it did in the end!







That's our recycling program in our school. We started like 7 years ago:



It's still there!
I studied in this school from my 4th till my 8th grade. That doesn't mean in US as much it does in Brazil. Here because we have a bunch of different schools. First because we have more people in my city. But also because the study is private and non-religious, so it's pretty common to study in different schools.
I had 6 different schools, plus LHS.

OK, I have to ask... Who are you pegleg?? I've been thinking about that for days, weeks, months, years! I just don't know!
This week I have had some homesick nights... It's awesome. Like, staying awake for a long time, thinking in two languages at the same time and then when you wake up next day it's like you've been hit by a truck....
Yeah, I miss America... But I just can't see in front of me those candies anymore! lol... (did you know I took back with me 22 pounds of pure candy?!?

I saw on the news here: Brazil sells 115 millions of nail varnish (is that right? Or nail colour?) and US 81 millions a year! And Brazil is in the top of the vain people (or conceited? My English is getting rusty...).

Alright. Now, for a good end:



cyall.
Gabe.

Kinda random stuff

Hi folks!

Just to keep talking about dad, Todd (2nd generation dad) is also a chocolate powder!



Toddy! Tastes really good.
We use to drink it a lot (milk here tastes better. And, yes, it is pasteurized)

Actually, milk here lasts for 3 months and 10 days without refrigeration. It's not because of conservatives, just this special 1-liter box on the top (that "Tirol" thing).

Yeah, spider man!



Just kidding. I am already learning new stuff on Kung Fu (finally, results! And exercises!). That's a one hand handstand.

And today I did my first Kung Fu presentation. It was small, I just performed Tai Chi Chuan:



(sorry, I don't have pics yet so I stole this one from another website. Thank you another website).
These are "slow motioned" movements.



I took this picture to show how cigarettes are sold here. By law, on the whole back of the match, it has to have this Health Ministry's message talking about what it can do for you. It has some worse ones, but I found those on the sidewalk. The first one is about kids that live with smokers, second about sexual impotence and third about getting your teeth all yucky.

OK, I hate cigarettes. I was amazed how many young people smoke over there. But I don't want to start on that... (please, no retaliating comments. I know problems there and problems here)

Now... DAVE!



Dave Bailey! Were you on Oprah and didn't tell us? lol
Well, that's GNT Brazil Channel. It's Oprah with subtitles!



I'm sorry, I don't like Oprah... I don't watch TV at all actually.

Now, the cat picture of the week!



That's my brother Gustavo and his love Livia.

Oh, and a mistake I committed over there. I had no idea why in English Brasil is spelled as Brazil with "z".

Now I kinda have a clue. (let's go to some history)
Brazil, like US, was a colony (but from Portugal, not England). Then we got our independence and then, we formed a Republic. I don't know why, sometime when we were a Republic, they have changed our name to Brazil! Look:



This is a silver coin from 1913 written "Republic of the United States of Brazil" with Z! (how did I get the coin? My friend Flavio collects it... thanks to eBay!)

So, maybe, they included in English this way of spelling and was like this after that, even though we changed back again (confused Brazilians...)

Ok, enough thinking for a Saturday.

Next week on Saturday I have the first level of the Brazilian Academic Olympics of Physics. It is 3 levels... I don't know if I'm going to get something this year but... I hope so. I heard that good students go to Paris, lol.

Alright. I know I'm not answering anybody anywhere. But, well, that's me. The only thing I can keep really well is letters! I love letters.

By the way, I never gave my address here:

Rua Ernesto Pincinato, 536
Quinta das Videiras
Jundiai, SP 13211-660
Brazil

Just throw it in front of the envelope. 14 days coming + 3 days writing an answer + 14 days going back = 31 days. I love old fashioned styled things... And everybody over there called me slow.

Ok, goin' to bed.
Drive safe.
cyall,
Gabe.

FELIZ DIA DOS PAIS!

YAY! It's father's day!
So, I'm just going to put a special post for my dads:



left to right: Todd (2nd generation dad), Elizabeth (2nd generation mom), Vivian (lovely and only sista!), a Brazilian guy, Dorival (1st generation dad), Judy (3rd generation mom) and Steve (3rd Generation dad).



