It's complicated

If you have been even glancing at the world news, you know that there is a bit of turmoil here in Brazil politically with elections on the horizon and controversial front-runner taking the spotlight with audacious comments and a large following. This weekend, there were huge protests here in Brasília, throughout the country, and in various cities worldwide.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/30/huge-protests-in-brazil-as-far-right-presidential-hopeful-jair-bolsonaro-returns-home

Driving round and round and round

Brasilia was built for around 500,000 inhabitants (never mind that there are close to 3 million in the metropolitan area now) and, in the 1960s, was a city of the future. That is to say, a city built with the car in mind. Visionary planners plotted out a city with virtually no stop lights or left turns. Instead, there are looped-de-loops galore with cloverleafs that foil new drivers to the city. Struggling to figure out which lane I need to be transitioning to and when to turn to get turned in the right direction, I am regularly sighted twisting through intersections. On my first trip to work, I impressively missed my exit and looped through an intersection six times before getting set in the right direction. The challenges of a newcomer navigating this city can be well understood.

How many cakes do you need for 30 Brazilians?

This weekend we made cake for a small-ish housewarming at our new apartment in Brasília. Here are the beautiful and delicious outcomes of our two-day baking efforts.

Brioche, butter cake, beetroot cake, banana bread, brownies, apple cake with cream... the party was as good as the cakes!

Bursts of color

The Ipê is a type of tree native to this area of Brazil and when it flowers, there is an explosion of brightly colored blossoms. There are few around my building that pop out at you and then are suddenly blown from the branch to the ground, leaving behind tie-dyed streaks of color on the red soil at their base. It's stunning (although my photography might not be...).

Words with a local poet

Semana de Português

Speaking a foreign language as an adult is one of the most humbling experiences. We aren't used to taking risks. We are not used to purposefully putting ourselves into vulnerable situations in which we will look silly. We are not used to not having control. We are not used to being so aware of being bumbling idiots.

Portuguese is the 8th foreign language I have attempted to speak. I like the way it sounds and I feel like there is a chance of success, especially as we have three years here and it does not have an impossible grammatical system like Russian or Estonian. They say that language learning gets easier, and I am sure that I am proof of that. However, I feel differently about my learning now than I might have when I was in my twenties as a Peace Corps Volunteer or when I was teaching in Mexico. I'm more afraid, less precocious, and more aware of the impression I am creating.

The context here is helpful. So few people speak English with confidence that communication requires bumbling and ineloquent employment of the target language. There is an assumption by Brazilians that you speak the language. There are many Americans here who speak Portuguese with impressive fluidity -- my colleagues are all living in Brazil for the second, third, or fourth time. Several of them have Brazilian spouses and children. It is completely necessary and a little intimidating, to be honest.

This week I had a big breakthrough. I participated in conversations and gave presentations to three national bodies in Portuguese, sometimes spontaneously and sometimes with remarks that I wrote (errors and all) in Portuguese myself. The National Board of Education, Pro-Rectors of Federal Institutes, the Council of State Secretariats of Education... I think in a past life I would have felt more confident about the communicative successes, whereas now I have doubts about how I presented myself and how I might have been perceived by my own staff during those interactions. However, no calamity happened. No one died from bad grammar. And I have that small triumph on which I can build the next encounters.

Drink of the gods

Must definitely be a passion fruit caipirinha.

Laying it bare

It is fun to be an unsuspecting tourist sometimes, isn't it? Today, Uli and I attempted to visit 7 different beaches on our walk and we had a pretty interesting experience. We were looking for a quite place to enjoy the sun, waves, and sand -- without too many crowds of Brazilian bodies (although there is something healthy about the Brazilian relationship with their own skin - I saw a lot of things that were somewhat cringe-worthy and cannot possibly be un-seen. But I also saw how unassuming the locals were with bodies of all ages, sizes, and shapes, and I think we could learn something there as American women).

