If I'm lucky, it won't Rain tonight

Ok, I know I've made it sound like the constant rain here is not a problem because it's such a fantastic city, but....it is a problem. I'm really sick of it. Yesterday, coming home at about 1, I caught what in Trinidad is called a maxi (just a little taxi-van on a fixed route) to get from Lapa to Copacabana. As I waited on Rua da Gloria with the transvestite prostitutes, it started to mist. A van came, I jumped in, and it started to pour. The windows fogged up and I couldn't even see where we were. Luckily, someone knew that I wanted to get off at Siquiera Campos, so they dumped me out on that street into a puddle/river, and I "ran" (did I mention that I've decided to throw caution and anonymity to the wind and augment my already monsterous frame with heels?) under the tent of one of these sidewalk resturaunts that line the praia here in my new bairro. There, I spent time with an assortment of other rain-refugees, watching the new river get bigger and faster. The sidewalk merged with the street. The cars appeared to lose their wheels. The water comming out of the sky accelerated downward as the water in the street accelerated horizontally towards my feet. I remember last year seeing photographs of Rio under 8 feet of water, so I got scared and decided mete o pé despite the flood. This was uncomfortable. At times during the 5 block walk, the dirty sewer water reached above my knees. At one point I fell, because I was wearing heels and the curb was completely submerged and the sidewalks here are made of impracticle mosaics! Grrrr. Soooooo disgusting. Meanwhile, men were actually hitting on me, more than one! I am not especially friendly when alone and soaking wet in the streets, up to my waist in sewer water at 2 in the morning. Only Ricardo, who works at the Chopp kiosk at posto 5 on Copacabana was able to get a nice word out of me, because he tried to cover the 3 foot deluge with a piece of cardboard for me to walk over. It's the thought that counts!

I think I'm stuck in Rio

Oi gente,

Finalmente, acho que eu posso falar Portugues um pouco melhor que quando eu chegou. Não utilizo o pasado...talvez isso limita meu nivel da comunicaçaõ, mas tambem não posso ficar no pasado!

Oh, how I hope the weather will get better now that I'm moving to Copacabana! It's true: ever since moving into Santa Theresa a month ago, I have seen maybe 5 sunny days. Of course, this has encouraged me to get to know different aspects of the city. I've been to the museums, I've started attending a charming music school, I teach English in Parada de Lucas. I even started dating someone...I think :) BUT I want to go to the beach. So, if moving within 10 meters of the black and white wave mosaic sidewalk is what it takes, I'll do it. Also, Santa Theresa is grossing me out. There are red worms in my shower and pigeons are shitting everywhere. I can't walk up the hill without talking to one or another guy who thinks I want him. I give this impression to the men here somehow. Believe me, I'm not trying. But when the security guard at o Museo das Bellas Artes tried to kiss me yesterday, I had to face the facts that something in my comportamento is encouraging these dudes. Não! I'm going to start walking around with inverted eyebrows. But if I do that, and the sun comes out and I get a sunburn, than maybe my eyebrows will get stuck like that, so I won't do it (just a little taste of how I secretly make decisions :)

Most interesting and bloggable, of course, is that I'm "teaching English" in a favela. Well, it is a treat for me. I don't know how my students feel...yesterday they were pretty animated, and 10 animated kids in a 4x7 cement room next to an open sewer is quite a contrast to the black and white mosaic sidewalk of Copacabana! But I like it. They are animated (when I say this, I do not mean that the energy has anything to do with my lesson) and they are funny, but they aren't mad at me because I'm the "teacher" or because I'm bad at teaching. So even though I can't handle them, I don't feel bad. I told Nueza, the director of CIACAC where I work, that basically I don't know what I'm doing and things are just gonna be crazy and she just laughed her smokey laugh and said that's fine (I think that's what she said...). After my final lesson yesterday, one of my students invited me over to her house, where she treated me to a cake she had baked for the occasion and a telanovela. I watched her sisters playing a creative game with a ball and big pieces of cardboard in the street.

