Feliz Pascoa!

Today is Easter Sunday, and here in Brasil that makes this week a major holiday. Pascoa is the word for Easter, and I like that the word has more of a related meaning ("passage") to the Resurrection. Because of Holy Week, med students from years 1-4 get the whole week off! From what I understand, these years are roughly equivalent to M1 and M2 years. I5 and I6 are the last two years which are the clinical internship years... and those guys don't get the whole week off, but everyone gets Good Friday off! Except the unlucky few who work through the weekend.

It has been an interesting cultural lesson being here during Holy Week. There is a disconnect between people honoring the holiday for what it is - the last week of Lent and preparing for Good Friday and Easter - and people just enjoying the holiday because they get a day off. Perhaps not unlike Christmas in the U.S., but it seems more apparent here given the strong Catholic influences in Brazilian culture. Thales, a friend I've met here who is a 4th year med student at FMUSP, says that about 90% of people here say they are Catholic, so religious days are a big deal. But it also seems more cultural now, perhaps, as some people may not even remember why they're getting Good Friday off (one resident told me, "I think it's when Jesus Christ died? I probably cannot go clubbing then because if my mother knew she would kill me!").

And then there are some other traditions around Easter here that seem like variations on a theme. We may have Cadbury eggs in the US, but those are a little gross (blah, yellow/white creme) and we don't really do much with them other than see them pop up on CVS shelves in March and April. Here, people exchange giant hollow chocolate eggs filled with toys or more chocolate (!!) among friends and family. This lasts the duration of Lent. Not really sure what the entire purpose is (jokingly I have been told people find any reason to buy more presents to exchange and keep the economy moving), except that there's a lot of chocolate eating going around here and giant Kinder surprise eggs being sold at the supermarket (that means giant Kinder toys!!!).

Easter lunch - meat, meat, and fish. 

Thales graciously invited me to join his family for Easter lunch today. It's much more common here than in the US for students to live in apartments in the city near the hospital during the week and travel home (even as long as a 2 hour commute) every weekend to see family. And since Easter is a major holiday, everything was closed and everyone was with family today. I met a very large extended family, chatted briefly about my poor Portuguese and what I was doing in Brasil, and then we feasted. One of Thales' aunt handmade more pasteis filled with carne or queijo (cheese), which were delicious! As with most things homemade, these were much better than the pasteis I ate yesterday.

baked bacalhau (cod) - a traditional Easter dish

We also had bacalhau (codfish), which is a traditional dish eaten for Easter. It was a welcome divergence from the meat, meat, and fried foods I have been eating here.

And then there was the exchange of chocolates and chocolate eggs! Something I am slowly (re-)discovering here is that Latin American families seem to be super close, or they are just more used to spending a lot of time together and enjoying it. Plus when they get together, everyone is invited. Makes for a very welcoming bunch of people from a visitor's point of view. I even got a bunch of chocolate! Definitely more than I can eat by myself this entire month, so I'm sharing it with my roommate and probably leaving most of it for others.

Chocolate eggs filled with more chocolate pieces

What's inside??

MORE CHOCOLATE!!

My roommate, Claudia, also has her own tradition of sharing chocolates with others. Instead of buying eggs for her friends, she makes her own chocolates! I was pretty impressed. She made at least four flavors (white chocolate/maracuja, dark chocolate/maracuja, dark with milk chocolate inside, white chocolate), and there were hundreds of little chocolates sitting in our fridge waiting to be gifted to classmates the next day. Being a roommate of a confiseur has its perks - I got to try a few, and they were delicious!! :)

Making the chocolatey exterior shell 

Finished products