It's crazy how much Americans get ripped off all over the place, even in our own country! Living in Brazil, seeing the prices of things and realizing that even though the prices are probably about a quarter of what we would pay for things in our own country has been a bit of a shock to begin with. On top of all that, the quality of things like the clothes and such seems to actually be BETTER here than home. It makes me think we really at a nation of consumers.

I saw a video that was being passed around Facebook starring a well-traveled former CIA agent the other day that kind of goes along with this. There are many similarities between our world and the fictional worlds of Star Wars, the Hunger Games, and so on. We create these incredible stories and send them out into the world, and we make the bands of rebels into the heroes of the stories. However, in reality, the U.S.A. is the Empire or the Capital City and other people of smaller countries see themselves as the small bands of rebels that will eventually win the war if they just keep fighting and stay together. So then, what's the reality of the situation? Because I've always grown up with the belief that we as Americans were out to help people, although we often over stay our welcome and don't always pause to understand other cultures' needs or attitudes. But at least our intentions were good, right? Is that really the best thing? Maybe Canada has it right and we should just be keeping to ourselves and allowing other countries to mind their own business...

This all sort of comes around when you look at the whole "Americans get ripped off" thing. The people in other countries don't look at us as helpful, they look at us as a big, bad empire that's trying to take advantage of them. We go along, wiping out every trace of native culture and business while setting up our own cultural influences to take hold. Just the last couple of days my British friend Kirsty and I were shopping to get some things to prepare for the summer and I can't tell you how disappointed we have both been with the clothing. We were hoping for some sort of Brazilian style with maybe Brazilian sayings on them in Portuguese... but there is absolutely nothing!! After a week of being here all we have found is one shirt with a saying on it in Portuguese, and none of the bright colors and craziness one would expect of Brazil.

It's been an incredible experience thus far, but I'm hoping to get more culture and more language practice as time wears on...

<3 Jackie