Last week

So last week was not a good week. Let me tell you about it.
It actually started almost two weeks ago.
No, it started over a month ago. Well, kinda. My roommate (housemate?) got a job, in a different city. And from Manaus "a different city" practically means a four-digit distance away. Getting the job was good, but it also meant that she had to move, which meant that I had to move.
So a week ago on Sunday I moved. But I'll get back to that in a moment. First I want to go back the two weeks, where I was going to start.
So two weeks ago I had this course that was all about Amazonian ecosystems, and practically consisted of three day-field trips to see the different types of ecosystems. (I missed the Tuesday, because I was at the police. I think I said something about that in that post.) On Wednesday we went to this nature reserve that is owned(?) by INPA (the institute where I'm studying), that is on ground that never floods, aka terra firme. Because this is a place where they have a separate name for a forest that doesn't flood. Anyway, I think I said something about this. Or at least I put up some pictures from it last week (the black palm trees). What I didn't say is that while walking in the forest I picked up some ticks. And the ticks here are different from the ticks in Finland in that they are invisible. They're not invisible. They're just tiny. They look like tiny black dots, except instead of being sand or something they will suck your blood. They apparently just sit in a blob on the underside of a leaf, and when you brush against that leaf, the entire blob jumps at you and suddenly you have a so, so, so many ticks on you you can't see unless you know what you're looking for.
Anyway, the end result was that by Thursday evening I had maybe a hundred tick bites. At that point I asked my roommate about the red spots that kept appearing all over me, and she was like yeah, those are tick bites. Here, wash yourself with this soap to get rid of them.
But by then I already had maybe a hundred (literally, I'm not using hundred here as just a big number. I mean literally hundred) bites. And they're not things that go away in a day. So I spent all last week (and still) with a hundred very itchy tick bites. Allergy meds helped, though. Or maybe it's just the placebo effect. Doesn't really matter.

So that's the first reason why last week was not a good week.

Another reason started already over the weekend: my computer decided it won't work unless it's plugged in. I'm missing a screw from one of the back corners, which has been a problem for almost the whole time I've had this laptop. Now, however, the crack that results in the top and the bottom not being held together bu anything wouldn't close. Always before I've been able to push the sides together when closing the lid, but now, nope. So I suppose the battery came a bit loose or something, so that it didn't work. So the computer needed to be plugged in to work. This wouldn't be a huge problem, though annoying, but. *sigh* But the bits of the charger that go into the socket are slightly bent. Not enough for it to not work, but enough that every now and then even without touching anything the charger stops loading for a couple of seconds. Which is fine. Unless your computer shuts down the second it is unplugged.
So this resulted in my computer no only needed to be plugged in at all times when I wanted to use it, but it also kept suddenly shutting down without a warning about once an hour or so when the charger didn't load for two seconds. So that was... Yeah. No. I started wondering if I have to buy myself a new laptop from here. Because sitting in class trying to do some exercises on R (or anything else with the computer) is very, very annoying if the computer keeps randomly shutting down. Did teach me to save my work after every few lines of text, though.
Anyway, then a miracle happened, and on Tuesday Ithe crack between the top and the bottom of the computer had just shut on its own. I had it with me, in my backpack, and when I got home after the day it had simply been pushed back together by some unknowable force of the universe. I have no idea what happened, but I quickly taped the corner together (since I don't have a screw that I could put there to keep it together), and since then the computer has been able to function again without being plugged in. So I'm guessing the battery really was loose. And now it's fine. But a source of significant frustration in the beginning of the week.

