Resolution

In the name of the New Year I’m going to ask you to do something, to show you something that I have learned in my time here.  Open a new page in your Internet browser.  Go to Google maps and type in your address.  Watch as the huge world spins and zooms in to find your location, passing by all of the other countries, states, cities, and houses, finally landing on your small front porch.   The web of roads and highways untangles slowly to reveal the scenery of your life, a small scenery in comparison to the big world that you just whirled by.  And that is exactly it: you only live in a small part of the huge world that we are all apart of.  You are only a small part of the world we live in.  As of 2012 you are one of 7.046 billion other human beings.  If you want, open another page and look up the population clock and watch as the number of people born today continues to go up and up with every second, showing more people beginning to live in this huge world with you and me.  I really believe that that is so important to see and to realize.  I am just a tiny percentage of this world; my city back in the US is just a small part of my country, which still only makes up a section of the world.  What I’m trying to get at is that you and I are just miniscule pieces of the big picture.  This slice of truth has helped me look past so many moments this year that could have whirled me away into an unnecessarily dramatic and stressed mindset. 

When I look at life through this perspective, thinking about the billions of other people walking on this earth, I realize that while my problems may feel big and important, they are not affecting anyone but me.  Realizing that I ask myself, then why the heck are they affecting me?  And I don’t mean to say that all of the problems in this world should be cast aside and not taken seriously, I’m talking about the mindless worries and temporary hiccups in life.  There are people all over this huge world worrying about things that wont be relevant to them this time next year, or maybe even next week.  And this New Year I am going to try to be one of those people who isn’t.  I am going to try to be one of those people that always remembers that life goes on for everyone as well as for me and that I have no reason to worry about something that is not affecting anyone else.

I invite you to join me and remember the rest of this beautiful world.

Feliz Natal!

Feliz Natal! Boas Festas! Merry Christmas!

I am here to report on Christmas, here in Brasil.  This year was by far the most far-from-normal Christmas of my life thus far. First of all, a majority of the week of Christmas was spent on the beach, in my bikini, layering on the sunscreen and eating bananas or mangos.  Not so bad, I'd say.  But what was very strange was being away from my family.  While I spent Christmas with my family here in Brasil, people that I love so dearly and feel as though they are a part of my true family, it was incredibly strange not to stay up with my sister awaiting the 7:30 a.m. "go time" in anticipation, or playing a board game with my everyone on Christmas Eve.  This combination of lack of snow and lack of family made it difficult for me to accept that it was Christmas time at all.  And I think that this honestly made it more enjoyable for me; took away almost all of the anticipated feelings of being away from home or missing my family.  With that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed, loved to tell the truth, this year's Christmas.  

I spent the week on the beach, as I said, with my second host family.  I love them.  They are such a united family, with all of the cousins and uncles and aunts always together.  There is always laughter and everyone is always relaxed- they don't stress out about the little things in life.  Being with them always reminds me of being with my family in California, which is for me the best feeling in the world. This week was more of that, and was perfect for Christmas.  

Everyday we had a churrasco (barbecue, more or less) which although consists mostly of meat that I don't eat, I truly love.  Everyone gathers around the barbecue waiting for the food to be ready and eating little by little, garlic bread, glorious melted bbq-ed cheese, meat and eggplant (well, I ate the eggplant.  To tell the truth, I ate about five eggplants by myself this week they were so good).  There is nothing like grilled eggplant with olive oil and salt.

And of course… the beach.  The beach was located two blocks from the house that we were renting, a quick two minute walk from the front door.  I went there in the morning to run, in the afternoon to swim and play in the waves, and sometimes another time later to swim again.  

 I also enjoyed some yoga on the beach, Merry Christmas!

And a huge surprise for me was the amazing fresh fruit that we all enjoyed with Christmas Eve dinner.  At about eleven at night we all ate together, mangos, pineapple, and grapes as well as rice, sweet ham, and another meat that I didn't identify.   When the night turned to morning and midnight arrived along with Christmas day, every one gave hugs and and smiles.

And then, to finish my night off, all of the cousins played a game until late at night.  We each thought of names of people or characters for each other, secured them on our foreheads, and had to guess who we were by asking yes or no questions.  It was incredibly fun and ended this year's Christmas happily with family.

I miss bed.

Something this month that surprised me was how any bed can truly feel like my bed.  Maybe its exhaustion or maybe its adaptation, but its true.  Before I came here I thought that this would be hard for me, a year without my bed.  When I was younger, I used to have sleepovers with my friends and wake up consciously missing my bed.  The right amount of blankets, the way my head fit nicely in my pillow, the cozy smell- I missed everything about my bed.  When I visited my family in California for a month it was really hard to go without my bed.  But now?  I can build up a good, solid relationship with just about any bed in 5 minutes, about the amount of time it takes me to fall asleep.  Any house, any bed (or surface really) that I can sleep in, is perfectly alright with me.  I don't distinguish anymore between which bed I miss, I just miss bed.  

