Pascoa

Easter came with a calm morning and an invitation out to a farm. Cooking started quick on the meat. I toured the trees: peach, mango, maracuja, tamarind, jabuticaba, persimmon, etc. I petted the nice dogs. I watched the neighbor tickle a large blue macaw, it laid on its back and spread its wings and kicked and grabbed the neighbor’s hand with its feet while giggling. Saw the peacocks and the chickens and the geese. We ate the fresh cooked steak with tomato salad, rice, and mandioca. After, some folks swam in the pool. The Lady of the farm showed me her paintings, which I assure you were not the work of a slouch. We took a drive through the sugar cane and saw some eucalyptus. A crowd of kids and adults piled in the back of the truck, tailgate down. On the way back we stopped at the pond to catch some fish. The friendly macaw followed along to watch. I caught nothing. A piranha has been eating the farm's fish’s tails off. One guy caught one of the piranhas. The sunset was pink above the sugar cane, some low clouds darkened to grey in front of the higher rose colored ones. We loaded the small boat onto the truck and returned to the farm in darkness to eat the leftovers. Little chit chat and then the drive home. All things green. The noise of animals. I tried for the first time a mango with thorns in it. Tasty. Great food. Great people. Happy Easter.

A Stroll In Pictures

Noise

People expect South America, really all Latin countries to involve more noise. It's a right assumption in my experience. Even the middle of nowhere has louder birds and bugs, let alone the hustle of motorcycles and cars and trucks and people and music and cars with PA's that drive slowly all over town advertising, or god forbid living within hearing distance of a club or popular bar or place with televisions during an especially pride inducing soccer match.

I tend to vacillate between an appreciation of the cultural differences and a solid annoyance at the disruption. Some days it fills my ears happily, all this noise of life. Other times I put on my headphones and think about the nothing that one hears in the woods of the Olympic mountains. In any case, along with the birds here, there are also dogs. A pack right next door and a pack across the street. One might assume they live to antagonize one another. Or that they are engaged in a futile game of Red Rover. Futile because they live only behind gates. Gates easy enough to see through and be seen through but impossible to exit through. When the next door neighbor dogs bark, no one ever ever ever yells to them to be quiet, no matter the hour. The tiniest sound and they bark for roughly 5-10 minutes. Not to be left out, this usually involves the across-the-street dogs to chime in. Well so I sometimes scratch my head and wonder where the humans are in all this mess. Where are the irate and sleepy neighbors through these debacles? Are they desensitized to it all? Or have they lived with the futility all this time and just don't think about it. That sort of thinking leads me to feel all out of place, a foreigner in a land where people's ears and patience are superior to mine. Then something great happened.

It's 'round eight last night and the dogs are going for it like usual. Then I hear a loud boom which nearly knocked the book right out of my hand. It came with quite a flash too, so I run to the window and see the across-the-street neighbor standing in front of his house lighting M80s and side-arming them under the gate of the next-door-neighbor's house where the dogs are. The second and third little bombs were right on target, sliding under the gate before going off. His daughter was next to him, she might as well have been jumping and clapping since she seemed so happy to watch. After the blasts, the street was silent. The shirtless across-the-street neighbor went back into his house and all in all I felt a little less out of place.

Calculations

It rained last night on the drive back to my town. It was dark and there was silent lightning in the distant North East. The day ended at the school with a small hush of the fans and clang of the gate. A group of the final students waited out on the sidewalk for a ride, or for maybe nothing at all. They are small town kids with the aimless manner of all small town teens. The merits of the local pizza place and the endless nothing else to do were the most popular topics of discussion. One girl told me she only lives in the present. I told her this sounded like the best way to avoid going crazy in a small town and not so much a philosophy. She said maybe.