I don't know how to explain this...I really really don't want to go on about the poverty and adverse circumstances. I also don't want to gie you the "innocent children brightening the streets of the slum" thing. Because, these are cliches. They are true, but I think it's too easy to think about a place like this in that way. The fact is that this is a commuity that is very poor, practically ignored by the government but still made up of people who participate both within the favella community and outside. It is an interesting relationship, that of the government and the favella. If you have time, look up the UPP. Maybe it's the kind of poverty that is so profound that I can't even understand it's depth or see it completely. Honestly, I don't know. But my days there have been normal, uneventful, and pleasant.

You know a little about favellas already, right? Remember Black Orpheus? Or Cidade De Deus? I haven't seen the bad guys, or at least they didn't make themselves obvious to me. I also haven't seen the musicians or the dancers or the singers. Just a few kids and some funny dogs and Nueza. For me, the starteling part is the train ride to Lucas from Central, which is a 40 minute clanging lurching vendor-squacking view of what happens when you go north in Rio. It's not all favellas, but it is all poor looking. Where there are "real" houses is less "pretty" than the favella, because little hooligans have literally covered every inch of surface space with their tags. I wish I could take a picture of this, but I'm a little wary of using my camera (even though really and truly I don't feel threatened here. It's more that I'm reluctant to take pictures of other peoples' difficult lives). They are these black tags, illegible and tangled. Meanwhile, the favellas are covered with makeshift electricity lines, more tangled black lines in the sky. Honestly, it's not very beautiful to me. The quintesential Rio art print is that of the colorful favella climbing up the hill...Where I'm working, there is no hill, the houses are not painted and many are just crumbling and open. I guess at night when the black knotty aspects are muted out by the darkness, the favellas on the train ride are pretty, like hillside constellations. But, I mean, at night all you can see are the lights.

Speaking of lights, another little light of my weekly routine is the chorrinho school in Urca that I go to on Saturdays. It's at 8:30, that's the only thing I don't like. Four hours of pandeiro, and the I get to watch all of the students play together under the trees in the back yard of this grand university building. It's charming!

My New House Makes Me Go On The Internet

óla gente

Who am I writing to, anyway? Maybe I should say "óla, Julia", my one and only official reader :)

Anyway, I have moved to the decrepit and charming Santa Theresa. It's kind of like if a tourist moved into...hm, well, if Brattle Street were winding up a mountain, and the mountain was in the middle of the Bronx, and it was haunted and colonized by hipsters, that would be the equivilant. It's kinda cool, but also kind of impractical and creepy.

The walk down...

And, to contrast completely with that description (you just have to see it to get how it all goes together, I guess), today I jumped on the Bunge (street car) to get downtown. In Santa Theresa, we have several modes of transportation: walking (prefered), taxi, omnibus, moto-taxi, and street car. Everything with wheels is a little dicey, because the narrow road into the bairro is composed of hair-pins and cobblestones. It has been rainy since my move, and the combination of tires, slick rock, hair-pins and no space is just not fun. So I've been walking a lot. But I changed my pace and jumped on the street car today. It's free if you hang off the side :) , so everyone is doing that (yeah, me too, 'cause there were no seats left), and it's just like The Music Man! People were singing and clapping, I don't know why. And we just wind our way down, clanging the bell, tooting the horn, singing and...hanging on. There is one particularly "thump thump thump went my heartstrings" part, over the Lapa Viaduct arches, where you're way up above everything and just hanging over...

Now I'm going to go home early because I don't know how to get home late at night :(

My arch nemisis: Pigeons are gross

Settling In

My hostel from Pão de Açúcar

I'm moving in on my third week in Rio. To me, of course, this feels like just the beginning, but I think in terms of international trips, I am expected to have seen and done something interesting by this point. And I have! Don't worry, I'm not sitting on my inadequate-looking butt all day drinking caiparinhas!

In fact, I don't really like these ubiquitous acid drinks that are offered enthusiastically at every bar, tourist or otherwise. I've only even sat on the beach a few times...actually, that's not true. The beach here really does work itself into everything, sand just filling in the cracks of a day. As long as you're in the Zona Sul, you will be looking at the many bays, maybe even dipping your toes in, at some point. But once you venture into Centro, or even more off the beaten track into Zona Norte, Rio's beach culture nearly disappears. On a rickety communter train heading North, I saw some boys dressed in red swim trunks and yellow t-shirts waiting on the platform. I recognized the uniform from a hot day on Impanema, and sure enough, the boys were going home with their silver kegs of the chilled matte that had been so refreshing. So, there are indications of the beach in the North...