That was today. Me, dad, Guilherme and Gustavo, my brothers.



We gave my dad a book and this Bonsai. It's a small Japanese plant, really cool.

So thank all my dads for putting me on this world (or at least putting me on US!)




cyall
Gabe.

School's on!

A brazilian thumbs-upped hi!
(Those are my bass-player friends, Heider and... well... Bass-player)

First of all, sorry about the blog's off-time. I forgot to pay my domain (www.usaexchange.us) so they canceled it, both blog and e-mail. Now, if you can read this message, everything is alright!



A nice 7a.m. picture on my way to school. That's to show our winter (and a Lions' monument). Right now I'm wearing my BUCKEYES shorts and a T-shit - by the way, no air conditioners, just opened windows. Just have to pay attention if any monkey get in.

My new school uses a pretty cool educational system. It's the best I've ever seen (we do have some crappy ones here, but not this one).

We don't have those yellow, unconfortables - but free - School Buses (sorry, I hated those things). So we usually pay for private transportation, like this:



That's mine, the basic. The one below is fancier:



"Escolar" means "related to school" (like scholarship)

This is my classroom:



Differences you can see here: no obligated desk arrangement, no fixed desk-chairs, no teacher's customized room or cool - depends on the teacher, boring - posters (they change among classes and we stay there), bags everywhere (we don't have this school-terrorism concept), windows that can really be opened and opened door right over winter, no TV, computer or any technology and right outside the door you can see some plants (going up there we have a small vegetable garden project going on).

Other differences:
-Scores goes from 0.0 to 10.0. The effort here to get an 8.0 is the same as to get an A there, so no 10.0 students like the As students there.
-We have Philosophy.
-No picking classes. They give the classroom (mine is Third A) the schedule and it's the same to everyone because you don't change classrooms (so it's easier to get closer friends).
-No cool classes like wood/metal-work, french and some other ones, neither dumb classes...
-In Phys. Ed. we play... SOCCER! (Ok, sometimes volleyball, basketball and handball).
-No detention.
-No big drama plays :( - that means, no money for it.
-No teachers asking "Who's AC/DC's lead guitarist?"
-No cool crazy parties
-It's harder to skip classes
-No school lunch (THANKS!)
-School 'till 12:35 p.m.
-And... my English teacher has a British accent! (argh...) And his English is pretty good by the way...

Ok, let's eat now!



43 bananas of 3 or 4 kinds and 7 apples! (yeah, I spent some time counting... now you count and see if it's right!)
That lasted for a few days (like 3 or 4) here at my house. Yeah, we do eat more fruits.
And every day we have fresh bread, cheese, ham (fresh sliced, not packed).
Oh, and here we say that hot-dogs are made of recycled newspaper... and we still like'em! But American ketchup is better. And we also call it ketchup but nobody knows how to spell it, so it ended up being "catchup".
And it's really hard to trash food here. Like reusing food (like make cake or pudding from old bread), using to feed the dogs or even to feed teenagers (that's the most efficient one) is pretty common.



Random pic.



yay Rotary!



McDonnalds! (it's kinda bad pic, but you can see the "M" flag and the brazilian flag.

That's it by today.

It's 12:16 a.m. and I have school tomorrow morning (starts at 7 a.m.). Then I have Kung Fu from 1:30pm to 3pm, then Kung Fu from 6:30pm to 9pm. Then I'm in bed!
It's really hot in here.



That's my Kung Fu mattes.
We have a contest this weekend. And in a few months it's gonna happen in China the World contest, one of our girls is going! (actually, we hope so. We're not finding sponsors and it's 7000 reais - US$3,500.00 dollars. So if you know of anyone wanting to sponsor it, any help is useful, just email me). Then, after the world one, they'll get the best ones to go to the Olympic Games! Chine will include in 2010 Kung Fu as a new sport over there!

I heard about a heat wave over there and people dieing, is everything ok?
We also got about the bridge over Mississippi.

