Ahhh, good journal of mine. How I so neglect you. So many white pages, so many spaces left unfilled. Forgive me for my absence, my long belated embrace. Life beckons and my attention falls on other things. I have been out of the house almost every single night these last two weeks. What extra time I do have is usually spent on my homework for class, and I’m often too wiped out when I get home to do anything but fall asleep. I’ve had too much sun, too much beer, and enough new experiences to fill a small lifetime.
The sun rises early here. Despite the often late hour that my head hits the pillow, I usually wake up around six in the morning. Salvador is a place that is mercilessly loud, and if not for the rays of sun that touch my head, I am often roused by the urban concerto breaking open outside. Like many great operas, it begins simply, with a single note—but a drawn out whisper. Then, with time, force, and will, the harmony gains in complexity, taking on a life of its own. Here, the song begins with the chirp of a bird, the bustle of a car, and then falls into more intricate patterns. Each morning, a man in a blue and yellow uniform circles the block yelling “Gaizzzzz, Braziuuuuuu Gaizzzzz!” He pushes a cart with eight or nine kerosene containers; the kind that people use to heat their kitchen stoves. Yapper dogs with too little room and not enough play bark with his approach, and from the street people honk their car horns seeking the attention of the commuters laying wait inside. Within the apartment, the day begins with mince and pound of the juice grinder, squeezing sweet nectar out of an assortment of fruits for breakfast. Doors slam, toilets flush, the symphony rises in complexity. Little choice is afforded to those that wish to stay asleep.
After taking my shower and coffee, I begin my long track downhill to the school. Graça is situated about 30 min walking distance from Rua Greenfield, where the building resides. The route takes me past fruit vendors, small supermarkets, large gated historical buildings, and a number of other small lojas opening for the day’s comings and goings. Taking this path numerous times a day, I often see the same people, hear the same punctuated tones of street vendors selling their wares, catching their curious glances as I pass on by. The route is rather pleasant, animated by the cooler morning air and first light, but becomes quite a chore when I must hike back up the hill after midday. I’ve been doing so much walking lately that my feet are swollen and covered in sores. I bought a new pair of sandals—the cheap kind that almost everyone wears around here—but they only created new wounds in new places. My feet hurt so bad yesterday that I had to walk the entire length to school barefoot, mindful of the dog droppings and broken glass littering parts of the road.
Classes at Idioma have been steadily increasing in difficulty. Portuguese is quite a complex language, with a structure far more intricate than English. For every English word, they often have four (or like seventy if you want to count the verbs), divided by masculine, feminine, and plural forms. It is hard enough for Brazilians to understand, let alone a monolingual woefully incompetent speaker such as myself. I used to think that I was a worldly person, having experienced a bit of traveling in Europe and Latin America. Of all the students at the school, however, I remain the least advanced. Thanks be to the States where language remains an undeveloped pastime. Take Yasmina for example, a classmate and travel buddy over the last two weeks. Her fluency extends to French, Italian, Spanish, English, some German, and now Portuguese. And she is by no means an exception. Lately, I try my best to keep up with conversation in class, but it seems as if everyone else has a far greater vocabulary to draw open, and a far better ear to work with. I sit with my mouth hanging open, trying to parcel out the sounds that pass so rapidly by. I only hope that time and discipline will be my friend in this regard.
Just last week, Yasmina, Cori (another student…actually from the same town that my older brother lives), and I decided to do a little bit of traveling over the weekend. Our destination of choice was an island town known as Morro De Sao Paulo—a popular resort station for seafarers, Brazilians vacationers, and foreign tourists. The island lay about five hours ride, by ferry boat and bus, from Salvador. The trip was a perfect chance, as Yasmina cleverly mentioned, to “have a vacation from our vacation”. We hopped on a boat, first to the large island Itaparica, and then took a bus to a small colonial town known as Valencia. The bus ride was horrendously long—about two hours in total. All of the seats were taken and we had to stand up the entire way, perilously balanced as the bus over sped each turn. When we arrived in Valencia, it was late, after dark, and we came to find that the last river boat to Morro had left an hour before. Depressed and languid, we took a seat at the Tuica bar just by the waters edge. As we sat sipping a bit of cold beer at a yellow table outside, my mood was further darkened by the horrendously loud music slamming out of the speakers just beside us. Brazilians have a rather annoying tendency to over amplify music—often to the point where any redeeming sound is lost in the rattle of the hardware. At the bar, the music was not only pounding from huge black boxes just steps beside us, but also from a car across the street. The cars cd kept skipping, and it took about 15 min for anyone to notice and do something about it. Some random guy kept lighting firecrackers off near my head, for what purpose I wasn’t really sure, and it was all enough to make me question my sanity.
