Afternoon on the Avenida Paulista

Hi everyone! I appologize for my lateness in getting my blogs published (as usual), but I think traveling non-stop is a decent enough excuse. Don´t worry, I´ve been jotting down everything though, so I promise that I´ll be cranking out a bunch of new posts about my travels.

As a brief summary/update: (see map below for context)

After leaving the Rio de Janeiro area, I headed to São Paulo for two days, followed by one day in Curitiba (further south) and one week in Florianópolis (still further south). Then I flew up to Salvador for several days and traveled to a small town called Lençois to visit the Chapada Diamantina National Park. After three weeks of rather fast-paced traveling, I came back to Rio de Janeiro on June 26th to begin my program. It´s been a great week and a half here in Rio so far, and I´ll give lots more details soon, but at least now you know what I´ve been up to.

My Pre-Program Travels

So, now to begin where I left off...

Day 3: São Paulo
June 10, 2010

So, after an overnight bus ride from Niterói, we arrived bright and early to São Paulo, the fourth largest city in the world. I've been in massive cities before, but there was something about seeing the concrete jungle of skyscrapers sprawling out in every direction that really set São Paulo apart for me. In search for a hostel, we hit morning rush hour on the metrô (subway system) and got crammed in between the paulistas (people from São Paulo), which was a perfect time to just people watch. One thing that I noticed is that the paulistas are a bit more reserved than the cariocas (people from Rio de Janeiro). Of course, I probably would be less laidback if I had to navigate the traffic there every day instead of chilling on a nice warm beach in Rio. Nevertheless, every paulista still displayed the warm Brazilian spirit that I love, always willing to chat and help when I stopped to ask for directions.

Once we were liberated from our bags at the hostel, we were off to the futebol (soccer) museum, which was perfect considering a Copa (the World Cup) was starting the next day. It was really cool to learn so much, not only about the history of futebol in Brazil (which is obviously important to know in such a futebol-crazed country), but also a bunch of new futebol terms in Portuguese. For example, frango (literally: chicken) is when an easy shot slips out of the goalie´s hands and into the goal...which I actually saw a couple days later in a game. Another term is a zebra (zebra in English too), for when a low-ranked team with no chances of winning beats a really good team, which also happened. All in all, pretty educational! And the museum itself - actually inside a stadium, as you can see from the photo below - was really interactive and high-tech.

Luis and I then walked all along the Avenida Paulista, which is the main avenue there. It´s a massive street with tons of people and cars and commerce. I don´t know if you can make it out in the photo below, but the main avenue is where I took the picture from, and then there is another whole street below! This wasn´t taken at rush hour, but I´m sure you can imagine how crazy traffic gets there. São Paulo actually has implemented a rodízio in some zones of the city, where you can only drive your car on certain days. It´s determined by your license plate so, for example, even-numbered plates can travel M W F but not T R, etc.

We stopped to grab lunch inside a shopping (mall) along the Avenida Paulista before visiting MASP, or Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo Art Museum). It´s really famous for it´s amazing collection - Monet, Rembrant, Segall, Picasso, Degas, Rodin, El Greco, Van Gogh, etc. The design of the building itself is really cool...as you can see below, the museum is raised off the ground by the red columns on the sides.


Right across the street from MASP was the Parque Trianon, so we popped over there as our last excursion for the day. It was the most insane thing - five steps into the park and somehow all the hustle and bustle and noise of the Avenida Paulista magically melted away. Even the tall trees blocked out the reality of the endless skyscrapers - I couldn´t spot a single neighboring building. This tranquil oasis and the calm of dusk was a shocking contrast to the back-to-back traffic just outside the park´s gates. But, we eventually made our way back out for a relaxing night at the hostel to prepare for our second day in São Paulo!


Until the next update! Coli

Niterói, Niemeyer, and Nights at the Boteca

Day 2: Niterói, Brazil

June 9, 2010

After finally getting sleep at Rosi's house in Niterói (across the bay from Rio de Janeiro), Rosi, Luis, and I went for a walk for several hours along the beach near her house. As you can see from the picture below, it was so beautiful and peaceful...the only people we really passed were a herd of guys in sungas (speedo-like suits, very popular with the guys in Brazil) that were jogging by.

View from the rocks we climbed at the end of the beach.

After a delicious lunch of some special dish that is popular during Christmastime (a casserole of chicken, creamed corn, milk and a bunch of other stuff, covered with small potato straws on top), Rosi dropped Luis and I off in the center of Niterói, where we walked through a beautiful park until we reached another gorgeous beach called Praia Caribe. After walking the length of the beach, we headed up to the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (Contemporary Art Museum) built by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who I'll talk a lot more about throughout my blogs, I'm sure. But check out his Wikipedia page to see some of his buildings! All
his buildings are modernist and really unique, as you can see from just this museum.

View from inside the museum of Niterói

After checking out the modern art exhibits inside, we were off in search of some other places to see. Along the way, we met a girl from Indonesia who was traveling around and spoke with her in English, which felt kinda weird, even after only two days of speaking straight Portuguese. We kept walking around looking for the Solar de Jambiqueiro, which is a Portuguese colonial building covered in azulejos (intricate ceramic tiles). Unfortunately, it was under renovation, but we went to a different museum called Museu de Ingá, an old palace-turned-art museum before wandering our way back down to Praia Caribe.