The roads were pot-holed but straight. The red clay tinted trucks moved slowly and owned the whole lane. Waves of dust flapped across the headlights in the cross winds and the diesel of the trucks burned loudly. Daniela, the owner of the school, drove, and Eidmar, the postman who learns last in the day after doing his route, sat red eyed in the back waiting for Daniela to switch to Portuguese. She had a lot to say: the troubles of finding a new secretary, the students who do not keep studying, the man coming to visit from San Paulo with no one new he can train and of course the stubborn parents. I was listening half way; she was in a monologue anyhow. I was thinking about money. I don’t really know what I will earn, but it surely will not be much. There seems to be more demand for my time than I can supply, which is no bad problem. But even so, while it’s enough here, it’s not enough for much else. Earlier, Daniela was asking me why I will return to the United States. She made her case about the lifestyle, the teaching, the people, and the food. I told her it’s true, that I could, it’s possible to just settle in and reap the easy rewards. But I told her I knew I would not. So as she talked, I was thinking about money.

Thus far I am much more at ease. There is some levity to these little towns that might feel grating in the wrong perspective, or grow boring, but for me I hit it just right. It’s the right tempo for me now, and I can feel at peace. Compared with the ulcerous feeling I maintained in Korea, or the treadmill of America, a person feels fine just surviving the heat and lingering in a conversation and dripping some fruit juice down one’s chin. But, and this is what I was thinking about while staring out into the fields, how do you calculate that? I mean, clearly I took a hit in pay to come here, and one might take the difference and measure that against the costs to arrive, look at the overall discrepancy and then use that as some means to ground the value of living here. But the calculation just feels too slippery. So, how can you really account for the value of a way of life? I knew the gist of my lifestyle here already, but if one really had to make a more blind decision about the value of living a certain way, a better way, and measure it against the difference in dollars, how can one possibly attack that with a sort of logic? At what cost is it worth to live how we want to live? Not just to say in one’s dreams or by a campfire, how it all should be, but actually to weigh and measure the abstract differences in a practical way. If you frame the discussion just right it starts to answer itself. In the right light it seems like nothing could be more important, once we land on what we want. Outside of that clarity though, which is when most of the small decisions that add up to a lifestyle are made, there are lots of reasons to digress. If you are lucky enough to choose, what do you put in that deciding column: lightness in the shoulders, patience, a settled stomach? Is that really logical? Still, I think it’s not incompatible with a logical decision, just that I don’t know how to measure it. But, I guess it’s impossible not to think about--when it’s late and she is still talking while the clouds flash quietly--exactly how long I could keep using this road. 

BBQ

Saturday is for BBQ here in Brasil. Michele came to pick me up and off we went to the little farm outside of town where we got to chill out and listen to some tunes and play with kittens and eat steak. The fields around the house are filled with sugar cane. The animals eat the fruit that falls from the trees. In all it's just a little slice of paradise. The steak is marinated in giant chunks of salt and then cooked over the coals and sliced. Damn fine meat, I must say. Another highlight was the jar of pickled peppers! I was lucky enough to get to take the jar home as a gift, along with some fresh lettuce from the garden. Next time I reckon I will try and make off with some avocados from the MASSIVE tree. A generous host, fine chatter, and tasty food. That along with 11 kittens to watch for entertainment made for a great Saturday. Thanks to all!

Facebook Album:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.810908815594.1073741825.52301808&type=1&l=df058bc433

How Does It Feel

Yesterday I had a morning meeting at the school, Wizard, which is here in Novo Horizonte. The meeting happily consisted of about an hour of chit chat followed by about ten minutes of discussion of teaching. They will use me as a pronunciation guru and also to instruct about writing composition and speeches. Cristina told me that in Brasil there is pretty much zero instruction, even in Portuguese, about how to write an essay (i.e. thesis, body, conclusion, etc). I told her that I could happily begin to teach these things, and said that I should just start my own academy for Composition here in Brasil, she agreed and added that a woman was opening one in the town very soon. I told her maybe I could find a way to make it a graduate school research project and get a ticket back to Brasil later. In hindsight, I reckon I oughta find out where this woman’s academy is and pay her a visit.