The night did fortunately improve after leaving the bar. We had met a young guy on the bus who recommended that we stay at his mother’s pousada, if we became stranded in town. The pousada turned out to be a clean well run establishment, founded by a Japanese Brazilian couple, who insisted that we try some of their Bahian cuisine for supper. The hotels slogan read “A sua casa em nossa cidade”—your house in our city. Everyone seemed excited that we were there, and after meeting up with the young guy again, we were offered numerous free drinks from the bar. I was served a Cervejaroska, a strange mixture of vodka and beer that threatened a quick T.K.O.
After bedding down for the night for a measly $10 per person, we caught a slow river boat out to the island. Discovered in 1531, the small tourist village promised a picturesque lighthouse and maravilhosas prais—blue green rock strewn sand and surf. We stayed at the Encanto Do Morro pousada, and hit an Italian beachside restaurant for dinner. Highlights over the following day and a half include eating the best damn french fries I have ever tasted, and acquiring an award winning sun burn that continues to plague me to this day.
On the way back home, riding on the bus to Valencia, I met a pretty blond haired Brazilian girl from Santa Catarina, a state near the southern tip of Brazil. Both she and her friend were very friendly and fun, and we exchanged numbers, promising to rendezvous later that week. All in all, the trip was quite the score.
* * *
Ahhhh…..Brazil. I have been so ridiculously busy here. Damn near every night I’ve got something going on. Take this week for example. Monday night I went to dinner in Barra with friends, eating Italian and talking over beer. Tuesday night I hit Pelourinho, dancing the night away to live samba ballads, and picking up the number of a girl who registers quite close to a ten. Ouch! Wednesday night I went out with Larissa, one of the girls I met on the bus returning from Morro de Sao Paulo. She was super sweet, trying earnestly to show me the sites and sounds of Salvador; the places a tourist wouldn’t go. We went to a local dive called Nossa Coisa – our thing – and ate clams and some kind of dish with fresh tuna. Thursday was a huge festa in Salvador—the Festa Iemanjá—celebrating the goddess of the sea, a major figure in the Orixas pantheon. People congregate in the Rio Vermelho neighborhood, offering up thousands of flowers and other gifts to the mulher do mar. I didn’t have small change and couldn’t buy a gift, so I instead stripped off my shirt and ran head first into the ocean. Everybody around thought I was crazy, but I just felt like being spontaneous. Like a mini carnival, bands strolled boisterously down the street, singing, dancing, being vicariously Brazilian. My group ended up as some ladies house, where we ate shrimp soup and danced to the classic music of Caetano Veloso. On Friday, I was planning on a quiet dinner with Corri and Yasmina, but instead ended up being dragged to see Olodum, an incredible live singing/percussion band known throughout Brazil. The concert was free, unusually so, and spectacular. After the show ended, I got tickets through Larissa to a private V.I.P. live concert party in Pelourinho, where I again danced the night away, flirting with the other girl I met on the bus last weekend. And if that wasn’t enough, tonight I’m heading to the Festa de Verão, a huge Woodstock like weeklong concert, where I’m going to see the oh so popular reggae band, Burning Spear. I’m sure I’m going to return tonight rather cooked and tired, ready to crash into oblivion. Sunday, I promised to hit another festa with the two maids that work in my house, Maria and Ninguem, who are 24 and 28 respectively. Then the week begins anew.
Ai, Meus Deus! And it’s not even Carnival yet!
