Saturday, July 29, 2006

Global Warming

I’ve seen the news that the US and Europe have experiencing record heat waves . Well I must add to the list of record high temperatures. I’ve been told that Sao Paulo has been experiencing the highest temperatures on record for the month of July, which is of course the winter down here. The weather has seen highs in the 80’s. But even at night the temperature has stayed in the mid 70’s. Now this may not quite compare to the 100+ temperatures some of you may have been feeling, but for a city that has average winter temperatures in the 50’s this is definitely an abnormal occurrence. Perhaps this is more evidence of global warming.

Prison to park

The name Carandiru was once synonymous with one of Brazil’s most notorious prisons. So when Marcel said there was a park at that sight I knew I had to go there. Of course the biggest selling point is that within the park there is free canopy zip lining. The park is called Parque de Juventud. The subway stop still carries the name of Carandiru which at this point it the line the subway becomes an elevated rail system giving you great view of this section of the city. Most of my explorations have gone I have a general destination with no real idea of where we needed to go. So as I walked with Alexis, Justin and Caroline we asked a few people if they knew where the entrance to the park was. The general rule is to ask three people and hope that at least two of their stories match up. Though all the people we asked gave us the same general direction they all gave us slight variations. But we trudged forward and found ourselves passing by a large housing complex that definitely gave the impression of a favela, though it looked nicer than what I would imagine a favela would look like. After walking close to 2 kilometers we noticed the neighborhood quickly change from these dodgy housing projects to a more upscale area complete with auto dealerships. Then finally we stumbled on an entrance to the park. It looked like a park you might see in some suburb back in the US complete with a skate park.
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Though the heavy presence of security officers certainly leaves one wondering what the reasons are for the heavy police presence.

We entered the park and sticking out like sore thumbs with our tourist attire and taking pictures of everything. This led to our first taste of the security system.
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After Justin and I took some pictures at the skate park I noticed that a security officer was checking us out then radioed someone. We continued on and another officer approached us and asked us if we were journalists or researchers approached us. I quickly said were just tourists so the officer just warned us about having our cameras out because of thieves and welcomed us to Brazil. Its interesting that at this point in my time in Brazil I see the presence of how the government exerts its control and where. Why was there no police presence in the government housing yet the park was rife with uniformed officers checking out everyone that entered the park. Also why did he care if we were journalists or researchers? I wonder if it’s part of the government’s attempts to control how the image of a site with such an infamous history is being portrayed abroad.

Aside from the security presence I was also struck by the fact that the people using the park were certainly not from the neighborhood we passed by earlier. It’s been challenging for me to get my brain around the concept of race relations in Brazil. Since I’ve been living in a part of town that is much more “chic” you don’t see many people begging on the street nor do you get the sense that poverty exists in the high numbers that you hear of. You would also be left with the impression that Sao Paulo is mostly made up of European descendents. The park patrons are mostly lighter skinned and the housing project residents were mostly darker skinned. It’s quite an eye opening experience. Yet because you definitely see exceptions to this rule it’s hard to say that racism the way we think about it in the states exists here.

I have some pictures of the park for you to see just how much of a beautifully designed park it is. Elements have been left from the original prison including the wall and some structures that definitely remind you that something more ominous once stood there. But beyond that you see that the park is still some sort of a prison because it is walled in from the community that surrounds it. When we got the end of the park with the tree canopy zip-lining we found out that they only allow 4 groups of 15 a day. So we will have to go back again.
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Since this was a park I had to leave my urban planning mind for at least a little while and actually take advantage of the green space. So before leaving the park we took some time to do some yoga and a few cartwheels. It felt so good to move around some and feel some grass and see trees. We were leaving the park when we realized there was an exit that was only 100 meters from the subway station entrance. I’m still glad we took the long way, because sometimes the short cuts make you miss out on the bigger picture.

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Friday, July 28, 2006

Work, work, work…

I've gotten a few emails from, my professor Susanna Hecht from UCLA who has been coordinating my work here, and its sounding more and more like go to Campinas. It sounds like the work like the work being done over there is more related to what I want to do, so since I haven't found a place yet I might end up going out there. I'll keep you posted on how that develops.

