Ripe rumps, caipirinhas, sexy accents and samba are expected from Brazil ‘ but there’s more to S√É£o Paulo than butt shaking. The day I arrived (the day after the S√É£o Paulo plane crash where 200 people died) it was raining, about 50 degrees outside, and an overweight 60-year-old lady in a nylon soccer jumpsuit with bottle cap eyeglasses and a gold tooth greeted me at the airport with a sign reading ‘Moya Fiks.’

After riding in an alcohol-fueled mini car past the favelas (outer-city slums) of S√É£o Paulo for an hour, I opened the door to my bare apartment, furnished only with a 2 1/2 foot-wide bed and completely lacking hot water.

Tentatively thinking I should’ve picked Spain, I received a slew of disappointments to accompany my homesickness: no laundromats, no washing machine, a hole for an apartment, ridiculously inclined streets, freezing weather, no Internet, no warm clothes, no friends and the sniffles.

Three hand-washed loads of laundry and 30 degrees later, I forgot all of my troubles (except for the streets, they are impossible). S√É£o Paulo is not only packed full of whatever you want to do anywhere, it has all the benefits minus the pretentious attitude of New York. Everybody here is generally happy to be here, everyone loves soccer, everyone gets into any club, everyone dances and EVERYONE makes out. Everyone might also have a few diseases, but you give and you get, kiddies.

‘The guards don’t ID you unless you look like you’re five, and even then you might get in without ID,’ admitted Luana Smeets, a regular at the kindergarten bars.

The typical night scene includes going to one or two clubs (or baladas) where you pay something like $15 for the fancy places and none for the others, which usually gets you more than just entrance: sushi, some drinks or the like.

With the electronica, samba-rock and drunk dancing/stumbling, you could fail to notice that 90 percent of people are heavily necking around you and that there are about five guys headed toward your face.

No matter what you look like, if you enter the club you will find prudes, brace-faces and especially effeminate males. Beware.

‘Yeah, it’s like that, but here you have to do that, otherwise the girl will think you’re gay and move on,’ said one of these attackers.

For a low(-er) key night, you could always go to a bar near your school for good 80 cent beer. Take it outside and listen to the reggae band playing on the street, immersed in an atmosphere of so many good-looking and carefree people that you may feel compelled to walk around with a peace sign.

Before I start to sound too much like a tourist pamphlet for teens (no, too late?), the more serious facets of my experience must be mentioned as well.

My pen pal, Nathalia Fraga, told me in her first e-mail, ‘Only businessmen and transvestites come here.’

After a 10-hour flight there to prove her wrong (maybe), I found that to be pretty much true.

But that’s not all I found.

This is a town for those who love soccer, fun, being ballsy and late. Soccer games here turn into huge outdoor parties with flag waving, cheap beer and, often, brawls if you root for the wrong team.

The universities throw parties (yes, with alcohol ‘ lots), the perpetually late American girl is now the early nerdy transfer student and professors smoke in classrooms (the health conscious and compassionate only); but where there is all that carefree fun comes the downside.

The high levels of theft in S√É£o Paulo are blatant when you walk down even my peaceful residential street. All apartment buildings have at least one guard in addition to extra security.

Since arriving, I’ve already heard of three stolen cell phones and seen the gangs of nine-year-old boys that steal whatever they get their sticky little hands on, with force or sharpened trinkets.

While driving past them, Maria Helena Maier, my orientation guide locked her car windows and said, ‘They’ll come up to you when you’re on the street and make you give them whatever you have, and point to big brother with the machine gun keeping a close eye just in case ‘ to teach them, you know.’

As developed as the city is, faults are unavoidable, and here they just add to the flavor.

S√É£o Paulo is a city like any other, but it also entails a large dose of culture shock that you need to be prepared for before anything else. After you get over the threat of crime, the painful inclined streets and the Portuguese language-barrier, you can settle warmly into the S√É£o Paulo beat.