The World Cup (A Copa Mundial) is currently going on, and for those who don't know, soccer here is like an intense religion. I hear from everyone how the whole country shuts down for games, and I've been seeing Brazilian flags and other displays of national pride that apparently only come out during the Copa. They even have contests for neighborhoods for the best decorations for the Copa, as you can see below from one of the neighborhoods we passed.

When we met back up with Rosi, she took us to a boteca, which is sort of like a bar place that people will go to and have a cerveja (beer) and salgadas (fried dough filled with different fillings such as shrimp, chicken, beef, etc) in order to wait out rush hour traffic. We ended up staying there for several hours because some of Rosi's friends came to meet us too and we ended up having a blast talking and trying the different salgadas. We also had guaraná, which is a really popular soda in Brazil... I don't know how to describe, but I really like it despite not being a huge fan of soda in general.

Our new friends at the boteca

Me trying guaraná soda, yum!

Overall, it was a really fun night, and we had to rush back to pack up and catch an overnight bus to São Paulo..which you will hear about in the next blog!

Until then, Coli

Crash Course on Cariocas

Day 1: Rio de Janeiro

Hello from Brazil! So, even after one day, I’m rethinking my decision of buying a return flight to the U.S…I might never want to leave here! My first day was amazing.

It didn’t really hit me that I was leaving for Brazil until a couple hours before I left for the airport…maybe because that was when I started to pack and it finally seemed real. My parents dropped me off at Tampa International, where I met up with my friend Luis (who’s doing the same study abroad program as me) for our 7 pm flight to Charlotte, North Carolina in order to make our connection to Rio de Janeiro.

Nothing to crazy about the flights themselves to report, except when we were hanging out in the food court in the Charlotte airport and heard an announcement for “last boarding call to Rio de Janeiro”…man, we grabbed our bags and sprinted down the entire terminal, with my things falling all over the place (including my computer). But we made it on the flight, and arrived to Rio! (as you can see below we are really excited)

My friend, Rosi, who I met when she was doing an professor exchange at UF this past February, was so wonderful to offer to pick us up from the airport, which is a bit of a ways from the rest of the city, and introduce us to Rio. Cruzing with the windows down, our eyes glued to all the new sights around us, we listened as Rosi narrated all the places we were passing as she took us through all the well-known bairros (neighborhoods). We also were jamming out to samba, and I now know why it’s such a popular music style here: it’s the perfect rhythm to complement the brown sugar sand, blue waters, and swaying palm trees.

We stopped for lunch near the naval base at the Pão de Açúcar (“sugar loaf” mountain named for its unique shape) and ate at a nice kilo restaurant, which is very typical in Brazil. It’s sort of like a buffet where you go around and put on your plate what you would like to eat, but, unlike in the United States, you weigh your plate at the end of the line and pay based on how many kilograms of food you’re taking. We had an absolute gorgeous view directly in front of our table looking out over a beautiful beach. It was also a great way to try a lot of different Brazilian foods at once, and even better to learn the names of the food based on the cards.

I tried a little bit of everything – there were several different types of fish, chicken, and meat, some pastas (including a fettuccine alfredo and lasagna), vegetables such as eggplant and a creamy corn dish, and of course, feijoada, the most typical Brazilian dish (sort of like a stew with beans and lots of different meats).

After lunch, Rosi had to go to work, so Luis and I walked from the Pão de Açúcar to the “shopping” (what Brazilians call a mall) in Rio Branco and then grabbed a bus down to Ipanema (which you’ve probably heard of in the song “Girl from Ipanema”). After enjoying our walk along the beach and stopping to watch some surfers, we continued

on to Copacabana Beach (the most famous beach in Brazil, and also featured in song). I was excited to come across a well-known bench with the statue of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a famous Brazilian author that I studied last semester, when a band appeared all of a sudden and gave me the pandeiro (like a tambourine) to participate in a jam session..all in all, random and hilarious.

We then caught a ferry from Praça XV over to Niterói, a city right across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. It was right around sunset (which happens around 5:30 here since it is winter, despite the beautiful weather) and really beautiful views from all around. From there, we met back up with Rosi and she took us back to her house on the outskirts of Niterói to eat a dinner of Brazilian fruits (Caja, Goiaba, Manga [Mango], and Caqui) and lasagna. Though I was absolutely exhausted, Rosi invited us out with another friend, so we ended up making the hour or so drive to Lapa (a neighborhood in Rio) to go to Carioca da Gema, where they had a live samba band. It was a blast and I finally learned how to dance samba, which made it even more fun!

All in all, it was a perfect introduction to what I have to look forward to for the six weeks I’m in Rio and a great crash course to Carioca culture (cariocas = residents of Rio de Janeiro).

Well, this post is getting long and I even uploaded pictures for you all, so I'll have so save any other thoughts for another time.

Até logo! Coli