Handball!

So today (1/21/2010) I had psychology class first. My class is with another class for this course so there were about 30 students in the room. The teacher spoke English (thankfully) and had me introduce myself to the class. I can at least introduce myself in Portuguse. One of the girls told me that the guys were speaking English to me to try and impress me, which I thought was funny. In the class, they talked about peer pressure and how people change so they are excepted into groups. They had some discussion about how centries ago, people had different values and different looks were acceptable back then, but it`s different now. We had to go around the room and give an example (like how years ago pale skin was a status, the rich people were pale because they didn`t have to work, but now people tan to fit in) I gave an example about how religion isn`t as important. The class was very noisy, but when I talked they got dead silent and just listened.

Next, I had gym class and we played handball. The guys and the girls have class together. Handball was fun, but my throwing skills are not too good. In gym, they run warm up and stretch. The people aren`t anymore athletic than students in the US. Some of the guys get into it, but they aren`t all hardcore athletes. In Sociology class we watched The Constant Gardener in English with Portuguese subtitles so I could actually understand that.

Another thing that`s different in Europe is the amount of kids that smoke. Almost everyone smokes. During break, I went outside with one of the girls from my class and all her friends were smoking. It`s normal for kids here and nobody thinks twice. Another random new thing today, I tried Nutella for the first time. It`s the European version of peanut butter (they don`t have peanut butter here). It`s a chocolate hazelnut spread and it`s really good on toast.