We finally found this beach with beautiful, pink sand. But we did not stop. We pressed on, asking for directions to the next inlet over the hill, a little beach called "The Eye of the Bull." Each person pointed to the entrance of the path and gave us a quizzical look, but we kept on...

The walk narrowed to a small path surrounded by brush and cactus but great views. Uli stopped to put on his real shoes. I trudged forward with flip flops. Several men passed by us and commented it was worth it.

We were afforded some great vistas and could see a tiny sliver of perfect, uncrowded, exquisite beach. 

And, as we dropped down through the bottom, we were faced with a bunch of naked bottoms! Oops! We managed to locate the only nudist beach on the peninsula. Perhaps that is why we saw so many funny faces when asking directions... we decided all of our white parts might not fare well with full exposure and returned to the previous beach to enjoy our afternoon destination of pink sands.

Coasting on a holiday weekend

Friday was Brazilian Independence Day, and we spent it like the locals - on the beach. We headed to Búzios, a couple of hours outside of Rio, to enjoy the peninsula of beaches and clear, blue waters together with some friends.

On our first day, we wandered around from beach to beach to beach, enjoying gorgeous weather in the mid-70s with sun and marveled at the landscape and other beach-goers. Búzios is the playground of people wishing to escape Rio and was crowded for the weekend with families and groups of young people there to soak up sun, swim, and enjoy the nighttime parties in town. We enjoyed ourselves immensely and ate fresh fish on the boardwalk while enjoying passion fruit caipirinhas.

Back in the saddle again

I am abandoning my 100 days posts... not because I want to disappear but rather because life here is becoming just that: life. We are settling into a routine and feeling more like we belong, bit by bit, to this place. It isn't that there are not interesting occurrences or strange happenings in our day-to-day experiences here in Brazil, but they feel less jolting and more like the kind of stand-out things you can appreciate if you are paying attention most anywhere. The best sign of our being in this stage of moving to a new place is my recent adaptation of my commute. I am back in the saddle and happily biking 9 kilometers to work each morning through the park. I feel like I am part of the fabric of the city. I have a baseline routine from which I can vary, and the comfort of doing a familiar thing (riding my bike to work) in a new place feels very very good.

Whoopi-ty-aye-oh
Rockin` to and fro
back in the saddle again
Whoopi-ty-aye-yay
I go my way
Back in the saddle again

Post #62: City Park

Brasília's City Park is near our home and consists of 420 hectares set aside for barbecuing, cycling, running, and amusement. It is reputably one of the largest public parks in all of Latin America. If you compare it with New York's Central Park (320 hectares), it is remarkably bigger. There is a stage for concerts and an artificial lake as well as an amusement park. The architecture, landscaping, and art are by some of the founding fathers of Brasília -- Lucia Costa, Oscar Neimeyer, and Burle Marx. My favorite Brasília-esque detail? The iconic tiles on the bathrooms, below, by the well-known Athos Bulcão. 

Post #61: If plants could communicate with us...

We went to this exposition yesterday that is a fusion between agriculture, art, and technology. A bunch of students and researchers planted a natural forest around a home and started to actualize the sound of plants through sensors and measure various qualities of the soil, air, and plants to create visualizations. My significant other has been involved in the back-end of this ecological smart home, and throughout the tour I was struck by the inventiveness and melting of nature and technology. Too often, we (ok, I) think of technology and nature in isolation in diametric opposition to one another. Here, one grew out of the other and created feedback loops for human consideration with an ecological message. Fascinating and heartening to see a group of students here in the national capital of Brazil innovating and sharing their message with the wider community. They do outreach to schools so that students can also combine these two aspects of life -- getting kids to learn about batteries and charges at the same time as they interact with plant life. Completely genius. Their FB page has tons of cool videos -- of plant energies being turned into LED displays and sound -- but I couldn't manage to link them (check it out!).

Part of the garden with sensors in it

An exhibition where sensors around the plants take measurements for an entire day and turn each element into sound, so you can hear nature and compare one day to another. Again, increasing human interaction with nature in a very modern way.