Sonia’s daughter Jacqueline and her boys Ricardo and Igor picked me up in the afternoon to give me some pointers on grocery shopping here in Brasil. I was mostly in need of learning how to buy some of the produce we don’t get in the US and aid in navigating the meat department. Included here in the photos are: the sweet avocado they have here, a persimmon, a fig, a mango, some fresh cheese (queijofreco) and also one of my favorites, what are called paçocas (puh-sock-uhs). Paçocas are peanut candy! Since the peanut butter here is 9 parts sugar to 1 part peanuts, this is the closest thing. Good peanut candy is totally endemic to the culture, and good peanut butter is totally absent.

For late dinner, there was a Churrasco (shoe-hoss-ko). There was fine tasty meat and sausage and lots of lively Portuguese. In Brasil when they BBQ, they cook over coals and put the meat on spits and on different levels of racks. As the meat on the outside gets cooked, they slice it off into small pieces that people just pick at with their hands. Meat and beer and cigarettes, nothing more. At one point in the night I left with a man whose name I cannot remember, but everyone calls him the Japanese He is Japanese. This was an occasion to notice the racism here, since there was a lot of eye narrowing and sushi jokes thrown around. We did a few passes around the town and I got him to blast “Like a Rolling Stone” while cruising. He had a curious habit of flashing his headlights on girls that he liked, and they really didn’t seem to mind all that much. Or maybe they were just diggin on Dylan. Alas, made it home by two. Nothing like drunk passengering in small town Brasil, keeping my eyes on the stray dogs and one-way streets. 

First Day Teaching, Borborema

6 March 2013

Woke up to the birds again at the 6 hour, wandered to a room and slept a few more hours. The rain from last night dried early. The day brought powerful heat. I went to the gym down the street, met up with the same trainers there I remember from 4 years ago. They all know me as Brian’s son. Made some grated beet and cabbage salad with some egg for brunch then got ready for the first day of teaching in Borborema. Daniela owns the school and she gave me some materials to go over in preparation of my three classes. I read through the material and took some notes for ideas to work on in classes. She arrived circa 1pm and thankfully we had the AC in the car, because it was full body sweat hot. Borborema is 20km away and in that drive time I learned that my three classes will be very casual, that I can use the book today or not, just get to know the students and learn their levels. Also, they speak enough English that I don’t have to completely speak Portuguese (something I was nervous about).

The school building is small, just an entry, common TV area for movies and two computers, kitchen area, and three classrooms. After 30 minutes of discussion with Daniela about teaching and ways that she can improve (she wants to improve her pronunciation, I suggested repetitions of trying to copy my dialect), I met my first student. Fernanda is an adult student, she will go to Toronto to study some English and then to New York. She has a strong grasp of English but a little bit strange way of speaking. Lot’s of um…uhh… ahhh… and mad gestures, like she is afraid of the silence when she is looking for a word. But she can correct her own grammar mistakes and usually catches them such as past tense conjugation errors. She rarely relies on Portuguese to help her and although she seems a little nervous with her mannerisms, she mostly finds her words.

Class 2 was also one person, Rafaela, who is also very competent in the language. She has been studying for 3.5 years and admittedly does nothing, because in her town there is nothing to do. She is a senior in high school here, and wants to be a dentist. When I asked her what she would do if she could do anything, she said she wanted to drive off-road trucks. Then she admitted that when she borrowed her father’s car, she crashed it into a fence. I told her it’s her parents’ fault if they are bad drivers and never taught her how to drive more safely. She seemed satisfied by this. We did not cover much of the book, but did a primer at the end of class about the topic of diet predilections for next week.

Class 3 was 5 people and Rafaela. This was the least talkative class and also the youngest. They were 15 years old with the exception of one older lady who was sitting in. They seemed much more nervous about chatting, and kept looking to one another before speaking. Bunch of lemmings, looking to one another. In any case, friendly but nervous folks, seemed genial to the idea of finding ways for them to talk. We decided to have a debate next week about movies, who makes better movies: America or Brasil. I’m hoping this sparks some talking.