That problem gone I was happy for about 10 hours. The next night at about half past four I woke up to a weird sound to find the lamp in my new room (I had moved on Sunday) dripping water. Water. Dripping from my lamp. Fantastic. So I put a towel under there and went back to sleep. In the morning at around seven when I woke it wasn't dripping anymore, but as I left for my classes of the day I left a towel under the lamp, just in case. And a good thing too, it was completely soaked when I got back in the evening. So I told my roommates about it, and they were like "yeah, we'll send a message to the landlord" and I was like "excellent, thank you".
That night I left a kettle under the leak, with the already soaked towel on the bottom to dampen the sound so it doesn't keep me awake. In the morning I had a kettleful of water. Though the towel was in there too, and it had already been very wet. So I emptied the kettle and left it there for the day, cursing the fact that I had time to live in this room for three days before a problem appeared.
I came back in the evening to find that not only did I have another half a kettle of water, I also had another leak coming directly through the ceiling, dripping water on my stuff (I don't have any stuff at exactly the middle of the room where the lamp is, so that's good). So I put down some more towels and told my roommates again, and they sent another message to the landlord saying that yeah, this really is a problem. And the landlord said someone's gonna come check it out the next day aka Friday.
No one did.
There was, however, another spot in the ceiling leaking. So my unbelievably helpful roommates sent another message, with pictures, to the landlord that this really is a problem. And I was evacuated to a room that happens to be empty at the moment. And the landlord said someone is gonna come check it out the next day. This time someone did. And this time someone really did. And fixed it. And I moved back to my room. So it's all good now. But yeah, I lived in a room with a leaking ceiling for half the week.

Ok. More things that made the week not great. The schedule of the course I'm in is tough. We start at 8:30 every morning, with a small test on the things of the previous day, then work until about noon. With one break in between. Then we have a lunch break until two. This seems like an overly long lunch break to me. No one needs two hours to eat lunch. People can bring their own lunch here, there's a kitchen they can use, or they can go to a lunch place to eat, where the price of the meal is determined by weight. I'm not sure I've said something about that before, but yeah. That's the system. Pay by weight. There's one place on campus, but on two days I went out with some of the people who were going to go eat outside campus to these places with much better food. But they were also more expensive. So I ended up paying 4-5 euros for lunch those days. Which is more than I want to pay regularly for lunch. (Add that to the list of things that weren't great this week. The food was great, though.) So mostly I stayed at the worse but cheaper restaurant on campus where I only pay 2-3 euros for lunch. And I think the food there is good enough.
Anyway. The class starts again at two, and goes on (with one break) until five. Or half past, if things happen to stretch. So I'm home at maybe six in the evening. That's a ten-hour day, from leaving the house to returning. And then I have to do some reading for the next day's class, and maybe finish off some exercises I didn't have time to do during the class. Though mostly I try to use the ridiculously long lunch break to catch up with those. But coming home at that time of the day and keeping studying is not easy for a person whose efficient time of the day is from about eight to about four. Reading scientific literature after six in the evening is close to impossible.
So yeah. And this is going to be my weeks until the end of July, apparently, because I have classes almost every week.
I think the worst part about this is that here each credit you get for a course should be worth 15 hours of work, and the courses are scheduled so that there's two days per credit. So about 7,5 hrs per day. Sounds reasonable. Except which part of what I just described sounded like I'm doing only 7,5 hours a day? The classes alone are eight and a half hours a day, with admittedly a very long lunch break. So yeah. In Finland I've never worked for a credit as many hours as the credits officially require work. Here I have to work more. That I think is the worst part. I feel like I've been lied to about the effort I have to put into this. I've been told that I need to spend about 7,5 hours a day on the work, and I've said yeah, that's fine, and now, in reality, it turns out that 7,5 hours a day means all day every day. Because I also had to spend (some) time over the weekend doing the exercises.
The upside is that the course itself is interesting, even if I don't exactly understand everything, because it's in Portuguese. But that's fine, because it's turns out that we were taught quite a lot of community ecology (which is what the course is about) in a statistics course I took a year and a half back. I didn't even realise it at the time, and then I was sitting in class all last week thinking "haven't I studied this already once...?"