* * *
Ahhh……que pena! My luck turns sour. If I wasn’t going to slow down my body was going to do it for me. After eating a rather large portion of meat and rice yesterday, I started to feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. Things started to move in directions they shouldn’t, and I had to immediately head for the bathroom. The maids, mindful of my predicament, started to break out all sorts of ad hoc remedies, first a lemon and then some sort of disintegrating water tablet. The first only increased the burn as I began to worship the porcelain god, and the second made me want to throw up even more. I was immediately taken back to my honeymoon in Mexico, when I experienced a dreadful bout of Montezuma’s revenge, where all sorts of liquids decided to exit one end and then the other (sorry for the mental picture). This time, it was the worse sort of vomiting, where nothing had quite been digested and no relief afforded after. I kept puking and puking until my throat burned from the acid and my whole body ached in complaint. I ran to the bathroom at least twenty or thirty times—just call me the chunky monkey.
And worse still, I had a Festa do Verão Burning Spear ticket in my hand, and quite an expensive one at that. It cost me about 65 reais, which is a small fortune for a concert ticket here. I so wanted to go, but my body said otherwise. In the end, I weakly handed over my ticket to a wide eyed Ninguem -- the maid I mentioned earlier -- who works everyday at the apartment cooking meals for Silvia’s catering business and cleaning the house. I would guess her daily salary to be at the very most 20 reais a day, although it is probably less. I knew that buying such a ticket would be damn close to an impossibility for her, and that she would appreciate it more than my other friends here. Her smile mirrored that fact.
This exchange got me thinking about an unfortunate truth of Brazil—that many people work their asses off here and make next to nothing. I see so much need, such hard resolve in many people’s faces. Lines and cresses communicate a demanding life, tough and unforgiving. Almost every time I sit outside at a restaurant I am accosted by young street children looking for handouts or bits of food. I have a difficult time looking at them, not because they are scarred or in some way disfigured, but because they look strangely unlike the children that they are. The innocence, given to a child sheltered and loved, is all but gone from their eyes. It’s like looking into the face of an adult with a child’s body, and it’s so saddening.
It makes one wonder how socialism or communism failed to take hold in countries such as these, where the system falls short for so many. I see great value in capitalism, structured as it is on the innate principles of nature’s survival of the fittest. Founded on the structure of the Savage Garden, it offers great possibility when functioning ideally, to the benefit of the greater good and the collective whole. When a man can earn his own keep, and is rewarded for his labor, he is given to a much greater desire to achieve more—to shoot farther than what a handout would provide. But like nature, capitalism lacks a sense of higher justice, driving it’s losers into the heat and press of the grindstone. When it is democratic, when the greater majority wins, then it is easily justified. But when the greater populace falls, and only a few ring strong, one can only begin to wonder. Is this the better way?
Anyway, maybe that’s the fever talking. I still am weak, achy, and in need of some good rest.
The sun rises early here. Despite the often late hour that my head hits the pillow, I usually wake up around six in the morning. Salvador is a place that is mercilessly loud, and if not for the rays of sun that touch my head, I am often roused by the urban concerto breaking open outside. Like many great operas, it begins simply, with a single note—but a drawn out whisper. Then, with time, force, and will, the harmony gains in complexity, taking on a life of its own. Here, the song begins with the chirp of a bird, the bustle of a car, and then falls into more intricate patterns. Each morning, a man in a blue and yellow uniform circles the block yelling “Gaizzzzz, Braziuuuuuu Gaizzzzz!” He pushes a cart with eight or nine kerosene containers; the kind that people use to heat their kitchen stoves. Yapper dogs with too little room and not enough play bark with his approach, and from the street people honk their car horns seeking the attention of the commuters laying wait inside. Within the apartment, the day begins with mince and pound of the juice grinder, squeezing sweet nectar out of an assortment of fruits for breakfast. Doors slam, toilets flush, the symphony rises in complexity. Little choice is afforded to those that wish to stay asleep.