Ok, now about comments. First of all, thanks for everybody reading here!
Judy, I tried to call you today... How was talking to my brother? And I have just the no-bake cookies recipe, but I got them wrong (but still, people here loved it!) I'll try it again later.
Ryan, well, we have that one golf ball... we just need clubs... you know... here they are expensive... (cough, cough...) lol. Say bonjour to Vanessa.
Kim, yeah, because of what you guys said I'm trying to put some different things over here. But the guy from Denmark actually got a picture of a 2 ft monkey over my high school! I'll try to get one too just for you!
Sarah, I brought your books here! lol. It's right there with the other ones I didn't read!
Lyssa! Someday I'll answer your MySpace messages! I swear! (I miss your mom's food...)
Pegleg, Ok, sorry... Pegleg? Who is it? Thank's for the recipe anyway! lol
Eddie, I hope you like this book! And, you know... I really miss a corvette.... like a black one, you know... jk. Is your husband back home?
Debbie, Yeah, I have been Americanized.... and that's because I had a good time over there. I miss you (and your food). Thanks for going to the airport.
Jen, The messages you missed (after your connection got bad): (a long distance hug!) / I miss you too / I still have your pic on my desk here.

ok, good night everybody.
cya.
Gabe.

First decent post!

Hi guys!

I just realized I can put a title up there.

To night I was talkin' too my parents (the Brazilian ones) 'bout colege. I've to study English too get an best ACT/SAT score and aint do no mistake too get my scholarship over theire (OU Bobcats!). Whell, its goin' be hard, butt writin's a goood way too keep up the language, so...


I'll try to not post so many food pictures... I'll try. But here are some:

American pancake in Brazilian kitchen!

Some people didn't like it (way too sweet). And some others (like me) loved! Yeah... I'll miss syrup.

Better than pancake is waffle, but I wont buy the iron. You can get it here for 40 bucks. But I don't understand, why get a waffle iron if you don't have the maple syrup...?

Today I tried to bake no-bake cookies. It didn't work, but it tasted good! But I wasted some peanut butter... my precious... I get it right next time.






A good, old fashion style barbecue. Good meat, good grill, good season, and no barbecue sauces.

I heard that I don't talk too much about people, just food and cats. We had last Saturday a family reunion kinda.



That's big part of my family. Left to right: Guilherme (brother), Gabe, Reginaldo, Nenê, Nair, Renata, Janete (mom!), Dolores, ? (the little one, was born while I was out), Dorival (dad!), Débora, Ronaldo, Nilza, Simone, Lorena and Melissa.



I showed my trip to New York City. I'm still counting, but I think I have about 35,000 pictures from my year in US.
And, yeah, that's a plasma TV. It works with electricity and there's no monkeys involved. And, yeah, it's probably assembled in China (that may be the most international thing we share).


And I also got to play some Dulcimer. I'm far from good, but still trying.

Dulcimer is a American instrument (I brought from there), even though a lot of Americans do not know what is it.

Comes from the Latin "Dulce" (or Portuguese "doce") that can be candy or sweet...
Sweet sound.




Come on, I had to have a cat here.

I have 5 Brazilian cats (Pepê, Toco, Lívia, Romeu and Gato or Little Joe) and 2 Brazilian dogs (Drica and Lola), all tike (or tyke? Idk. Like no race).
Then 2 American dogs (Dallas and Sammy) and 3 American cats (Sheba, Teco and Ninha).

And now we are getting the coldest days in the coldest winter on the last 16 years! We reached 48 degrees Fahrenheit already! It's freezing!



Talking about cats, a few hours ago Toco went to sleep over my laptop's keyboard... That is how it was. We almost lost some pieces but now it's all right. But it wasn't a problem. I just had to contact Dell over the US and ask'em to send my host parents the pieces, then ask'em to send'em to Brazil and then try to put'em together... Really easy...

The next picture is special to Judy. That's my backyard in my new house. We have this 29ft Imperial Palm Tree that reaches 88ft in the end... (no coconuts by the way). And That's Toco watching the sunset.




















