All Things Strange & Brazilian

I haven't posted in a while. I have a few posts that are half finished and a few ideas for posts rolling around in my head. In the meantime, here is a list of strange, strange things I have encountered in Brazil:

• Slamming Car Doors. Brazilians don't slam car doors, they close them gently. Every time I entered or exited a car for the first 2 or 3 weeks I was here, I would get yelled at for how hard I closed the door. I would patiently explain that Americans slam their doors hard, dammnit, and that 17 years (I estimate that I slammed my first car door at age 4) of car slamming practice would take a while to undo. (How else can you make sure it's closed anyway?) Then they would say, "Don't you have a refrigerator in your house?" which is a funny Brazilian expression for, "You have a fridge in your house that you close gently -- why are you slamming my car door?" If riding with my roomates, the vast majority of whom are mechanical engineers, I would then get a lecture about long term stress or some such nonsense, at which point I counter with "In the U.S. we slam the same car door for decades and it never breaks." I have yet to hear a good answer to that.
  
  
• Halls Are Candy. In Brazil, Halls are candy. Yes, Halls, the medicinal cough drop you take when you have a sore throat. Try to wrap your brain around that. EVERYONE in Brazil thinks Halls are candy. They sell them at news stands are restaurants as dessert in a greater variety than I've ever seen in the U.S. It's baffling.
  
  
  
  In Brazil, this is candy.
  
  
  
  
• Electric Shower. The state of São Paulo (where I live) is a pretty hot place most of the year. Most homes do not have a hot water heater or heating of any kind because it's so rarely cold enough to warrant it. Thus, the sink gives you only cold water. To heat water for a shower, an electric heater is positioned above the shower head to heat the water before it is sprayed out the nozzle. "Could an eletric appliance inside the shower be dangerous?" you might ask. Why, yes, it could! It is not unheard of for people to get ever so slighly electrocuted while taking a shower. Crazy country!
  
  
  
  Our shower head looks a lot like this, except the wires dangle down more.
  
  
  
• Oogling women. Brazilians have truly raised bawdy guy talk to an art form. Much time is spent leering at and saying dirty things about attractive Brazilian women. It's a true spectator's sport. Grown men in a work environment will still do this.
  
  
• Age of Consent. This one really blew my mind. Apparently in Brazil the age of consent is never enforced and therefore the socially acceptable age of consent is more open to interpretation and more flexible. Sex between a guy in his mid to late 20's and a 16 year old girl is fine. Apparently if she looks like a women, she is woman enough for sex. Much more disturbingly, first cousin sex is not necessarily wrong, and a cousin two or three times removed is fair game. Thus, if you don't know your first cousin well -- if you're 21 and she's 16 and has boobs and an ass -- you can have sex with her. I spent an entire evening talking about this with some Brazilians who were advocating dating your cousin. I don't care how ethnocentric I'm being, that is very fucked up.
  
  
• No Sidewalks. They have sidewalks in big cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but in Barão Geraldo where I live, they don't. You just walk on the edge of the road while the cars wizz by. Weird.
  
  
• No Sex. I just wrote that title to get your attention -- of course Brazilians have sex. But Brazilian girls are generally not as open to casual sex as their American counterparts and hooking up works differently here. A girl can kiss 10 guys at one party, but she probably won't be going home with any of them (or anyone for that matter). Of course, there are sluts in Brazil, but girls are generally less slutty. In summary: making out more casual, sex less casual.
  
  
• Ratty Facial Hair. Brazilian men can step out in public with truly terrible facial hair without fear of attracting any attention. I like this because I can't grow a beard either.
  
  
  In Brazil you can go to work like this without shaving.
  
  
  
  
• Laundry. People don't usually have washers or dryers here because they're too expensive. So, people do wash by hand or with crazy little machines called "tanquinhos":
  
  
  This looks like a washing machine, but it isn't. It just fills with water and agitates. I'm not sure it actually cleans.

All right, that's a pretty lot of text for now. I might write a second installment since there are many things I find strange here in Brazil. Boa noite.