Sao Paulo, an introduction

This week, I got to know the big city.  And by big, I mean the seventh biggest city (by population) in the world.  The tall buildings tower over the streets that are crowded with people from all over the world, moving quickly to their job, their family, or to the metro, which is another story entirely.  The metro is a war, a brutal bloody war.  There is no mercy and there is no surrender. I only rode the metro during rush hour two times, but seriously, I feared for my life.  There is no line, its just a big glob of people pushing and shoving when the doors open.  Fortunately, I survived with my suitcases and head.  We rode the metro all over this city: to the neighborhood Liberdade, which is like NYC's china town, but Japan, where we ate some really fantastic food and marveled at the odd brands of candy and chips in the stores; to various museums that the city has to offer, filled with beautiful works of art, both recent and ancient; to their version of Grand Central Park (Ibirapuera) where we had a picnic; and to the 25th of Março, which is a scary and intimidating street.  It was like stepping into what I had always imagined to be India (minus the cows).  The street was shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip full of people, rushing here and there, people shouting out bargains or whatever they were selling, "Agua-agua-gua-gua-gua, dois reais!" and the air carried the smell of a strange combination of pollution, various perfumes, and people.  The reason that everyone is there is the amazingly inexpensive prices of all of the falsified brands of purses, jewelry, technology, and makeup sold on this street.  One of the touristy points of Sao Paulo, this street was certainly a site to be seen. But a site that was even more impressionistic for me was the famous Mercadao.  This is literally translated into "huge supermarket" and it is exactly this.  Filled with beautiful, rare and expensive fruit, meat, nuts, spices, drinks, oils, and other foods from around the world, this building made it to the top of my touristy wish list long ago.

Although it appears rather plain and simple from the outside, inside is a festa of colors, scents and flavors. 

 

Because the prices of everything are insane, I just counted on the samples to get me though the day.  You can ask to try just about everything and I went crazy on the fruit.  This odd little guy to the left is hard on the outside like a nut, with a huge seed inside covered with a little of this white, mucus-y fruit.  The way you eat it is cut off a little of the shell and bite hard to squeeze the seed into your mouth.  They you eat off the sweet fruit.  It was delicious, but a lot of work! 

 This fruit was a beauty, another delicate, lightly flavored fruit, but this time you could eat the seeds too.

This fruit was my favorite.  The color and dragon-like spikes on the outside already gained it some serious points.  The texture and the flavor of the meat of the fruit are truly splendid, reminding me a little of a plum. A very exotic plum.  

I felt like I could get lost in this building for hours, spending the whole day marveling at the different items that I had never heard of or could have imagined in my life.  And if I could get lost here, Sao Paulo is definitely where I could lose myself for months.  The city is filled with billions of things to do and see, to taste and experience, and to know.  I spent a short week there, but I should have given myself a month there just to get to know the bare tourist points.

Pirenópolis, Goias

 I just got back from a long weekend spent in a city called Pirenópolis- a city that I fell in love with.  It is located in the Goias state, a neighboring state of SP.  Goias is where the capital of Brazil, Brasilia, is located.  Although I will visit the capital later in my exchange, this trip to Goias didn't land me there.  I went with my host sister who was traveling to Pirenópolis to take a test to enter the college there.  She wants to study culinary arts and if the food she's made me and the extra few kilos I've packed on have any say in the matter, she will make an excellent chef.

We took the overnight bus from Catanduva to Goiania, the capital of Goias.  The bus was cold and the ride was long, but the seats were cozy.  When we arrived there we got a taxi and to take us to the house of a friend of ours, who lives in the city.  After sleeping for about three hours on her couch, we took off again, this time for our final destination.  As we started to get closer and closer to Pirenópolis and farther and farther away from the metropolis that was Goiania, the road got a little narrower and the trees more abundant.  After about a two and a half hour drive we knew that we had arrived in the city when the tires of the car started bumping  a little across the now cobblestoned streets.  Pirenópolis is a historical city in Brasil because of its well cared for and preserved colonial houses as well as natural beauties.  It is a huge tourist attraction, so mixed in with the authentic restaurants and stone age palm trees you will find the occasional touristy shop.  But it is created with grace.

This city also has an overabundance of old bug cars (one demonstrated in the photo below), which I think is truly lovely as this is my dream car.  Plus, turns out they play the "slug bug (color of car)" *pow* game in Brazil too.  Unfortunetly for my sake, I can never remember what it is that they say along with the punch, so I'm usually the one getting hit.

For those of you who have been to Ashland, Oregon (a.k.a. my future home) you can imagine that, Braziliazed.  Its the same feeling that Ashland has plus palm trees and Portuguese. 

 We went for an adventure to find a waterfall (one of the natural beauties about this beautiful place) and first found a road side stand selling coconut water.  And what makes me more happy than fresh, cold coconut water?  Basically nothing.

And of course: waterfalls.  When we arrived it was midday and very hot.  After hiking a little ways down the trail we found this beauty and everyone jumped in.  The water was icy cold, but the warm Brazilian sun had no problem warming us up as soon as we stepped out of the water. 

This parrot is named Rosa.  After an extensive photoshoot with her, I read the sign which translates to say "I like to make friends, but my beak is very sharp!"  Needless to say, I fled the scene.

And here we have me, starring as a namoradeira.  In many shops, and some houses as well, these wooden statues stay gazing out at the streets.  The story behind them is that back in the day many young girls wanted to go out at night, but their parents would not let them.  So instead, they stood at the windowsill, looking and wanting to go out on the town.  Fortunately, I don't have the same problem.