Campinas….Finally

I arrived in Campinas on August 7 for the conference on municipal governance. I had originally thought this would be a large regional conference with people from various agencies and organizations, but it turned out to be a gathering of academics from UNICAMP and the University of Texas. This was not bad; I just had a very different set of expectations. Many of the presentations focused on comparisons between the greater Austin municipal region and the greater Campinas municipal region. Campinas is very different from Sao Paulo. There is a suburban feel to the city. Plus the campus is located on the outskirts of Campinas, which gives you a further sense that you are in a rural setting. But I do like the change of pace here. I spoke with a researcher here and it looks like I’ll be helping him out with some research on public participation around water issues. He even gave me a book and a CD-Rom to look to familiarize myself with the work he is doing. So it looks like I’ll be back on Monday to start working. But in the meantime one of the UT students who is also doing exchange work in Campinas asked if I wanted to join her on a trip to Belo Horizonte. How could I pass that up?