Back in a few days...

Well, so, I let a month go by without putting anything up here...It's been a wonderful month. But you'll have to ask me about it in person. Send me an email or call me after April 1st and we'll find a time to catch up.

It's been an amazing journey here and I can't wait to get home!

See you soon!

p.s. Get on twitter, or let me know that you already are! @MarkyLee

Wow, so, Carnival...

It's come and (almost) gone, and it seems like the whole city is releasing a post-coital sigh. People have been talking about Carnival here since I arrived at the beginning of December. For an event that effectively drives the entire economy of the city, takes months of preparation, draws thousands upon thousands of tourists from around the world, I was a bit underwhelmed. It seemingly has all the elements that would make a dream world for me: dressing up, wild music and dancing, temporary break in all social norms and regulations, and interesting religious undertones. Sadly, booze, butts, and breasts really seem to be the dominant Carnival experience. Not that there is anything wrong with any of those three things. It's just when they are eclipsing what maybe once was a rich moment of culture...but I suppose my snobbery is showing.

Some highlights for me: turning the corner (several corners, several times) and being swept up in the crowd following this or that bloco, watching Measure for Measure in Portuguese, dancing with the bloco from Tabajaras (where I'm teaching) through Copacobana and running into bunches of people I know, failing to get into the Sambadrome and watching from behind on a pedestrian bridge, hiking the Pão de Açucar with a friend from Vassar and watching the Oscars with Dom instead of doing anything remotely related to Carnival and yet still hearing the sounds sliding across the bay to me as I fell asleep.

Last night I pranced around Santa Teresa with THREE other people who went to Vassar college. Four of us! And three of us lived in Ferry House...amazing. We went to this incredible little bookstore/cafe where they serve homemade artisan pizzas and acoustic musicians play sweet Brazilian melodies as you look out through the trees over Rio de Janeiro. It was my second time there, and I've got to go with Ariana, who's coming on Wednesday! Wow!

Most incredible of all though was the hike I did a couple days ago up Pedro da Gavea. It took three hours or a little more to get up, including a section that was really on the verge of rock climbing (we needed a rope). It was excruciating, but it was amazing to get to the top and look out over the incredible beauty of Rio. Beaches, mountains, forest, the lake, and the ocean surround me in majesty.

Photos to come.

Guacamole

It's what I'm eating right now. Avocados here contain approximately six times the meat as an avocado in California. They cost exactly the same. I will never see the California Avacado ads the same way again.

Showers of guacamole.

The Water Still Sparkles when the Sun Shines

No matter what else is going on in A Cidade Maravilhosa, the water still sparkles when the sun shines. It doesn't matter how many reais were stolen by street kids the day before, or how many drug dealers were murdered (by corrupt cops, or other drug dealers) during the night. Anyone who wants can stroll down the endless curves of beach and watch as the sun erupts in showers of glitter as each wave calmly gathers itself up and surges down to crash on the sand of Ipanema. However many cars were stolen (to deliver guns from cops to gangs, or money from gangs to cops, or just to stick a dead body in and leave, parked and bloody), Christ still stands tall, tranquil, warm, inviting. 

We talk about how you can see the Christ from anywhere in the city. I hadn't thought about the back of the Christ until yesterday. It is really just a small slice of Rio that Christ looks down on: the tourist-ridden Zona Sul, Downtown, the peaceful middle-class neighborhoods of Orange Trees and Botanical Gardens, the party scene of Lapa. But Christ never looks down on some half or three quarters of the population of Rio. Six or eight million people living in varying degrees of absolute poverty to whom this great edifice of the Prince of Peace shows only his back.

It was a treat for me to visit a project in Para da Lucas, one of those Christ-forsaken communities in the North of Rio, where one woman has reached out to 400 children over the last 7 or 8 years by opening her home to them to offer classes in art, capoeira, dance, music, and english. Volunteers from around the world come and teach classes, and they go on field trips to expand the world of kids who, when she asked what jobs they could have when they were older, could think of only street vendor and drug dealer.

I'm teaching three days a week now in Tabajaras, wild drama classes with kids and exhausting english classes with adults. There are ways that I wish the project was different, but all in all, I'm engaged and enriched. Through that project and connecting with other places and people I've met there, my life is suddenly feeling full. Hiking up the mountain every day is sadly a long-distant dream, but I'm sure I haven't yet done it for the last time.

Thoughts on a Monday

I just lay down on my hammock with my computer to send some emails when a gigantic black flying thing began making passes by my head. Terrified, I slammed my computer shut and held it as a weapon, leapt out of the hammock and protected my face with the computer as I shrieked and ran inside. Inside I stood, astonished that this tiny creature could foil my plans so thoroughly. The neighbor's internet connection is accessible only outside, you see, so I watched and waited as this monstrous terror on wings continued to dart about my balcony. Eventually it crashed and fell belly side up onto the ground. As it frantically waved all six legs about in a futile attempt to right itself, I gained the courage to come back outside and write this. In the midst of my musings, however, merely a sentence or two ago (after several minutes of fruitless exertion) it managed to turn over and take flight. As soon as I knew what was happening I raced inside. Now it's gone, and I can write again. I'm glad that it absolved me of the difficult choice I was facing over whether or not to help it.

