Brazil represents the best of the Latin Dream for the traveller. There's thousands of beaches, good music, it's relatively cheap and the people have a relaxed attitude towards casual sex. What more could you want out of your travels in South America?
Okay, Brazil may not be the best destination for the thinking backpacker. Brazilians are so at home in their bodies that few really care to use their head that much. A large portion of the population is uneducated and those that are tend not to trouble themselves much with the existential dilemmas that plague your average Westerner.
It's not to say Brazilians are any less intelligent than anyone else, it's just that they're not often all that intellectual. They spend less time thinking about life than they do actually living it. Which is probably one of the reasons that the Brazilians are one of the happiest peoples in the world.
Brazilians live to party. Whether it's at the beach, a barbeque at home with the family or a quick beer at a café on the street, the meaning of life is clearly to socialise as much as possible. If they run short of gossip (and they rarely do) there's always the football and the telenovelas to chat about. Regardless of the poverty and suffering in Brazil you'll never be short of smiles in the street.
Many Brazilians are a little sick of the image of the Land of the Endless Party though. Travelers come here expecting everyone to be on a constant high and don't bother to educate themselves about the appalling division of wealth in the country which makes the lives of millions of people in Brazil a misery.
The average travel guide to Brazil mentions these kinds of details in passing but unless you speak Portuguese you'll never really get the idea. If you only speak to those who know English you'll be socialising with the upper classes who generally could not care less about the reality of the poor even if by chance they happened to know anything about it.
Travel in Brazil
It's not the duty of the traveller to change things in Brazil but you'll learn a lot more in your travels there if you bother to educate yourself first. Don't be an ignorant gringo.
To this extent, do all you can to learn Portuguese. It's the only way you'll really get to know who the Brazilians are and it isn't a tough language to learn. It's spoken quite differently than it's written though so you're best off hiring a teacher than buying a phrase book.
Remember that now you're working on Brazilian time so don't expect people to turn up on time, if at all. No one likes committments in Brazil so relax and get flexible, otherwise they'll write you off as another uptight gringo.