Ok, that's a little bit of the life here.

Now I started having my reverse homesickness, which makes me feel that I'm just coming as an American exchange student, putting up with all the weird people and culture. Like a foreign.

Can you imagine looking at your closest friends like you do every day and asking yourself... "Who are they?".

Yeah, and all the people and places that I left there. People I wanted to know better. Girls I wanted to... know better. Cities...
And by the way, Brazilian beer tastes better and American. And by the way... I know because my friend told me, so it must be true...

Well, my school starts August 1st (it was just a month winter break).

I'm still learning some stuff on how to use the blog. But for people that aren't used to it, you can write comments on every post. Here in the bottom you click over "comments" (or "Comentários").

Ok, cyall.
Enjoy your summer.
Gabe.

PS: What's the temperature over there?
PPS: How can I make peanut butter?
PPPS: I think it would cost US$20.00 just to ship peanut butter down here, plus its price.

Hey folks!

Thanks already for the e-mails! (Well Fred, It's sad you don't want to participate in the Green Card project... but that's fine... Have you ever been to San Francisco?)

Today was another lazy day with all these plane crash thing all the time (by now I think a lot of you already heard about it). And I finally finished packing! I put all my ex-24-pound package of candie in a box (now it's probably like 18 pounds, or less - and that includes some tootsiepop leftovers).

And now something about Brazil that can creep some Americans out and make them never come to our country:

Yes, that's pringles. And, yes, it costs R$8.46 (R$ is our money, Real, that is like US$1.90 <-> R$1.00).
This price probably reduce a lot the number of American tourists coming to Brazil, opening a big lack in our economy. Maybe that's what make us an underdeveloped country, who knows?

This one on the top is... PANCAKE! Ok, we call it pancake (panqueca) but it's our version (it has grounded meat inside - we do not have Syrup). It's actually a wrong name for the french crap, I mean, crêpe.

I'll show some other Brazilian food later, like Brigadeiro (no, Brigadeiro is not a cowboy! But it's a nice try). But don't worry, this wont be a food blog.

By the way. THEY LOVED REESE'S CUP! That's terrible! I brought like 2 or 3 packages and they are almost gone! (actually, I hided what's left).
And we just finished the second peanut butter jar. One more to go.... (I got here less than a month ago!)

Does anyone have the homemade peanut butter recipe? I got once from Alyssa but I forgot...

Well, that's all folks! (oh, the Looney Toons say here "É isso aí pessoal!")
Yee-Haw!
Gabe.

Yay! I'm back! No plane crash, no problems (OK, not actually nooo problems, but it's a long - and good - story)

I'm back, and as normal, I didn't call anyone! I'm a terrible contact-keeper (is that a word? Or a kind of carrer?).

I'm sorry if I take 2 weeks to answer an e-mail or even a MySpace comment, that's how my brazilian mind works - really slow.
BUT, I love letters. That I do. And I write long ones.

I've picked this picture to start the blog because that was my Brazil restart. That's the first time this year I've seen my mom and my brothers. That's a good beginnig. (And look at the cowboy hat! Yeeehaaa!*)

It's 1 a.m. here in the land of Brigadeiro so I wont write too much in this post. Actually, this is a kind of a test to see if people are actually interested to see more of Brazil, since I have never showed barely any picture from my country. Tell your friends, family, WOW companions, workmates, pets, MySpace known (and unknown) friends, cops, U.S. government, EVERYONE! (ok, nevermind about the government) about this blog.

I'll put more news later. And once in a while I'll call some random people from US to say hi while I have money.

And, nevermind... I don't remember birthdays. But I'm a great boyfriend! (just in case if anyone is still interested on the Greencard project...)

Next post is going to be better with more pics!

And, please, leave comments! Any stupid ones! Nothing can be more stupid than what I write...

cyall later,
Gabe.

*Oh, we were discussing among the exchange students... How the heck do you spell "yeehaa!"? Any idea? (I would expect a good answer or from my dad Steve or from my calculus teacher, Mr. Krile...)