I had a meeting with someone over at Theater of the Oppressed this morning, and like every meeting that I've had in Rio, it was five-minute affair that could have easily taken place on the phone when I spoke with him last week. Furthermore, it really should have taken place 3 months ago when I first made contact and they could have told me that they do absolutely nothing for half the year instead of stringing me along from one person to the next. The upshot is that there may or may not be 1, 2, or 3 events in March that I could check out. Ah, the worst laid plans...

I'm thinking about writing a book titled, "On Gangs and Governments"

But really, the I'm more interested in coming up with titles of books than actually writing them.

In a surprising turn of events, I'm now off to meet a Czech woman who's just arrived in Rio. I have no idea what we're going to do.

Reflections on Christ (not really the point)

I met up with a couchsurfer from California last week to hike up the Sugarloaf. It was my second time hiking the short steep path, and we breathlessly talked about home, traveling, social change, Unitarian Universalism, and generally what we are doing with our lives. Well, I breathlessly talked. She ran up the hill with breaking a sweat and confessed that her friends call her a mountain goat. As I embarrassedly whined about being out of shape, she astutely remarked, "if you hiked up this hill every day, you would be in shape." So I've done so, 7 out of the last 8 days, at least.

Even more exciting though is what a just got back from! Like just now! Tabajaras is a favela between Botafogo and Copacabana. There is a community organization taking flight there where I will be teaching English three nights a week, and hopefully theater 1 or 2 days a week. Meeting the people there has been really juicy. I first visited just last night, and tonight I taught my first class...supposedly the advanced class, a conversation class, but really all the classes just seem to be for whoever happens to show up. Which is great fun. Then hanging out with kids in the street afterward is even more fun. 

Less fun, but rather exciting, in that pulse quickening sort of a way, is the amount of people with guns riding around on motorcycles. Tabajaras is what Dom refers to as a middle class favela--nothing like the image of shanty town poverty that I would conjure in my head...everyone has a cell phone, wears nice clothes, and many have a car or motorcycle. But there is a drug gang that pretty much keeps order in the place, and so there are plenty of young men with guns.

A great guy named Walter showed me all around today. Much more striking than the guns was the Church. It shines as a spotless blue and white castle amidst the haphazard catastrophe of brick and stucco that sprawls up and down the hill. It's Catholic, of course, and has quite a compelling feeling to it. I hope I might meet the priest.

Which brings me to my reflections on Christ. I've realized that before living in Rio, I had only 3 images in my mind of Christ:

-The baby Jesus, swaddled in the manger

-The close up of the handsome aryan with long wavy hair, looking peacefully into the distance

-The blood covered martyr, the Christ, on the cross

Really, I had no other images. Some vague notions perhaps of throwing moneylenders out of the temple, hanging out with prostitutes and riding a donkey into town, but all these lacked images. Rio has given me another image, the open-armed Christ always nearby, always inviting, welcoming, protecting. The Christ as the cross, as constantly present salvation, as, not son nor charming suitor nor dying martyr, but radiant father, offering his embrace regardless of where you are or what you are doing.

Unless, of course, it's a really cloudy day.

Adventures by the Dozen!

Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted! I think that means I'm having fun :) Now, lets recap (this is a little long, if you want read half now and save the other half for the next time you're wondering if I've gotten around to posting yet):

1. Museums!
São Paulo is the New York of Brazil, and the museums did not disappoint. MASP, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, had a number of neat exhibits going on, including the modernist Bible interpretations of Candido Portinari, one of the most famous Brazilian painters, and an epic display on the history of the portrait. The Museu de Arte Sacra was a fascinating tour Christian art over the last 4 centuries, mostly from Portugal and Brazil, though there was an incredible display of Nativity scenes from around the world. I was fascinated by the many sculptures of St. Anthony (I think...) holding the baby Jesus in one hand and a cross in the other. Baby Jesus and the cross... Lastly I got to see the Museu Afro-Brasil, a gigantic museum documenting the history of African culture in Brazil, with some of the most powerful art I have ever seen. Particularly the photographer Walter Firmo is worth checking out!

2. Sé

This massive cathedral in the old center of São Paulo was just like the cathedrals I've seen in Europe. I guess I've never really been to cathedrals in the States, perhaps they're the same...Anyway it was amazing to see, and then to walk around the old center to see the immense variety of architecture used over the last 400 years here, and PoMo blend of ancient churches, capoeira dancers, juice bars, and infinite street hawkers celling cheap plastic crap.

3. CCSP

The Centro Cultural de São Paulo was quite a find on my second to last day in the city. I went to see a play (see #4) but got so much more! If I lived in São Paulo, CCSP is where I'd be...There's a big library downstairs, and a whole bunch of open area upstairs with a cafe, tables, etc. In one section are the chess players (including one blind player who had a really neat special board so that he could rub his hands over all the pieces at once without knocking them over). Then, interspersed throughout the rest were, get this, Role-Players! Dungeons and Dragons! That's right! It was Brazilian geek heaven. Top it off with the theater crowd that night, and clearly it was my scene...