Class 4 was Renato. He is traveling on exchange to South Africa to learn English. He intended to go to Canada but had his Visa application denied. He is high level and really wants to have practice conversation so that he can overcome his shyness when he arrives in Africa. He also wants to get a better job upon return to Brasil as a result of learning better English. Right now he works in a bank. Friendly guy, seemed really happy to speak with me. He also really liked the idea of doing mock interviews in English and we talked for 30 minutes after he was supposed to leave. When this was finished, I was invited into the last class of the night, a group of younger learners who were the least advanced group of the night. They seemed to just desire my company in the classroom. And they also seemed plenty content just to listen to me talk. I reckon I probably talked more than I should have, but I was maybe too tired to ask so many questions and pull the words out of them. I told them about different foods I like and asked which places they are curious to know about and how their lives are here in Borborema. The teacher of this final class also called her daughter in to chat with me, her daughter grew up in Connecticut and moved to Brasil three years prior but never spoke much English now. In this final class there was one student who looked very familiar to me. And near the end of class I recalled where I thought I knew her. When I first came to Brasil 8 years ago, I went with my Dad and Sonia to a BBQ with three other families. No reason other than chillin out and cooking tasty soup and shooting the breeze. It was really great, and I remember it really well because it seemed to me then to be a very quintessential Brasilian event, no one hurried, people love to talk and I had some great conversations with the older people. But I also remembered this very sweet and wide eyed little girl who I talked with, too. With my level of Portuguese then, I think I probably had the best conversation with her, about her family and school and such. And this girl, I could swear was sitting in this class. So at the end of class I said to her, “I think I know you. Eight years ago did you ever go to a BBQ with Brian and Sonia and some American kid?” She had no memory and asked her sister, who was in the class, neither of them had a memory of it, and why would they, they would have been 6 and 5 years old. I said, “Well, I have a pretty good memory for faces, so ask your mother.” They left and the younger one came back and said, “My mom came to pick us up and she remembers you!” Sweet vindication I was right, and went and spoke with her mother and told her that I had a great time and it was one of my greatest memories of traveling to Brasil and that I remember her daughters being very kind and sweet little girls. The mother was just like I remember them, calm and kind.

Daniela drove me back to Novo Horizonte and I told her that I didn’t really have food for dinner and asked her to drive me up to the sandwich stand on the end of the street. She took me up there and we chatted some more while they made my burger with egg. We talked about how in Brasil people love to talk, and we talked about how the dance instructor always tells Sonia to be quiet and listen to him, and she offered to show me around if I ever wanted to know the place more, and invited me to the dance class Saturday. I told her that maybe my heart and my stomach could be Brasilian, but my hips and feet are American. She left.

While I was waiting for my burger, two motorbike police parked and walked by. The larger one said “Hello,” and I asked in Portuguese is he spoke English, to which he replied that he does not. Then he asked if I knew Brian, and I said I did, that he is my father. The police man then extended his leather-fingerless-gloved-hand for a handshake, asked if Dad had left yet for his trip and told me when I speak to him next that I should tell him that Fabricio sends him a hug. I said I would then walked home and watched the lightning in the distance on this final promenade of the day.

The hours in the school flew by. All the students were pleased to have a foreigner around, no pressure, nothing needed to start on time, nobody interrupted anyone, no one was rude, or overly formal, people smiled, introduced themselves, Daniela had the forethought to bring some sandwich materials to feed me, she told me to do whatever I want in my classes. A more pleasant first day of teaching could not be asked for. I can’t believe they are going to pay me for this. 

March 5, Novo Horizonte, Casa

The Squawkers

I woke up to the birds so far twice. Not just chatter, but a squawk in the 6am hour. I sleep under the open air on the tile floor on a small bit of foam, under a single light sheet. Thankfully there are not many bugs and thankfully there are stars. The two cats, Brad and Angelina, are awake at night, but since they are cats, they don’t make much noise. Their feet are silent; their curiosity is also delicate enough to mostly go unnoticed. And, since they are cats, they do not go out of their way to get any attention from me.