After taking my shower and coffee, I begin my long track downhill to the school. Graça is situated about 30 min walking distance from Rua Greenfield, where the building resides. The route takes me past fruit vendors, small supermarkets, large gated historical buildings, and a number of other small lojas opening for the day’s comings and goings. Taking this path numerous times a day, I often see the same people, hear the same punctuated tones of street vendors selling their wares, catching their curious glances as I pass on by. The route is rather pleasant, animated by the cooler morning air and first light, but becomes quite a chore when I must hike back up the hill after midday. I’ve been doing so much walking lately that my feet are swollen and covered in sores. I bought a new pair of sandals—the cheap kind that almost everyone wears around here—but they only created new wounds in new places. My feet hurt so bad yesterday that I had to walk the entire length to school barefoot, mindful of the dog droppings and broken glass littering parts of the road.
Classes at Idioma have been steadily increasing in difficulty. Portuguese is quite a complex language, with a structure far more intricate than English. For every English word, they often have four (or like seventy if you want to count the verbs), divided by masculine, feminine, and plural forms. It is hard enough for Brazilians to understand, let alone a monolingual woefully incompetent speaker such as myself. I used to think that I was a worldly person, having experienced a bit of traveling in Europe and Latin America. Of all the students at the school, however, I remain the least advanced. Thanks be to the States where language remains an undeveloped pastime. Take Yasmina for example, a classmate and travel buddy over the last two weeks. Her fluency extends to French, Italian, Spanish, English, some German, and now Portuguese. And she is by no means an exception. Lately, I try my best to keep up with conversation in class, but it seems as if everyone else has a far greater vocabulary to draw open, and a far better ear to work with. I sit with my mouth hanging open, trying to parcel out the sounds that pass so rapidly by. I only hope that time and discipline will be my friend in this regard.
Just last week, Yasmina, Cori (another student…actually from the same town that my older brother lives), and I decided to do a little bit of traveling over the weekend. Our destination of choice was an island town known as Morro De Sao Paulo—a popular resort station for seafarers, Brazilians vacationers, and foreign tourists. The island lay about five hours ride, by ferry boat and bus, from Salvador. The trip was a perfect chance, as Yasmina cleverly mentioned, to “have a vacation from our vacation”. We hopped on a boat, first to the large island Itaparica, and then took a bus to a small colonial town known as Valencia. The bus ride was horrendously long—about two hours in total. All of the seats were taken and we had to stand up the entire way, perilously balanced as the bus over sped each turn. When we arrived in Valencia, it was late, after dark, and we came to find that the last river boat to Morro had left an hour before. Depressed and languid, we took a seat at the Tuica bar just by the waters edge. As we sat sipping a bit of cold beer at a yellow table outside, my mood was further darkened by the horrendously loud music slamming out of the speakers just beside us. Brazilians have a rather annoying tendency to over amplify music—often to the point where any redeeming sound is lost in the rattle of the hardware. At the bar, the music was not only pounding from huge black boxes just steps beside us, but also from a car across the street. The cars cd kept skipping, and it took about 15 min for anyone to notice and do something about it. Some random guy kept lighting firecrackers off near my head, for what purpose I wasn’t really sure, and it was all enough to make me question my sanity.
The night did fortunately improve after leaving the bar. We had met a young guy on the bus who recommended that we stay at his mother’s pousada, if we became stranded in town. The pousada turned out to be a clean well run establishment, founded by a Japanese Brazilian couple, who insisted that we try some of their Bahian cuisine for supper. The hotels slogan read “A sua casa em nossa cidade”—your house in our city. Everyone seemed excited that we were there, and after meeting up with the young guy again, we were offered numerous free drinks from the bar. I was served a Cervejaroska, a strange mixture of vodka and beer that threatened a quick T.K.O.
After bedding down for the night for a measly $10 per person, we caught a slow river boat out to the island. Discovered in 1531, the small tourist village promised a picturesque lighthouse and maravilhosas prais—blue green rock strewn sand and surf. We stayed at the Encanto Do Morro pousada, and hit an Italian beachside restaurant for dinner. Highlights over the following day and a half include eating the best damn french fries I have ever tasted, and acquiring an award winning sun burn that continues to plague me to this day.