The girl from Impanema!

But I have to admit I have been more interested in the night life here than in the beach life. Every night offers various music opportunities...Samba, Samba, Samba, Forro, Samba, Funk, Samba...Rock is pronounced "Hockey" (haha). Obviously, I like the Samba. There, I can just groove my own little way, singing along with the inevitable "La-ya La" chorus. Funk...well, let's just say my years of whining classes in Trinidad help out here, but it's not my first choice!

Practically every night I find myself at a Samba party. My friend Eduardo has been my guide. He seems to go out every night of the week, and every time to somewhere new and interesting. His only distractions from a die-hard nightlife are the Fluminense games that happen all of the time (Rio has a bunch of football teams, some of the best in Brazil, and everyone is beyond obssessed).

The first time we went out, he brought me to a little back street bar in Largo de Marchado, where a tiny band played soft chorinho ("little cry"). Since then, he's brought me to sambas all over town. One on a rock by the port where the first slave market was held in Brazil. A bar in Lapa where we've ended up every Terça Feira (Tuesday), free concerts all over the place. I am the gringa with a huge bottle of water (I cannot get hydtated here!), and every time I offer Eduardo some, he says "Thanks, but I only drink the water that the birds refuse." Get it? Vodka, cachaça...clear alchohol. It took me a while to figure out what he was talking about, I kept insisting that the water was store bought, as "clean" as I could find....anyway, a cute little Brazilianism for you guys.

Cachaça casado no mercado

I bought a pandeiro from my pandeiro teacher, and yesterday another new friend gave me a lesson. We ended up singing all of the Astrud Gilberto songs I've been listening to all of these years, me in English, him in Portugues! The lyrics are quite different, and it was fun to comb through them. Did you know that the Girl from Impenema was not tall and tan and young...well, she was lovely. She was so beautiful, that her beauty was something for everyone to share and enjoy, and this guy was sad that the beauty wasn't for him, but he also recognized that that is the way it is. Just a little different from the way we sing it.

Meu Pandeiro

My roof/the view from my room

I just moved away from the beach, up into the hills of Santa Theresa. I am far away from everything, except for Santa Theresa, which is a little artsy/old money neighborhood, the kind of place where the buildings are crumbling away and the artists are painting them all different colors with spray paint. My place is no acception. It's a family house, with the family still intact, and I think Great-great-grandfather's wastebasket still hasn't been emptied, let alone replaced. It's a mess. I live in the eaves of the roof with the pigeons and their shit. But, I have a great view! After writing this, I will go visit a tiny NGO ("onghee" haha) in the North where I am the new English teacher.

The view from Santa Theresa: a castle and Christo!

Typical graffiti, typical architecture

Beijos!

Oi gente!

Back on the trip, so hopefully back on the blog...

I think this has all started rather well: I discovered that having my plane to Brazil canceled in Charolotte, NC is not that bad. I woke up the next morning to the rhythm of a fancy alarm clock at the Embassy Suites (?), stretched out in my super-comfy bed, took a little jog in the gym, checked my bag at the airport, and spent an informative day at the Levine museum of the New South. Then I ate some fried chicken with okra and candied yams at Morts. Yum! Coming back to the airport on the bus, I met a 85-year-old Colombian man who lives in Charlotte all by himself! He´s been there only four years, he´s estranged from his son´s because they are, or at some point were, living in sin with some women, his wife passed away decades ago, and he has no friends because he thinks all of the old people are racistas. And he was taking this bus to the airport to try and book a flight to Colombia, where he will collect his pension and then move again, maybe London or New York?

It was a funny little side-trip, but well worth it!

The flight to Brazil from Miami (somehow I got to Miami, too) was funny: by the time I got to this third airport, I had encountered a lot of displaced Brazilian travelers, and walking onto the airplane, to the last last row where I had been seated, was like walking through a beige, canned-air dream of friendship. That is to say I kinda knew a lot of people, and I felt super popular. I spent most of the flight drinking wine with the Brazilian guy to my left, the Floridian girl to my right, and the fat man who´s chair kept breaking in my lap ahead. And winking at the cute flight attendents. The moral of the story is: Boston may not be the friendliest city in the world, because ever since leaving the place I have had this feeling that we´re all supposed to be friends with each other.