More things. I have a prepaid phone here, because apparently it's a common thing here. Though it's not really what I thought of as prepaid before I got here. Basically it's the same kind of package system as in Finland, you pay an amount, and then it includes 2 Gb of internet per week and unlimited calls and Whatsapp (on top of the internet, because apparently Whatsapp is the primary way of communication here. Also between people and companies. Everyone and everything seems to have a Whatsapp number as a primary means of contact). The difference is that here I pay weekly, and that I have to pay, well, before hand. That's what makes it prepaid. And actually I don't have to pay weekly, because I can charge credits for a phone number, and then it renews the data package automatically, if there is enough credit. But this week I should have charged more credit for the number, because I had run out. But I didn't do it on time, because I completely forgot that it's already been three weeks since I did it the last time. Because there's is no way it had been three weeks since I did it the last time. Except apparently it had. And while trying to do that I got myself and the people I was taking a ride with to INPA for our classes stuck in traffic, because my need to recharge the credit for my phone made me ask to take the stupid route instead of the smart route, and the traffic was unusually absolutely terrible that morning. So we got stuck in traffic, were late for class, and I didn't even get my phone credit charged. So that sucked. I did get the phone working again (it wasn't working all morning, because I had failed to pay on time) over lunch when I got to a place where I could recharge it.
The next morning my ride (I rode to INPA with the same people every day, because I don't want to walk with the laptop and there are other people in the class who live nearby) had left without me. Apparently this time I had happened to be at the pick-up-spot a minute after my ride instead of a minute or two earlier, like usually, and the ride had assumed that since I wasn't there, I wasn't coming. Because I hadn't said anything. Because I didn't think "I will be at the same place at the same time as every morning this week" needed to be said. If I had been late, sure, but I wasn't late. I just happened to not be early. So after wondering for ten minutes why everyone was so late I found out they had already gone, and I had 20 minutes to be in class, which was definitely not possible. So I hopped on a bus to be there as soon as possible. And got stuck in traffic. Because that's just what you do here between seven and eight thirty in the morning. I ended up being even more late than the previous day.

On Saturday I went to the grocery store because I didn't have any food for the weekend at the new place (I had eaten at the restaurants all week), and tried to buy some bird sausage, because I'd already had some here (unless people lied to me), and I wanted to make something out of that. (Mind you, with the previous roommate we always cooked together, so this was basically my first time trying to cook alone for just myself starting from doing the groceries.) So I went to the store and read the ingredients on some sausages that had a bird on the package, and happily took them home. Only after getting home my brain caught up with the fact that swine and swan are in fact not the same word, and that I had bought pork sausages. (I acknowledge the fact that I thought the ingredients said swan should have instantly rang some bell in my head to tell me that can't be right, but it didn't. I have no idea how that's possible.) So I gave my non-bird-sausages to my roommate and had to return to the store to get myself something I actually eat.
And then, in the evening, I burned some popcorn in a kettle that is obviously not mine because I don't have any kettles here. And I couldn't get all the burned stains off. Well, I could have, with patapata, but I don't know what the equivalent is here, nor do I have it. So yeah. Now one of my roommate has a kettle with burned popcorn stains.

The only good thing about this week is that on the previous Sunday (the day I moved) I had bought myself some ice cream, because it was on sale (10R$/2l). So at least I had ice cream. Still do.
And ok, fine, Sunday was good. There's a market at the center every Sunday, so I went there with a girl I met in one of my classes, and we had some breakfast, and I bought some stuff for you people back at home, and myself some anklets, because if you're going to be in a country where your ankles are practically always uncovered, you have to have something on them. I can't believe it took me almost two and a half months to get some. And got some fruit I can't (I think) find in the normal supermarkets.
In the afternoon I was supposed to go do the exercises for the class (that's also this week) with some people, so we could talk about the answers together (we have to eventually return the exercises with the answers), but no one ever told me when and where they're meeting for that, even though I was invited on Friday to join them. So maybe they didn't do it after all. Or they forgot me. I don't know. But I spent basically the rest of the day writing blog posts. This one, and two more that I am working on little at a time, as I gather the stuff I need for them. You'll see one of them next week. The other probably won't be done before June.

So yeah. That was my week. I hope this one is better.
Sorry you had to basically read me complain about things. But hey, you could have stopped reading at any time, so it's not entirely my fault.
And I promise, I have something more interesting planned for next week.

~matu