On the way back home, riding on the bus to Valencia, I met a pretty blond haired Brazilian girl from Santa Catarina, a state near the southern tip of Brazil. Both she and her friend were very friendly and fun, and we exchanged numbers, promising to rendezvous later that week. All in all, the trip was quite the score.
* * *
Ahhhh…..Brazil. I have been so ridiculously busy here. Damn near every night I’ve got something going on. Take this week for example. Monday night I went to dinner in Barra with friends, eating Italian and talking over beer. Tuesday night I hit Pelourinho, dancing the night away to live samba ballads, and picking up the number of a girl who registers quite close to a ten. Ouch! Wednesday night I went out with Larissa, one of the girls I met on the bus returning from Morro de Sao Paulo. She was super sweet, trying earnestly to show me the sites and sounds of Salvador; the places a tourist wouldn’t go. We went to a local dive called Nossa Coisa – our thing – and ate clams and some kind of dish with fresh tuna. Thursday was a huge festa in Salvador—the Festa Iemanjá—celebrating the goddess of the sea, a major figure in the Orixas pantheon. People congregate in the Rio Vermelho neighborhood, offering up thousands of flowers and other gifts to the mulher do mar. I didn’t have small change and couldn’t buy a gift, so I instead stripped off my shirt and ran head first into the ocean. Everybody around thought I was crazy, but I just felt like being spontaneous. Like a mini carnival, bands strolled boisterously down the street, singing, dancing, being vicariously Brazilian. My group ended up as some ladies house, where we ate shrimp soup and danced to the classic music of Caetano Veloso. On Friday, I was planning on a quiet dinner with Corri and Yasmina, but instead ended up being dragged to see Olodum, an incredible live singing/percussion band known throughout Brazil. The concert was free, unusually so, and spectacular. After the show ended, I got tickets through Larissa to a private V.I.P. live concert party in Pelourinho, where I again danced the night away, flirting with the other girl I met on the bus last weekend. And if that wasn’t enough, tonight I’m heading to the Festa de Verão, a huge Woodstock like weeklong concert, where I’m going to see the oh so popular reggae band, Burning Spear. I’m sure I’m going to return tonight rather cooked and tired, ready to crash into oblivion. Sunday, I promised to hit another festa with the two maids that work in my house, Maria and Ninguem, who are 24 and 28 respectively. Then the week begins anew.
Ai, Meus Deus! And it’s not even Carnival yet!
* * *
Ahhh……que pena! My luck turns sour. If I wasn’t going to slow down my body was going to do it for me. After eating a rather large portion of meat and rice yesterday, I started to feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. Things started to move in directions they shouldn’t, and I had to immediately head for the bathroom. The maids, mindful of my predicament, started to break out all sorts of ad hoc remedies, first a lemon and then some sort of disintegrating water tablet. The first only increased the burn as I began to worship the porcelain god, and the second made me want to throw up even more. I was immediately taken back to my honeymoon in Mexico, when I experienced a dreadful bout of Montezuma’s revenge, where all sorts of liquids decided to exit one end and then the other (sorry for the mental picture). This time, it was the worse sort of vomiting, where nothing had quite been digested and no relief afforded after. I kept puking and puking until my throat burned from the acid and my whole body ached in complaint. I ran to the bathroom at least twenty or thirty times—just call me the chunky monkey.
And worse still, I had a Festa do Verão Burning Spear ticket in my hand, and quite an expensive one at that. It cost me about 65 reais, which is a small fortune for a concert ticket here. I so wanted to go, but my body said otherwise. In the end, I weakly handed over my ticket to a wide eyed Ninguem -- the maid I mentioned earlier -- who works everyday at the apartment cooking meals for Silvia’s catering business and cleaning the house. I would guess her daily salary to be at the very most 20 reais a day, although it is probably less. I knew that buying such a ticket would be damn close to an impossibility for her, and that she would appreciate it more than my other friends here. Her smile mirrored that fact.
