I've been spending a lot of free time with friends, cooking, walking around, seeing music, and watching the world cup! (BOOOORA BRASIL, PARA O HEXAA!) I've always been skeptical of the accuracy of portrayals of countries that rely solely on their internationally renowned cultural customs, (for Brasil, this would probably be a. soccer and b. samba) but I think that this view stops me from recognizing that there are times when countries actually DO align with the tropes that are used to represent them, although there are obviously many times when they don't. I experienced one of these times on a recent Friday night, when I went out to a bar with a girl I met while out dancing the week previously and her friends, to watch the seleção play while listening to live samba music and dancing during breaks. I'm still learning how to dance the steps for samba, (this has been a challenge...) but I'm more familiar with samba music, and I've loved soccer all my life. Still, I was super impressed when one of the friends I was with could sing along with basically every song that was played by the musicians -- she dances samba as a hobby. The environment was filled with items that I would say i consider tropey in relation to Brazil -- stereotypes, you could say -- but people were engaging with them genuinely. I think that being from New York City, (or at least the specific cultural bubble I exist in) which holds a degree of cultural social and political bias against "All-American" cultural paraphernalia, it surprised me to be in an environment where people find genuine value in their national culture. This feeling often extends into conversations about social and political issues -- as a New Yorker who's gone through fifteen years of progressive education, I find that my reflexive response when asked on my opinion on something American is to slightly disparage it and distance myself from it. I've noticed that people find this strange -- the Brazilians I've met (most of them educated, well-enough-to-do residents of São Paulo, the equivalent to NYC of Brazil) generally feel pride for their country even while feeling free to criticize the things they don't like, which are often many. I don't think I can magically make myself feel more resonance with American culture, but it's definitely interesting to realize this -- sometimes NYC can be very cynical!