Just in case you were wondering...

What? You weren’t wondering? Hmmm. 

So today I experienced the very quintessential Brazilian experience: the bureaucracy runaround. It’s a good thing I knew what to expect and was able to see the humor of the situation (...pat on back...)

First I spent the morning waiting patiently at the bus stop, watching the busses go by, not finding it the least bit strange that none of them stopped for me. I eventually discovered that I had to raise a finger as they approached, or else they zoomed right on by. Good to know.

Once I arrived at the school, I had the task of choosing my classes for the semester. The problem, I quickly discovered, was that the school had departments and offices scattered around the entire city, and there was no central listing of all the available classes, when they were offered, or where. That, of course, meant a trek across the city, literally going to each department I wanted to take a class in and looking at the bulletin board hanging there. They were all neatly typed up and everything, why not just post them online?

The other problem is that even these classes are subject to change without notice, both their time and location. Changes are, of course, written in pencil on the department bulletin board. Also, in order to do pretty much anything (enter the library, use the computer lab, get discounted meals in the cafeteria, log into the online webportal) you need your student ID number, but you can’t get that until you submit some documents listing all your classes. Once submitted, these classes are pretty much set in stone. This makes the 2 week add/drop period somewhat less meaningful.

Despite all this, I’m pretty sure I smiled today more than frowned. The funny thing is, I love it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

I've Never Seen So Many White People

Coming soon...

Weekend in São José

@Wayne: I agree, I think it’s a great way for you guys to keep up with me. It actually doesn’t take that much time at all. I always have my phone with me, which I use to take pictures everywhere I go. When I get home I get the best ones and post them, and just jot down an almost stream of consciousness entry on what I did that day. I find that it’s a lot easier for me to write what’s on my mind, since no one is obligated to read it.

@Valeria: que bom ;)

@Karen: também foi muito bom te ver. Sem dúvida eu te procuro na próxima vez que eu estou em São Paulo. E se vc vai para o sul esse ano vc é obrigada a parar por um tempo em Curitiba!

What a weekend!

On Friday I got on a bus and went to São José dos Campos, a city about 100 km away from São Paulo, to visit some friends, the Domingues family. Eduardo and Berenice went to college with my parents back in the day, and I have known them and their kids (Daniel, Ana Luisa, and Isabela) since we lived in Brazil in 1998.

First, the blow by blow; second, some reflections; third, pictures.

It so happened that Ana Luisa (one of the Domingues kids) returned from France on Friday. She was there for six full months studying at a French high school in Bretagne (northwest France). It was neat to see her family happy as could be receiving her back. I felt like a fly on the wall seeing stories and presents exchanged, much love unleashed, and the long-awaited union of a close family. A bunch of her friends came over and we had a go

od homemade lunch. Afterwards we went to a birthday party of one of their friends, Marilia, where I met some more people and got sick. Luckily, it seemed I was surrounded by doctors this week (my uncle Cícero, Eduardo Domingues, and now Marilia’s mother) and I was given a barrage of medicines to fight my fever and congestion.

The second day we got up bright and early to go to the beach! This was somewhat of a spontaneous decision as a friend of the Domingues’, Adilson, invited us to stay the night at their beach house. We drove for a couple hours from São José to the coast, and arrived at the house on the “litoral norte,” so named not because it is on the north of the country, but rather north of São Paulo. See map.

The finger on the left indicates where we (the Fortes) stayed the last time we were in Brazil, which was Christmas of 2004. At the very top right corner of the map is more or less where the beach house was, and the finger at bottom right indicates where we spent the day. Adilson had a speed boat that we all climbed into for the hour-long ride to Corral, a small beach enclave with a chic (actually it was literally called “Hippie Chic”) hotel/resort, where we sat for a few hours eating appetizers and having some drinks.

It was here, sitting in the warm, soft sand, with a glistening cold guaraná in one hand and a piping hot pastel in the other, gazing at the multitude of scantily-thonged women frolicking in the crystal clear water, in shade cast by big green leaves above, that I truly felt for the first time that I was in Brazil. That, and also the fact that it was about this time that my headache stopped, my sinuses cleared up, and I could peer out from behind my crumpled up ball of tissue and observe my surroundings. Yeah, that helped too.

But seriously people, it was beautiful. We ate some amazing lula (squid) and had some really good cheese whose name I can’t remember. The water was ludicrously warm, this being the Atlantic and not the Pacific and therefore there not being a frigid current descending straight down from the Arctic. It felt like a swimming pool.

After that we started the ride back, stopping for an hour for some ice cream at another small city. We saw an island that was owned by someone just for his one house (see pictures). It started to become a little overcast and the sun peeked through the clouds. We saw windsurfers.