This exchange got me thinking about an unfortunate truth of Brazil—that many people work their asses off here and make next to nothing. I see so much need, such hard resolve in many people’s faces. Lines and cresses communicate a demanding life, tough and unforgiving. Almost every time I sit outside at a restaurant I am accosted by young street children looking for handouts or bits of food. I have a difficult time looking at them, not because they are scarred or in some way disfigured, but because they look strangely unlike the children that they are. The innocence, given to a child sheltered and loved, is all but gone from their eyes. It’s like looking into the face of an adult with a child’s body, and it’s so saddening.
It makes one wonder how socialism or communism failed to take hold in countries such as these, where the system falls short for so many. I see great value in capitalism, structured as it is on the innate principles of nature’s survival of the fittest. Founded on the structure of the Savage Garden, it offers great possibility when functioning ideally, to the benefit of the greater good and the collective whole. When a man can earn his own keep, and is rewarded for his labor, he is given to a much greater desire to achieve more—to shoot farther than what a handout would provide. But like nature, capitalism lacks a sense of higher justice, driving it’s losers into the heat and press of the grindstone. When it is democratic, when the greater majority wins, then it is easily justified. But when the greater populace falls, and only a few ring strong, one can only begin to wonder. Is this the better way?
Anyway, maybe that’s the fever talking. I still am weak, achy, and in need of some good rest.
Time is said to heal all wounds. In my current state I’d rather pass the moments quickly.
(street vendors along side Igreja da Bom Fim)
(side of Igreja de Bom Fim)
(military fort, still used and abused)
(couple overlooking downtown Salvador)
(approaching Itaparica)
(pousada perfection)
(fighting over dinner at the Hotel Valencia)
(Arrgggghhhh...a pirate venture gone bad)
(bluer waters of Morro de Sao Paulo)
(red gringo)
(the tide is out and so is the modesty)
(a translation gone bad)
(ilha tropical)
7 comments:
Hey aaron sounds like things are going pretty good.... except for the language barrier thing and the puking thing, but I am sure that both will get better.... hopefully the puking faster than the language barrier, anyway the best way is dive right in... which is what you have done. have fun and live it up talk to you sometime??!
All mothers would say, I told you so.
Take care my son, we are glad that your life is so full.
mamzie
He's alive! Been a while. So nice to vicariously experience the din of Brasil (which you finding cheezy and irritating at times) - from a distance. I've been relishing the silence between guests while doing contruction, making trails, coming up with new projects. It's been absolutely gorgeous here in Okieville with still zer rain!
Did you get my emlog Wowzer Weekend?
Bitchin'
OK. I guess this is how I comment. I've read your postings with probably more interest than many, enjoying the interspersion of Portuguese. Especially since, due to your limited vocabulary at this time, I understand it all. You do have a way with description that captivates the casual peruser. I suppose you left the States to get away from the party life? Hah, your life is a party a day. Good thing for occasional bouts of food poisoning to get a rest (not really). Now, about this girl named Ninguem? That means Nobody. Surely it's a nickname. Her parents couldn't be that cruel. Well anyway, I'm glad this is the adventure you wanted it to be. Keep basking in the newness and discovery. In case you haven't figured it out, sou seu tio, Jeff.
Sweet beans! I'm so happy that people are actually reading this thing. It makes me all that more motivated to write more, which is fantastic considering that motivation is the one thing I have the least of right now!
Loved the comment Shem. Keep them coming. And where's your blog. We are all waiting, and you have so few excuses.
Still zero rain in Okieland! It's damn fine luck, then, for you to have bought a property with so many whales. When water is worth its weight in gold, and all your neighbors come a crawlin', your going to become one wealthy man.
I found out that ninguem, which does mean "no one" and thats rather funny, has six children, most from different fathers. Yikes, thats one girl in Brazil that Leo is going to leave alone, and I don't say that lightly.
Your comments keep me going people, so keep them coming!!!
Chow from Brazil.
oh come on, a couple of lousy pictures are nothing compared to your writing. i'm too lazy to even write full sentences sometimes.
19 year old day (though i prefer 18) i think should be...well i dont know. either before or after carnaval, i'll leave it up to you.
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