Since I’ve been having difficulty signing on to the internet I’ve been writing my blogs offline and trying to post them with pictures when I get access to some wireless internet or find an internet café that can read my USB jump drive. I’ve also figured out how to let people comment on this blog without having to be members, so feel free to comment away, just try to keep it clean. ;-)

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Sunday Stroll

Here are some pics of my random walking tour of the city. Sundays most everything is closed so it’s kind of eerie to see empty streets and very few cars on the road. I wasn’t sure where everyone went on Sundays but it seems like many folks head for the many open-air markets that abound in this city. The markets are know as “ferias” and are packed with people walking up and down eating good food and shopping for everything from handicrafts to antiques, and jewelry.
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Besides the ferias I stumbled on (3 within an hour of walking) I stumbled on a cultural center that was rife with environmentally sustainable features. Everything from a green roof, multiple recycling cans, plenty of natural lighting and many more features. I’ve learned that cultural centers like this one abound in this city and offer free cultural events including movies, live music and art exhibitions. Various industry associations generally fund these cultural centers. I’m hoping to take advantage of these free cultural events since everything else in this town seems to be bleeding my pocket book.
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But one of the coolest sights on this day is that some roads are closed to automobiles so the pedestrians take over walking their dogs or riding their bikes. I could just imagine shutting down Wilshire Blvd for the day…ah.

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Home…at least temporarily,

I still have not found a place to stay so I’m at this hotel, which doesn’t exactly leave me with a sense of being home. But Friday night hanging out with my fellow classmates really helped me to feel like I was home. We got together for Gaetan’s birthday. Of course this had to be done Brazilian style so a bunch of us met up for a drink at the corner bar/loncheria. The cool thing about these places is that it’s a place where people gather from the neighborhood everynight and socialize. You don’t have to drink beer because you can get a suco (juice/smoothie) or you can also buy food. After the pre party dining/drinking we walked across the street to Gaetan’s place. As soon as he opened the door to the apartment he was sharing with some Brazilians, it looked like we were stepping into some swanky bar lounge. There were vinyl records arranged on the walls, antique tin cans hanging from the ceiling and of course velour couches, red-lighting and a wet bar in the middle of the living room. We’ve only been here a week but this night we bonded. It felt like we had all known each other for ages. No one brought their camera, including myself, so no pictures were taken. This was probably a good thing since our attempt to practice the Brazilian method for checking testing sobriety, which involves standing on one leg and forming a figure 4, led to some yoga poses and a eventually a handstand… so of course we were sober….right?

Friendly Brazilians

I’ve been baffled in my attempt to understand how on one hand there is this perception that Sao Paulo is a dangerous city yet still I’ve had a few experiences where I’ve been completely amazed with how friendly people are here. On several occasions Brazilians and foreigners alike have warned me that I need to be careful in Brazil. The other day I had my camera out in an Information Kiosk when an older Brazilian woman approached me and warned me that pickpockets would snatch my camera so I had better put it away. Then the other night Marcel and I were trying to find the Shopping Frei Caneca, which we weren’t sure how to get to. When we asked the first person that walked by us if she knew how we could get there. Instead of giving us directions she just said she would walk us there since she had nothing else to do and wanted to go for a walk anyways. In the states when I think of a place that is considered unsafe I don’t think of random strangers taking time to show you around or stopping to talk to you at great length then wish you farewell.

Shopping here is also a different experience. It’s taken me a while notice, but it seems like shopping, at least in Sao Paulo, doesn’t involve the hard sell. When Marcel and I walked into a store that sells wine and cachaça, after having a brief conversation with the salesman about cachaça we asked we asked him to recommend a really good bottle of cachaça he showed us a bottle that cost R$20 even though there was a R$400 bottle right next to it. It really is nice to shop like this even if the prices are still higher than I was expecting.
Vila Madalena

Thanks to the suggestion from Marcel to visit Vila Madalena I was able to get a taste of the uber chic part of town. We weren’t quite sure what we would expect. All we had heard was that this was the new hip spot of town with swanky shops and bars. Not knowing where your going can make it difficult to ask how to get there. We eventually took a cab after several people we asked weren’t quite sure where to direct us. The cab left us in the middle of this long steep street that had very cool shops interspersed between some very beautiful homes. The street we were on had many shops specializing in wooden products. I just hope these aren’t contributing to the destruction of the rainforest. Though I didn’t ask too many questions lest I ruin my experience. After getting down to the bottom of the hill we stumbled on an alley that was covered in graffiti art. We found a sign showing that this project was funded by Boston bank, though I don’t much else about this project other than it is quite amazing. The pictures speak for themselves, but for an added sense of how impressive it was you can check out the video on youtube.
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Saturday, July 22, 2006

Day 3

A bit more settling in. I just found out that the school we are taking the language classes has wireless internet…woohoo! This is a really good thing since I’ve been having trouble finding an internet café. Well today we finally took care of activating our cell phones. It was quite a sight about 10 foreigners invading the Tim office asking how to take advantage of a deal that gives us 500 free minutes of calling within the Tim network. That’s more than I pay for my cell plan back in the States and a lot fewer minutes. But the funny thing was that I was acting as translator for two of my fellow classmates one from Bulgaria and one from Hungary. It was quite a site to see me translate in my broken Portuguese but it seemed to work out all right. And in the end I learned everything about the Tim service network and their plans, so I think I will have to just get a job with them.