4. The Play!

It was called 650 Mil Horas (650 thousand hours), which is the average life expectancy for Brazilians (72 years, I think). It was billed as part of a mime festival, and I was quite excited about the philosophy of the studio that was putting it on, because of the emphasis on the body and physical theater. Unfortunately the good stuff was in Portuguese (which I understand about 25% of) and the physical theater felt fairly amateurish. But it was a great experience, and I wish I could have seen more theater in São Paulo, it's supposed to be the best in Brazil.

5. Unitarian Universalists

I don't remember why (I think it was in a conversation with my mom), but before I came I looked up on the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Associate, for those non-believers out there, wink-wink, nudge-nudge) website, and saw that there was a Brazilian UU group in São Paulo. Well, I remembered this while I was in São Paulo, and managed to get in contact through...drumroll...their Listserve! That's right, they have a thriving yahoo listserve! I took the train to meet up with them in a suburb (of course) of São Paulo, where I participated in a New Years ritual (typically a week after New Years) with 5 UUs. It was remarkable just how UU it was. Like, from the ritual itself--which included singing Come, Come and Go Now in Peace in Portuguese, writing things to let go of on paper and burning them, and the lay leader's reflection on New Years--to the fact that in the couple who were hosting us, the man was a computer nerd and his wife was an herbalist, former tarot reader, and that the lay leader explained to me that they were more esoteric and new age, and that he and Bruno, the other lay leader, were more humanist. And our conversations outside of the ritual? Science fiction and board games. It was clear that I shared more culture through our common religion (however that happened...) than I do with many Americans...

6. Back to Rio!

I took an overnight bus back to Rio, where it was delight to reconnect with my little community here. I spent a few nights sleeping the hammock, a few days reading and lying on the beach, and used CouchSurfing.com to find the next adventures!

7. River Rafting in Petrópolis

I wasn't sure that I was going to go until 15 minutes before I left. I threw my stuff in a bag and rushed down the hill to meet a bunch of strangers from the internet, jump in their car, and drive an hour and a half up to Petrópolis, a beautiful rolling town outside of Rio. Me and about 15 other couchsurfers crashed in one generous couple's house, then woke up early the next morning to drive out to the Trés Rios meeting point. We were served breakfast, suited up, and bussed out to our starting point. 

After the truck with the boats got stuck in the mud, we hopped into the river a little early. The rapids were smaller than the times I've gone in California and Oregon, but it felt a whole lot more dangerous. In part maybe because the guide was speaking Portuguese, in part because the river was deceptively strong, and mostly I think because there were low-hanging trees on both banks and often in the middle of the river, and we were continually ramming into them as if on purpose. But despite getting sucked the wrong way several times, getting stuck in a few different trees, two of our crew getting stung by hornets, and a rain storm finale, we finally made back to our starting point and were served a hot lunch. Well worth it!

7. Cachaça Room

Ok, it doesn't really deserve it's own entry, but at the river rafting place was a room full of cachaça bottles, and some to try. Couldn't resist the photo op :)

8. Pizza

Way cool pizza place that night. For a fixed price, you eat all the pizza you want. The waiters just keep coming around with different types of pizzas, and give you a slice of whichever ones you want. While most of them, of course, have mounds of meat on top, they had a few that don't, including Rúcula, arugula with sundried tomatoes, which has become my favorite thing to eat here.

9. Serra dos Órgãos

The next day we went hiking in this extraordinary rainforest national park. It had the grandeur of Yosemite but a 100 times greener.

Our hike culminated in getting to a gorgeous waterfall. Classic travel experience accomplished!

10. The Ride Back

This was maybe the scariest car ride I have ever taken. That whole, it was a dark and stormy night thing...Well, it was definitely dark, but I don't think stormy really gets at the experience of torrential rain constantly rendering the windshield opaque while crazy Brazilian drivers swerve around each other on windy hilly roads and freeways without lane markings. Sorry moms!

11. Obama Day

It was a great day to be an American. I saw a couple others, as I ducked into an Irish pub to just miss the inauguration. We'd ask each other, are you american? And then give a long knowing nod when we'd say yes. Everyone, the my brazilian friends, my british housemates, people on the streets, was celebrating the moment, but it was something unique to be an American on that day, to tell Alice, I got to vote for that guy.

12. Sick Weekend, Pressure Cooker

Well, I got sick, with a nasty cold, but I think it might be at the end now. I watched movies (Doubt is excellent!) and listened to my audiobooks (the Twilight books are absolutely terrible!), and bought a pressure cooker to make brazilian style beans with. My first go was fairly successful, but a little overcooked. I'm excited to try again, but we've run out of gas for our camping stove, and we don't yet know how to get more (the original was a gift from a friend). I've got three excited leads on places to work with kids that I'll be pursuing this week, so more on that front soon!

Beijos e Abraços!