Anecdotes from a Brazilian grad student (6 of 6): Chilean activists under Pinochet.

As it turns out, the Brazilian grad student's mother is Chilean, and was an activist under Pinochet.

Sometimes her friends visit them, and they forget what they said earlier in the conversation, the torture was so bad that happened somewhere in a stadium in Chile all those years ago.

He said his mother was tortured too, and was only able to have him as her only kid after much difficulty, due to the effects of the torture.

Anecdotes from a Brazilian grad student (5 of 6): World Cup.

In chit-chatting with the Brazilian grad student, a grad student from Iceland (!) joined the conversation, and automatically the Brazilian grad student was like, "Oh, your soccer team was a favorite in Brazil, everyone rooted for them and watched their games."

As it turns out, Iceland doesn't really have a good team, but they were a total underdog who got pretty far in the World Cup, even beating the el primo British team.

"I don't like soccer, but that was a good game," the Icelandic grad student was like.  He also said that they just built an indoor stadium in the capitol to make practicing soccer easier year-round, since there really wasn't a place that you could do that before.

In any case, I found the whole factoid very endearing about Brazil, that the country fell in love with this ragtag team.  Very endearing!

Anecdotes from a Brazilian grad student (4 of 6): An American city.

In talking about meeting some people, the Brazilian grad student was like, "And I met a doctoral student from Tuckson."

It took me like ten, twenty seconds, and then I realized that he meant "Tucson," and had probably only ever just read the word.

Anecdotes from a Brazilian grad student (3 of 6): "The trans."

I asked the Brazilian grad student what he thought about all the young trans kids on campus, and he noted that he's seen a few and there there was even a young undergrad in one class he audited on identity formation, and he thought that they were connected, the subject matter of the class and their being on hormones, especially since searching for identity happens so much among the young.

"I see this," he was like, "And I think of the opportunities in a wealthy country."

Then, he continued.

"But," he was like, "There is no guarantee, that you will like better the person that you will become."

Anecdotes from a Brazilian grad student (2 of 6): Social decline.

When he's back in Brazil, the one Brazilian grad student lives at home, since his parents are getting older and a neighbor once told him that by the time he has lived his full life, he'll have more years without his parents than with them.

Anyhow, he said that just a few years ago, his father advised him to stop going outside after 8pm at night.

"Why?", I was like.

"It's bad," he said.  "When the economy is horrible, society is thin in a poor country, it disappears."

Anecdotes from a Brazilian grad student (1 of 6): Candomble.

So, there's this visiting Brazilian grad student who I met around campus, and we were chit-chatting and I asked him about candomble.

As it turns out, he has friends from the favelas, and they invited him along and he went to a number of ceremonies back when he was in high school, and he said that he would be there for hours, and people would just dance and dance and dance, and then the spirits would take them over and you could see it and they would start giving advice to whoever wanted it.

"Really?!", I was like.  "What was the advice?".

"I don't remember exactly," he was like.  "But it was like a bad psychologist."

A sad state of economic affairs that I heard the other day.

As I'm walking up to the self-checkout at the local chain drugstore, the security guard gets on shift and mumbles something to the (younger) (Latina) checkout clerk standing there and monitoring the machines.

"Oh no," she was like, "Thursday I'm at my other job."

. . .

People having multiple part-time jobs has just become completely normalized, it's sick.