The prices here are quite a bit more than I expected. The exchange rare is R$2.2 for $1. But all the prices just seem to be higher. My last few meals have cost me R$12 for a modest amount of food (I miss those Bolivian prices). I will have to do some more exploring because I know there are cheaper food options around, just not in my area.

Well I did find a deal this evening which was a bowl of Yakisoba for only R$2.50. And it was quite good. Or course there was a heaping dose of MSG, but hey, that just makes it better.
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Day 2

I’ve now been in Brazil for just under 48 hours yet it feels like I’m getting more and more settled. Today I took care of some very basic necessities like getting my cell phone to work here. I bought my phone partly because it was advertised as a GSM phone, which can be used most anywhere in the world. Of course theory always works better than practice, so when I went to the cell phone carrier I thought it would be just as easy as buying a new chip for my phone, unfortunately my cell phone was blocked from using other carriers’ chips. Fortunately since I started my language course I was able to take advantage of the experience of my fellow classmates who are all going through the same processes of settling in. MaFe (Maria Fernandez) told me where I could go to get my phone unblocked for just a mere R$50, which is about $22. It worked and I was well on my way to getting connected to my temporary new home. Now on tomorrow’s task list is to leave the hotel I am in, the Formule 1. It sounded like a good deal at first but given my budget I can’t exactly afford to stay here for too long, plus as much as Marcel and I get along, this is a very small room, and the idea of switching the bunk beds we are in every night is not looking very appealing. So for the same price we are each paying for this double, we will be moving to another hotel and each get our own room. Or course this is also just a temporary situation since we are hoping to find out in the next couple of days whether we will be able to stay in Sao Paulo or if we will have to move to Campinas. As if the trouble we had just to get here wasn’t enough, now we are stuck in a bit of limbo not knowing if where we will be. So we are just taking it all in stride and since its all new to me I don’t mind going off to Campinas if that’s the case. But a bit of good news did come when we found out that we will be here long enough to take a class though again its uncertain if we will do that in Sao Paulo or Campinas.
Aside from that we were given a tour of the campus at FGV and its pretty cool.
Now the Portuguese class has been going well. I met a bunch of other international students so it’s like making an instant group of friends. Of course since we are all here for a cultural exchange I will need to mix it up and start meeting more Brazilians.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

First day in Brazil








The first blog is always the easiest. The hard part will come when I try to keep filling these virtual pages with at least semi-interesting content (though I hope it will be more than that). Now the impetus for this blog is my recent arrival in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I’ll be spending nine weeks here doing research on an environmental issue related to planning. The details have not been fully worked out yet, but I hope to get that nailed down by this week. I’m in Brazil as an exchange student from UCLA and will be working with the Fundação Getulio Vargas (or FGV for short).

I’m traveling with Marcel, a fellow classmate of mine and we arrived this morning in Sao Paulo safe and sound. Thanks in large part to Helen for saving me from my transportation drama yesterday morning and getting me to the airport in time to catch my flight (um abraço muito grande).

Our first foray into Brazil began with renting a car and driving ourselves from the São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport into the city center. I was surprised that e driving here wasn’t as hectic as I had feared, though my Marcel did the driving since I just don’t think I could be aggressive enough. On our drive into town I could see signs for a major river project that has been underway to improve the Tietê River, which flows along the northern edge of Sao Paulo. I’m hoping to do some research on this project and see to what extent this project is being integrated with broader water resource management. I’m also hoping that as I learn more about this project I can see what comparisons if any can be made to the work being done along the Los Angeles River in my home town.

Once we arrived in the city I was taken aback with how clean the city is. The air seems relatively clean and the streets are pretty clean. I know this is a relative judgment that I am making based on comparing the parts of Sao Paulo I’ve visited so far with other cities I’ve been to including Mexico City, Cairo, and Bangkok. I’ve also been struck by the absence of the destitute poverty that one hears of about Brazil. And contrary to all the warnings I’ve heard, I felt very safe walking around the city and felt welcome to ask random strangers questions on how to get around the city, which they all responded to with a friendly smile and without a complaint about my very broken Portuguese. Now I have not been to the favelas or any part near those areas and I’ve only been here one day so I may have to revise these observations over the next two months that I’ll be spending here. I also hope to figure out what has set Sao Paulo apart from the aforementioned cities.

Well that’s about as much blogging for one day. I’ll keep you posted on other interesting things I find out, and hope to dispel some more myths in the process.

Abraços,

Guillermo