Brad Pitt

Yesterday I got my watch fixed, the battery stopped at some point since I last noticed it working. Went to the relogio shop and got a new one put in for 10 reais in a matter of minutes. Bought some guitar strings for the old guitar I left here about 7 years ago, but the base of the string was outfitted with a piece of faux feather and wouldn’t stay put enough to tune. Then I tried the strings I brought with me for my guitar and one of them snapped while tuning. Also, on my Seagull guitar, one of the tuning knobs has cracked and so I cannot tune it. Got two guitars, a bunch of strings and just enough pieces of the puzzle missing to prevent me from playing. There is a shop in Catanduva, they tell me, where I can get what I need. Met an English speaker at the photo shop where I needed a passport-sized photo for an ID at the gym. The man goes by the name Zey and his English is good because he is engaged to a woman from New Zealand and they Skype everyday. He says he plays a ten string guitar, something traditional here, and has a number of other instruments in his house. His father is an aging doctor and their family has been in this town for a long time. He also talked about a man who lives next to him on a lake that makes his own Cachaça. He offered to find me the part in Campinhas when he goes for business, but I would rather have the mission as of now. Met up with the neighbors at their bakery, still the same good folks. I asked for a piece of pudding, they make a flan that is harder than most other flan one might encounter. The girl explained how they do this, but I didn’t understand enough. In any case, I wanted to take it back to the house, but they served it on a plate for me. Alas. Met some nice folks who said they would help show me around, went to Jacqueline’s big house where they served up some cake and coffee. Earlier in the day, Daniela came by, she is the owner of a school called CNA in Borborema. She dropped off some teaching materials and we had a chat about me going there to work. As it stands I will go there on Monday and Wednesday each week for maybe 8 hours and teach some small classes and help some of the teachers as well. I told her that I think these days will work and today I will be talking with Mario at the school here in Novo Horizonte about helping them out as well. Sonia’s two daughters, Jacqueline and Michele came by with their husbands and kids and we took Dad and Sonia to the bus station. They are off to Reno for a stretch and leaving the house to me. It’s hot. The end of summer here and it gets up to the high eighty’s and hovers there for a long time in the day. They say the rains this year were terrible strong, and I hope to catch one before the fast summer rains become the easy autumn showers. I seem to remember enough Portuguese to get by for now. People here go at that South American pace, saving all their impatience for when they drive. I promised Sonia that the birds and the cats will not die. It is time to honor that promise with a little food.

Drive North

Tyler and I go back what, to people our age, can be called a while. Partly due to geography, partly due to some Luddite-like resistance to communication, partly due to time passing, we don't get to see each other enough. But what once was tenuous is now growing more tenacious, and we have been conversing through tunes. Over the course of a month or so, Tyler and I worked up some songs and are quite happy with the outcome so far. Since I am departing for a stint in Brasil, and I like to take the opportunity for a deadline (otherwise ideas just squirrel around in an abyss) we've polished a few of these first offerings and put them out into the world. There is a demarcation now, at least a digital one, of time and space spent with a common goal. Listen if you like. Share. More to come. 

Sea-Tac

I can see you there Rainier, rising above the tarmac, into the smooth marine layer. The wi-fi works for the first time ever for me in Sea-Tac. I've got an opportunity to kill some time in a more productive manner than my usual terminal laps and page thumbing. As I've said before, flights are good punctuation. The times in life for pause and redirection are often not chosen. But when I've been able to control where I go, I've departed for all sorts of reasons. Escape, indulgence, ambition, curiosity, love-sickness; maybe even all at once. Airports are places of most initial distance to begin parsing these reasons. Since the reasons, for me, might be the last clear thought in the process that begins at the initial itch to leave, it is a conclusive realization that might get chased for a while. So, what are the reasons?