Meanwhile, or I guess afterwards, we had an awesome churrasco at the house. That is when someone makes a bunch of different meats and you try/eat them over a couple hours, taking more of what you like and less of what you don’t. Tio (which means uncle and is used as a term of simultaneous endearment and respect) Eduardo made a beautiful paella and some more lula. I later learned that our host, Adilson, owns one of the biggest wine importers in Brazil, and we had some exquisite Australian wine. We spent some time in the jacuzzi and I explained the intricacies and lunacy of the U.S. electoral system, including some of its decidedly anti-democratic tendencies, which they found surprising. If the rest of the world only knew how dysfunctional our democracy is, we would have an even harder time making the case for imposing democracy elsewhere.

I’m getting tired of narrating so I’m going to go fully stream of consciousness right now.

Wake up next day and drive back to São José. Welcome back churrasco for Ana with extended family. Slideshow of photos from France, my slideshow of pics from last 3 years, rest of afternoon spent making funny songs in Garageband, watching funny videos on my computer, taking funny pictures in Photo Booth, and watching BBC documentary Planet Earth. Dinner, conversation, music, presents from France, and goodbyes.

Whew!

For the first couple days that I was in the Domingues household, I was in a bit of a funk. I was a little withdrawn, unusually shy, and I couldn’t seem to go with the flow of things. I knew it was more than the language, as that awkwardness had already passed.

I think that there is something wrong with the American culture, a cancer spreading from within that is gradually changing much of the fabric of our lives there. Our technology and consumer culture conquer and divide, continually segmenting us into sub-sub-sub markets, with or without our consent. Anesthesized into conformity and yet defined by our differences, in just the right balance to maintain a sense of precarious hope, we attempt to defeat the machine that enslaves us by committing more passionately to its values. We think that there’s an end to accumulation, that there will be a point where we can cease to be the person we are now, that person whose behavior we so dislike, and all of a sudden start to be the person we want to be.

To speed this transition we hunker down, acquiring the tools we think we need to get “there” as quickly as possible. More efficient car, better cell phone, new agenda, faster computer. We become isolated by the hope we hold that one day isolation won’t be necessary. We are measured by our accomplishments and not our relationships, judged on our image and not our substance. Happiness is complacency, intimacy is vulnerability, love is inconvenient.

I found this weekend that I’m not used to human interaction. I know that is a strange and ridiculous-sounding statement, but it’s true. I felt withdrawal from the online world, anxiety at spending too much time with others, even loss of appetite. The shock of community has been more intense than the shock of culture. It is a scary thought: what do we become without each other? Who do I become?

A Paulista

Yesterday was my first day “in the city.” My uncle Luciano took me from the sheltered enclave of Alphaville to the neighborhood of “Higienopolis” which means, literally, “clean city.” On the way there we started seeing young people painted as above all over the streets. These, I learned, are “calouros,” which is the Brazilian term for incoming college freshmen required to perform various degrading acts in order to gain acceptance to the social life of the school. This particular young woman was on a street corner asking passersby for change. I gave her a couple quarters.

But the main event was walking down Avenida Paulista, which is basically to São Paulo what 5th Avenue is to New York. Behold...

According to my grandfather Nehemias, the end of this street is a high point in the city, where some of the first settlements were constructed (São Paulo sits on a plateau about 70 km from the coast, so it wasn’t settled until some time after the discovery of Brazil in 1500. If you want more details there’s always Wikipedia) Thus this avenue can be viewed as a symbolic passage from the

primitive beginnings of Brazilian civilization to the modernity of today. Or something. Here’s a picture I thought summarized this idea well, the fusion of the old and new...

I must say, the walk down and back up Avenida Paulista was quite an experience. It is a battleground of sights, sounds, colors, and people. Greenpeace volunteers in those same little khaki vests ask you to participate in their surveys, the smell of snacks from little roadside carts wafts through the air, back

ground vocals blast from a van-mounted speaker as a rapper draws a small crowd, businessmen in suits exit soaring skyscrapers belonging to banks and consulates, disfigured beggars with massive backhumps or backward-facing feet stare at you pleadingly, chic socialites with massive sunglasses avoid the stares and whistles of construction workers waiting out the afternoon heat, water splashes from high above where it is being used to cool equipment in the summer sun, police cars with sirens blaring get barely a space from jaded motorists, and on and on and on. It must have been the first time that I entered a mall, a mall, for peace and refuge. Inside were some interesting fast-food joints, including the high-class Baked Potato and the “imitation of a franchise” Bob’s...