See the sweet, corny spread from my house...(Click on any of the photos on this page for a larger view)
I have also witnessed both ends of the celabratory spectrum here. The family I´m living with here had a quiet dinner at home for São João; many hours were spent preparing the typical foods and then extended family members came over dressed in the traditional country attire. Later they went out onto the street and lit sparklers and fireworks (one type of firework here, referred to as the bomb sounds like a bomb or a nearby gunshot when it goes off; women jump, dogs freak out, babies cry, car alarms sound). They also took part in a tradition here that I find pretty crazy (and surprisingly bothersome to my health), the lighting of a fogueira. A fogueira is basically a big pile of wood you stick in front of your house on the street and set on fire. Drivers and bicyclists in the street must take care to dodge the fogueiras, and as thousands of them are lit the city becomes thick with smoke.
On the left, old and new come together: the fogueria beside the erupting modern firework. On the right, a huge fogueira that was blazing down the street near where I usually catch the bus.
The next day I went to a nearby inland city called Caruaru, (nearly always subtitled for me ´the birthplace of forró!´). The city attracts many party-goers and fills up all of its hotels for this festival each year. I loved the several-hour scenic drive, the chance to meet some cool new people and deepen my existing friendships, but overall I thought the party was a bust. It was absolutely PACKED,(however I was assured that Carnival is even more crowded), there was much smell of pee, and the music was rarely actually forró (seriously...they played Lady Gaga); 90% of the men were drunk or on their way to it and an equal portion of the women seemed to have received a memo instructing them to wear 4 inch stilettos and not much else. Every attraction, t-shirt, table, and decorative flag was decked out in some corporate logo. I guess just like us, Brazil is not immune to having its traditions and good clean fun turn sour.
[SIDEBAR: on the way to Caruaru we stopped in Gravatá to eat at a restaurant called Rei da Coxinha (Coxinha King). A coxinha (pronounced ko-SHEE-ñuh)is a lovely fried Brazilian snack. It is shaped like a large teardrop, and contains potato and other fillings of one´s choosing (I ordered the popular cheese and shredded chicken filling). The establishment is owned by evangelical Christians and also bosts the best coxinhas in the state. I saw many strange artistic manifestations of these joint passions of the owners of Rei da Coxinha, and I felt obliged to photograph them...
Semi-seductive coxinha billboard and me and my new friends beside a giant coxihna statue.
Me in front of a giant chicken billboard claiming the best coxinhas in the state. And, by far the weirdest thing I saw, a mural in front of the restrooms which displays an except from Isaiah 40 about the LORD´s provision of strength above an American eagle ripping open a coxinha with its tallons to feed its young.
END SIDEBAR]
Two of my classes at the Catholic University this week were cancelled with the understanding that no one would show up. Half of this week´s classes at Arte e Vida were done away with as well for the holiday. While everything will be back to normal at the University, I will not have any classes at Arte e Vida next week either. Midweek the NGO is having a party to celebrate São João and showcase this semester´s work for the students´ families. I´ll get to see my students perform skits, play drums, show off some excellent crochet creations, and dress up in plaid clothes and straw hats and perform some traditional dances. I´m pretty stoked. I´m also stoked and amused by the fact that the NGO has designated the three days prior to the party as student-free, just to cook food and make final preparations for the party. I expect this to be a really special event for all involved, and the down time gives me a nice opportunity to plan the next few weeks of my lessons, instead of staying in the planning-one-or-two-days-in-advanced rut I´ve been stuck in. I think better planning will help me continue to decrease the stress and anxiety involved in doing my work here and will also make for better continuity and cohesion between my lessons.
In other news, it looks like I´m going to be staying here with this lovely family instead of attempting to switch homes in July. I think it works out well this way for everyone involved, and I must say, I am really enjoying it here. And I´m up to a solid 80% success rate at getting on the right bus and finding the correct destination when using the routes in this area!
It is also of great importance that I mention that Brazil will be moving on to the next round of the World Cup. Everything really does stop here for soccer. It´s true! We don´t have a sport in the US that receives such precedence and uniform support. Many green and yellow shirted aficionados are saying this year´s team isn´t playing very well, though. Today there was a fairly disatisfying game against Portugal--the Brazilian team was down its star player and burned a lot of time switching the ball back and forth between themselves midfield. The game ended in a 0-0 tie. As the players threw off their shirts and we got ready to go downstairs for lunch, my Brazilian uncle turned to me and said, `This is the reason why Brazil doesn´t get ahead. Because we sit around watching this trash!´ While I don´t completely agree with him, (because Brazil is in many ways getting ahead and because I think many of the nation´s setbacks are a result of more profound societal evils), I can certainly see where he´s coming from.
Hours before Brazil´s match against North Korea, I stood in the lobby of the Prefeitura, the body that governs Recife at the municipal level. I waited there for a good 15 minutes for a friend to descend from her office so we could go watch the game with her family. I stood there as hundreds of people flooded out of the cramped office stairwell and elevators, most in yellow or green attire, some mysteriously accompanied by their children. I just had to laugh at how many people were flowing out of the stairwell, and that all of them were leaving their government posts at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday! I expect to write another update in a few days. My half-way mark will be arriving shortly and I want to take some time to reflect on how I´ve been doing on accomplishing my goals here. I also want to share the major differences between the US and Brazil that have been brought to my attention through talking with people here. If you would, please pray that any remaining fogueira smoke would clear my lungs and that any mental smoke would clear my mind so that I might plan my classes well this week.
Please pray for discernment regarding my future (I can´t be an Olsen twin forever...). I have been looking into the grants that the Fullbright program is going to supply for students to do research and teaching assistantships in Brazil in 2012 and it looks like an opportunity I might want to try for. In the long(er) run, I still have thoughts of missionary work, study in urban planning, and stateside international student ministry swishing around in an inconclusive sort of way in my brain. If I´m supposed to be figuring any of this out nowadays, may I have the insight and inner quiet enough to do it.
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