By the time you reach junior winter, you know most of the ins and outs of living in Hanover. Never use a credit card at Panda House. Wednesday is 30-cent wing night at 5 Olde. Don't drink and blitz. Don't sign up for 10As. Freshmen don't get smaller each year; your ego just gets bigger. Don't poop in the East Wheelock elevator.
These are all important lessons and life skills, some of which will be useful later in life. The term I learned the most while at Dartmouth was not inside the Dartmouth bubble, but rather, outside its confines. I was in Brazil on the Dartmouth LSA learning the day to day life skills that I will most likely never use again outside of Brazil. Nonetheless, they were important at the time, and maybe they will help you out at some point in your life. Then again, maybe not.
Man-Bikini Etiquette
Growing up in northern Vermont, I honestly never thought I would have to deal with an issue such as man-bikini etiquette. Nonetheless, I took away many important lessons on this subject while in Brazil. Primarily, guys from northern Vermont should never wear man bikinis. Second, most Brazilian men should never wear them either. I quickly found out, for better or worse, Brazilians simply have no shame in showing off their bodies at the beach.
I was prepared and even looking forward to the implications of this for women. However, I was caught way off guard as for what it meant for men. The aforementioned man bikini is a Brazilian Speedo called a sunga that does relatively little to protect one's modesty. Hoping to blend in with the locals and get an authentic experience, I found the most conservative one I could find and made a trial run on the beach. I failed miserably. Owing to the fact that roughly ninety percent of the local population of Salvador, Brazil is of African descent, and the fact that I happen to be of extremely Scandinavian descent, I drew stares while I walked down the beach. And these weren't the "check out that hot American guy" looks, as I had hoped. They more like "what is this blinding-beacon-of-white-light reflecting into my eyes" looks. Fortunately, I quickly turned a nice shade of bright pink, which was to remain my skin tone the rest of my time in Brazil.
However, I was not the only one underdressed at the beach. While I enjoyed seeing the beautiful Brazilian girls sporting bikini contraptions made out what appeared to be random fragments of cloth and dental floss glued together, I had less reverence for the many flabby middle-aged women and men wearing the same contraptions. There are some things in life you just don't want to see.
Kissing strangers: the Brazilian National Pastime
While swimwear was a drastic change, the biggest shocks for me when traveling abroad have always been the little things. For example, what exactly does one do with a bidet? Consequently, it can come as a big surprise for the average gringo to have every single women he meets immediately kiss him on the cheeks.
At first, I thought I had amazing international game. That wasn't the case. And as it turns out, you don't just kiss people when you meet them. You kiss them when you say hello, when you say goodbye, when you leave the room for a little and then come back, when you accidentally leave the toilet seat up, and many more times throughout the day. I got used to this practice eventually, but always felt a little uncomfortable when running into my dental-floss laden host-grandmother at the beach. She sure knew how to say hello though.
Soccer: The Other Brazilian National Pastime.
Brazilians also like to play soccer a lot. I like playing soccer as well and even played soccer in high school. But I got schooled every time I tried to play down there (usually by 14 year old boys ... and girls). However, my trash-talking skills were better than theirs.
Fishing for Piranhas: Just Plain Stupid
While I was in Brazil, I also got a chance to travel to the Amazon and try my hand at fishing for piranha. I was lucky to come out alive.
Fishing for piranhas is simple, yet requires speed-of-light-fast reflexes. First, you take a wooden fishing pole, and thrash it around in the water like an injured cow. This attracts piranhas from miles away. Then fasten a bloody chunk of beef on your thick steel hook and toss it overboard. After a few quick seconds, the action begins; this is the moment that separates the novice from the pro. If you pull up your line at precisely the right moment, with luck, you will nab yourself a piranha. With a little more luck you won't fall backwards out of canoe into the feeding frenzy of blood-thirsty carnivores that can and will clean your carcass of its sunburned flesh in a matter of seconds.
In theory, piranhas can be caught with this method. In practice, you are dumping half a dead cow into the water and just letting them feed in the hopes that their hunger will be satiated enough that they will leave behind some of your important appendages should your canoe sink.
Avoiding Crazy Animals and Evil Parasites
Some call it biodiversity; I call it nature is out to get you. Either way, I found out that Brazil is home to a number of animals and plants that I had no clue existed, many of which despise humans. Little did I know, but the Amazon is actually full of freshwater dolphins. I kid you not. There are actually two species of dolphin in the Amazon: the gray ones and the pink ones. According to local legend, whenever a woman became pregnant without the aid of her husband, it was because a mythological river dolphin transformed into a dolphin-looking man and seduced the woman. After said act, the dolphin-man returned to the river. Honestly, it sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me.
However, the mythical pink dolphins were not the Brazilian animals that instilled the most fear in me. I could not have cared less about the thousands of caiman crocodiles swimming in the Amazon and the slews of other strange creatures that call the Amazon home. What I was most afraid of was the Candiru, a tiny barbed catfish that swims up your urethra and eats away the mucous membranes and tissue until the host dies of hemorrhaging. If this isn't one of your biggest fears, I don't know what to say.
So...
To conclude, expand your Dartmouth bubble and challenge yourself to do something like studying abroad. You'll probably learn a thing or two about living in another culture and, at the very least, you'll come back with some interesting tan lines.