And yes, I did arrive in RIO! I am here now, in fact. This city...It is really beautiful. Those mossy looking stones crumbling into the ocean are really there, mingling with mist and sun. The weather is coolish and bright: it is spring here. I went for a quiet walk in Botafoga, along the beaches, and enjoyed seeing the fishermen along the sea-wall, and the colorful old houses with stucco mouldings and big glass windows. Across the bay, the Jesus on the hill was spreading his arms open to the city, and in the water in front of me a little gold jesus/saint stood on a rock and pointed at a fish.

In Copacabana, the sidewalks are covered in famous wave mosaics, the cars honk, the buses spew grey smoke, and the men walk around in speedos. Ronaldo and Rafaela, some new friends, discussed the democratic nature of beach space as we sat there on the beach, watching volly-ball and ping-pong and brazilian bikins and watermellon sellers.

Last night, Rafaela from São Paulo and I went to a samba bar in a neighborhood called Lapa. The singers were from Samba schools, and they had full samba bands (Pandeiros and all!). The music is so wonderful! This is where it comes from!

I am happy to be here. I will make sure the stories get better!

Sidewalk Noir

Sidewalk Noir

There's a street called Brattle in Cambridge. It used to be called Tory Row, named after all of the English loyalist whale hunters who built their big houses there. I walk down this street at least 4 times a day, to and from Harvard Square. It's a beautiful street, a beautiful walk, paved with jutting flagstones and shadowed with encroaching or magnificant trees. The stones are big and worn, and are losing their fights with local tree roots. One must look down to avoid tripping on their little battle grounds.

I'm going to tell you why waking down Brattle Street with your head down is a good idea (besides the necessity of doing so to avoid falling):

Shadows! Brattle Street boasts some of the best shadows in Cambridge, and they are all around your feet as you gawk at Longfellow's old house and the Divinity School and that huge once-pink/now-white monstrosity that I love. The shadows are thanks to the matte flagstone and the shapely chestnut leaves and, at night, the lovely but practically useless orange street lights.

The only thing these lights do well is turn off right when you walk into their vicinity OR assist the trees in casting their wonderful images onto the matte grey cracked sidewalk. And also onto a very special old tawny BMW that used to always be parked where the image or an elegant iron fence could be temporarily cast upon it, lending some night-time glamour for the old wreck.

On nice days, a very certain kind of nice day, the sun gives the shadows multiple dimensions. While one shadow dances in the wind, another layer of shadow remans still or dances a different way. And the sun shines between the leaves in perfect little replicas of itself. My mother told me that during an eclipse, these little suns all eclipse together.

Waaay Back: Louisiana

Cleaning up: An out of place boat

Ah, Louisiana. I'm thinking of going back there. Of all of the places I've lived in the U.S.A, I think that New Orleans, that damp and fated city, is the most...well, what can I say that hasn't already been said? It's a city that resonated deeply with me. I really don't even know much about Louisiana or New Orleans, just the little I found out while staying there post-Katrina for a few months.

Things that struck me: I always come back to that scent of the Sweet Olive Tree. I've smelled it since and studied it. It's an amazing smell, like the most fragrant rose mixed with blood orange and grass. But it was love at first sniff for me because I never knew where it was coming from. I'd be walking down Government street in Baton Rouge (a grey, dreary street if I've ever seen one), and suddenly this delicious smell would override the gutter animal corpses and the exhaust fumes of the passing "lemons" (I think LA has the most derelict cars of any state...judging by shoulders of US 10 littered with flat-tired heaps). I would look around, but I could never find the source. In Oakland, CA, I finally did. There was a bush/tree around my Jewel Box neighborhood, with little tiny green flowers, but you had to go across the street to smell them. The scent has a sort of ventriloquist quality.

The Mardi Gras Spirit

I love Carnival. New Orleans has the best Carnival in the USA, I think. It's not like other fun parades and street parties, where you get excited for it to happen maybe a week before, and then it happens and is fun and is over. Mardi Gras runs deep, even when it takes place only a few months after an incredibly debilitating disaster. So, this is also alluring to me. The elusive scent of a tree and Mardi Gras. I think that sounds like a solid reason to move, don't you?